Knowledge Management in Innovative Companies 1

2Strategic Analysis of an Organization’s Knowledge Capital

2.1. Articulation of Chapter 2

The purpose of this chapter is to conceptually and practically explore the first stage of the knowledge management (KM) virtuous circle described in Chapter 1, which is dedicated to the strategic analysis of an organization’s knowledge capital. In section 2.2, we recall the main concepts of this strategic analysis.

The practical exploration of strategic knowledge analysis will then be carried out through case studies of Chronopost (section 2.3), Hydro-Québec (section 2.4), the IPEN’s Radiopharmacy Center (section 2.5) and Sonatrach (section 2.6).

Section 2.7 summarizes the lessons learned from these four case studies on the strategic analysis of an organization’s knowledge capital.

2.2. Introduction to the strategic analysis of knowledge capital

This section is a summary of the strategic analysis of knowledge capital presented in [ERM 18a].

The knowledge capital strategic analysis approach is an audit of the company’s knowledge in order to create a KM action plan to manage this said capital.

This audit is carried out in four stages:

• – critical capacity analysis;
• – critical knowledge analysis;
• – strategic alignment;
• – development of an action plan.

The analysis of knowledge capital is based on the representation, by actors, of the objectives of their unit and that of the knowledge available in that unit. The choice of representation mode is that of mapping. Mapping is an abstract process ...