Knowledge Management and Innovation

2Knowledge Typology and Knowledge Processes at the Service of Innovation

Defined as the creation and the application of new knowledge to render it productive [PEN 59, DRU 93, HAT 06], innovation must be “apprehended as a dynamic process of development of new knowledge enabled by the learning of the innovation collective that engages itself in view of a future success” [HAB 10, p. 95]. As knowledge itself is defined as a dynamic process, it is a continually recreated and rebuilt flux. As it ensures a competitive advantage, it is a strategic power resource of organizations [BOU 07] whose management features a “specific systematic and organizational process in order to acquire, organize and communicate tacit and explicit knowledge” [ALA 01, p. 6]. “Knowledge management then consists in not only keeping knowledge and to organize access to it, but also, to favor the creation and sharing of this knowledge via the interaction between individuals and the key tools/technologies or technological functionalities” [KHA 14, p. 56]. This systematic approach to knowledge management enables us to identify many processes demonstrating the manner in which knowledge is managed at the heart of the organization: the creation (or generation), the codification (or stocking), the diffusion (or transfer), the transformation, the application, the integration and the protection of knowledge [BOU 07, CHA 13]. Such a typology of knowledge processes reflects not only the cognitive and social nature of organizational ...