Industry as the knowledge base: the way Asians integrate knowledge from academic, industrial, and public sectors.

Knowledge Management (KM) has played a critical role in innovation and technology management-related fields over the past decades. Most KM studies investigate related issues from the perspectives of an organisational or firm-to-firm level. Many firms create and sustain their innovativeness and capability via their counterparts within and across the industry, and their KM activities occur at the industrial level. The members of the KM activities may include firms, research and academic institutes, governments, and even their competitors and clients. This study takes industry as the knowledge base and explores the content of Industry-based Knowledge Managements (IKM) and how it is practiced in Asia. IKM is classified as four modes — knowledge clustering, enlarging, exchanging, and initiating. Some practical IKM cases in Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan are reviewed to verify the model and to clarify the IKM contents of each mode. Suggestions and directions toward IKM practices and research for the future are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]