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This paper describes the application of case based reasoning (CBR) to decision support for design managers and engineers during the early phases of new product development projects, in a concurrent engineering environment. The paper discusses the rationale of using CBR, emphasising its suitability for ill‐defined, unstructured problems, in comparison with traditional knowledge‐based systems. The overall research approach is presented, the importance of case collection, case base maintenance and user training is highlighted and the pre‐requisites for effective use of the system are discussed. Finally, the benefits and costs of the CBR system, as perceived by the user companies, are discussed. The experimental nature of the approach is emphasised and it is shown that the industrial environment for which the system is designed and in which it is used has great bearing on its capability.

By now, change management programs for establishing knowledge management system at a national level for the countries have not been systematically explored. Available studies have derived their critical issues for change management from companies' perspectives and have not considered the needs of a larger scale such as a country and at a national level. This paper aims to fill this gap.

A qualitative case study technique has been used in this paper for data collection to gain insights into the topic being investigated. For that, “grounded theory” research approach has been selected by which the collected data from some case studies (European countries) are categorized and analyzed through specific stages. The extracted concepts can demonstrate critical issues of change management programs for knowledge management establishment at a national level.

The overall results from the case studies were positive, thus reflecting the appropriateness of the proposed concepts. In addition, ten concepts and a framework are the other findings of this research that clarify how to design and implement a change management program for knowledge management adoption at a national level.

The set of critical factors (concepts) can act as a list of items for countries to address when adopting knowledge management through a change management program. This helps to ensure that the essential issues and factors are covered during design and implementation phase. For academics, it provides a common language for them to discuss and study the factors crucial for the success of change management program designed for knowledge management adoption at a macro level.

This study is probably the first to provide an integrated perspective of critical issues for change management program during KM adoption at a national level in the countries. It gives valuable information and guidelines which hopefully will help the governments to mange essential changes for accomplishing knowledge management through their countries.

In the new era of knowledge economy, knowledge and the processes to generate it and manage it are considered to be the most valuable assets of an organisation in the competitive business environment. Over the last years, intensive discussions have taken place about the importance of knowledge management for the whole of society, except for the business world. Today, there is a consensus among researcher and practitioner communities that the challenges facing modern societies call for development strategies that are knowledge‐based. Such strategies could enable humankind to pursue the vision of a global society in which all the basic human needs can be satisfied, while maintaining a healthy and physically attractive environment. However, general agreement has not yet been reached on which type of knowledge‐based development (KBD) strategy is the most advantageous and should be followed. This paper attempts, on the one side, through the study of current literature, to demonstrate the needs that should be fulfilled by KBD strategies and, on the other side, to justify why the relatively new concept of knowledge cities is the one that fully corresponds to these needs.

The authors attempt to review and analyse in a coherent way the current trends regarding KBD policies as well as to examine the needs to be addressed by successful KBD strategies, based on a wide range of published works, including papers, books, reports and web sites.

The main finding is that there are many issues that contemporary KBD policies should address and that the new concept of knowledge cities fully corresponds to these needs.

Recommended directions for further action research are presented.

The distinguishing feature of this study is that it shows that the concept of a knowledge city is the most appropriate and advantageous model for a KBD strategy, fully complying with and satisfying their needs.

The problem that original design manufacturing (ODM) companies encounter with the request for quotation (RFQ) process is that there is no effective and efficient methodology for them to formulate accurate and profitable RFQs. The purpose of this paper is to present a quality function deployment (QFD)‐, concurrent engineering (CE)‐, and target costing‐based methodology for ODM companies to formulate accurate and profitable RFQs.

From eight Taiwan electronics ODM companies, 15 people are interviewed to understand their current methods for formulating RFQs and the problems of these methods. Based on the interview results, it was decided to make use of the merits of QFD, CE, and target costing by integrating them into the proposed methodology.

A case study is presented to illustrate a successful application of the proposed methodology in a case company. The case study shows integrating QFD, CE, and target costing into the proposed methodology allows the authors to effectively and efficiently formulate an accurate and profitable RFQ for the case company.

The interview sample quantity of this study is limited to eight Taiwan electronics companies, which is insufficient to represent all ODM companies in various industries. For the future research, it is suggested researchers collect more samples from different industries in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in ODM companies from different industries.

This paper aims to integrate QFD, CE, and target costing to come up with a systematic ten‐step approach that can accurately formulate the three parts of an RFQ: the product specifications proposal, the product price quotation, and the product development schedule. By adopting this methodology, ODM companies can provide accurate and profitable RFQs to ODM customers, thus increasing their chances of obtaining ODM business.

The purpose of this paper is to look at how knowledge management (KM) has entered into a new phase where consolidation and harmonisation of concepts is required. Some first standards have been published in Europe and Australia in order to foster a common understanding of terms and concepts. The aim of this study was to analyse KM frameworks from research and practice regarding their model elements and try to discover differences and correspondences.

A total of 160 KM frameworks from science, practice, associations and standardization bodies have been collected worldwide. These frameworks have been analysed regarding the use and understanding of the term knowledge, the terms used to describe the knowledge process activities and the factors influencing the success of knowledge management. Quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods have been applied.

The result shows that despite the wide range of terms used in the KM frameworks an underlying consensus was detected regarding the basic categories used to describe the knowledge management activities and the critical success factors of KM. Nevertheless regarding the core term knowledge there is still a need to develop an improved understanding in research and practice.

The first quantitative and qualitative analysis of 160 KM frameworks from different origin worldwide.

