Making the Most of Your Company’s Knowledge: A Strategic Framework

This paper develops a framework of four strategies for managing knowledge. Companies can leverage their knowledge throughout the organisation, expand their knowledge further based on existing expertise, appropriate knowledge from partners and other organisations, and develop completely new expertise by probing new technologies or markets. The two core processes of knowledge creation and transfer are central to the execution of these strategies, as is the company’s domains of knowledge. The framework is based on conceptualisation about knowledge management practices at Unilever, a multinational fast-moving consumer goods company. c 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.