Implementing knowledge management in small and medium-sized enterprises

Zusammenfassung

The evolution of the economy has caused important changes in the consideration of the factors in the production of both goods and services. There is an important gap between company market-value and book-value. This gap is explained by means of Intellectual Capital. There are several methods of measuring intellectual capital and new methods are appearing due to the importance that the measure of the Intellectual Capital is gaining in these days, but most of them are addressed to large enterprises. Small and medium enterprises are quite different from large enterprises, so the existing models are not directly useful. This paper presents the Intellectual Capital Measurement Model and Knowledge Management method developed for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). The model was developed combining the most successful elements of existing methods. A framework for the implementation based on the recommendations done by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) is also presented.