This paper aims to focus on distributed technologies with the aim of highlighting their economic-organizational dimensions. In particular, the contribution first presents a deeper understanding of the nature and the dynamics of the economies and diseconomies that arise from the adoption and diffusion of distributed technologies. Second, it aims to shed light on the increasing tension between the hierarchy-based model of production and peer-to-peer (p2p) production, which involves the pervasive diffusion of distributed technologies.

Adopting an economic-organizational perspective, which is deeply rooted in the related extant literature, an analytically consistent model is developed to simultaneously take into account the following variables: adoption density independent variable) and economies of knowledge integration and organizational diseconomies (the costs of a loss of control and the costs of organizational decoupling and recoupling) as dependent variables.

Distributed technologies allow access to a large quantity and a wide variety of cognitive slacks that have not been possible until now. In doing so, they are leading the transition towards p2p. This is an emerging production paradigm that is characterized – with respect to mass production – by a shift in the relative importance of cognitive slack in comparison with tangible slack. Nevertheless, the unrestrainable diffusion of distributed technologies is not neutral for organizations. On the one hand, these technologies allow for the integration of economies of knowledge, and on the other hand, they involve organizational diseconomies that should not be ignored by managers and researchers.

This paper fills a gap in the literature by developing a consistent analytical framework that simultaneously takes into account the economies of knowledge integration and potential organizational diseconomies (the costs of coordination and the loss of control) that arise from the adoption and diffusion of distributed technologies.

During the last 15 years, knowledge management (KM) has changed from one generation to the next through constant improvements and new perspectives. A myriad researchers have presented methodologies, frameworks, technologies and have discussed various KM theoretical and practical issues. However, KM still needs extensive development – it is in its infancy. This paper aims to explore the world of KM in a different way; to review the current status quo and analyze the main agreements and disagreements among researchers and practitioners in order to highlight the key issues which need to be further researched.

The authors attempt to review and analyze in a coherent way the main agreements and disagreements among researchers and practitioners – in the field of KM – based on a wide range of published works, including papers, books, reports and web sites.

Based on the key agreements among researchers and practitioners and having in mind the remaining disagreements, the third KM generation should proceed to further investigation of several KM issues and to further research.

The key issues highlighted here need to be researched further. Following on from the individual‐knowledge focus of the 1970s/1980s and the group‐knowledge focus of the 1990s/2000s, the third KM generation should: develop criteria for evaluating frameworks, methodologies and approaches, and systems for measuring knowledge, intellectual capital and other assets; include double‐loop learning; analyse investments and costs of KM Systems; use modern technologies for transfer of explicit knowledge; and apply KM to other areas of social life. There is also a need to clarify the meanings of differences between the various concepts discussed here.

The distinguishing feature of this study is that it emphasizes placing KM in a broader context of researchers/practitioners’ discussions so that the key issues can be better recognized and understood.

Given the numerous government initiatives in existence improving the transfer of knowledge to high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (HTSMEs) appears to be a highly relevant topic (Bougrain & Haudeville, 2002). For example, governments provide subsidies, give training, found knowledge-brokering institutes, websites, and support collaboration between HTSMEs and research institutes (Jetter, Kraaijenbrink, Schröder, & Wijnhoven, 2005). Although government initiatives are undoubtedly helpful in supporting the transfer of knowledge into HTSMEs, they are not the only way to support them. An alternative way to support HTSMEs is by providing them with the Methods and Software Tools (MSTs) they need to identify, acquire, and utilize external knowledge. This process of identifying, acquiring, and utilizing knowledge from their environment is termed external knowledge integration (EKI) in this chapter.

To date, critical success factors for designing and implementing a knowledge management system at national level for countries have not been systematically investigated. Existing studies have derived their critical success factors from companies' perspectives and have not considered the needs of a larger scale such as a country and at a national level. This paper aims to bridge this gap.

A qualitative case study technique has been used in this paper for data collection to gain insights into the topic being investigated. For that, “grounded theory” research approach has been selected, by which the collected data from real case studies (European countries) are categorized and analyzed through specific stages. The extracted concepts can demonstrate critical success factors of a knowledge management master plan at a national level.

The overall results from the real case studies were positive, thus reflecting the appropriateness of the proposed critical success factors. Also 20 concepts and one semantic network are the other findings of this research that clarify how to design and implement a knowledge management system at a national level. The semantic network shows the most important factors (concepts), their effects on one another, and their relations.

The set of critical success factors can act as a list of items for countries to address when adopting knowledge management (KM). This helps to ensure that the essential issues and factors are covered during the design and implementation phase. For academics, it provides a common language for them to discuss and study the factors crucial for the success of a knowledge management master plan at a national level.

This study is probably the first to provide an integrative perspective of critical success factors for implementing KM level in countries. It gives valuable information and guidelines that hopefully will help governments to accomplish knowledge management through their countries.

The field of knowledge management (KM) is highly estimated in research and practice but at the same time relatively diffuse and scattered into diverging concepts, perspectives and disciplines. On that background, it was the aim of this delphi study to give more structure to the field of KM and to get an outlook on worthwhile developments for the next ten years. International experts of KM from natural/technical and social/business sciences as well as practicians of KM with a similar background were asked some basic questions onto the future of KM in two rounds. According to the experts, the future of knowledge management lies in a better integration into the common business processes, a concentration on the human‐organization‐interface and a better match of IT‐aspects to human factors whereas IT‐aspects rank low on this agenda. There are no broadly agreed theoretical approaches though something can be gained from the related organizational learning field; in general much more interdisciplinary and empirical research is needed. There are also almost no broadly agreed practical approaches besides communities of practice.