The Knowledge Management System has been adopted as a method of business strategy to create sustainable competitive advantage in enterprise. Knowledge management building based on core technological capabilities after third generation R & D has been particularly emphasized. It is also true that R & D activity is closely related to Knowledge Management practicing to evaluate technology as a knowledge asset.
This paper focuses on how to manage knowledge activity effectively and proposes the Knowledge Activity Process Analysis (KAPA) as the aim for practicing successful knowledge management methodology in the R & D area.The KAPA is a Framework designed to integrate knowledge process and system and to effectively practice knowledge management in organization. This model is applied to and verified through a case study of one company. The following definitions are used: 1) knowledge management process: knowledge acquisition, creation, store, share, use; 2) organizational infrastructure: organizational structure, culture, learning, strategy, evaluation system; 3) human infrastructure: leadership, knowledge worker, chief knowledge officer; 4) IT infrastructure: groupware, database etc.
The major contribution value of this paper is that, first, it presents the theoretical background of knowledge management by reviewing related literature and verified through a case study of a company where the knowledge management project has been initiated. The KAPA suggests after being put into practice, several key alternatives as follows: 1) definition of knowledge management process and practice on the base of knowledge assets related to business strategy; 2) knowledge based organizational culture; 3) maintaining the knowledge manager with the firm support from top management; 4) enhancing of continuous learning activity to maintain knowledge value and evaluate the performance of the knowledge value; 5) building the knowledge management system, database etc.
Even if we defined the research only in the R & D area, this kind of knowledge activity should be magnified to the company's whole system including the production and marketing areas. By putting into the practice the knowledge activity proposed above, we expect to create and maintain knowledge based competitive advantage in a competitive environment.
