A knowledge network approach supporting the value chain

Pro-active management of the knowledge supply chain facilitates rapid technology, product and enterprise innovation. Collaboration has become an imperative for innovation. The knowledge explosion and abundant connectivity hampers rapid innovation and leads to communication overload. Structuring collaborative knowledge, exchanged via an integrated knowledge network, fosters the rapid exploitation of knowledge. An adequate (adaptable) configuration of network components within a domain of knowledge is required. This paper provides a framework for such an Integrated Knowledge Network (IKN); it also provides a navigation space to access knowledge contextualized with project life cycles. A practical case study that facilitates innovation research in this manner, spanning different private and public domains and including more than 100 projects, 130 users and in excess of 30.000 documents is briefly discussed.