INNOVATION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SUPPORTED BY SOFT SYSTEMS METHODOLOGIES

Abstract

Knowledge Science (KS) and Knowledge Management (KM) have become more important in the last decade. An authentic revolution has occurred in this field. Many studies and surveys were conducted among doctoral and post-doctoral researchers who were studying these subjects to define the Knowledge Science content : creativity, systematic application of knowledge, human science and methods of knowledge transfer, knowledge utilization and knowledge creation. It has been hard to define the content of Knowledge Management as an interdisciplinary field. Several different definitions have been proposed. In spite of that, it is well known that Knowledge Management focuses on organizing general management to achieve its mission, improve its competitive advantage and develop organizational competences through that knowledge. Several models have been proposed which cover a lot of factors, entities, functions, events and support. Factors for considering all the needed variables, entities for answering what does KM deal with, functions for defining how to implement KM, events for studying main situations and support to enable us with the available tools. Creativity and innovation are keys to obtain results. The available models should be analyzed, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, by means of a systems analysis methodology. When a model for improving an specific innovation system is applied it is convenient to select and utilize a soft system methodology (SSM) to promote the change process. In this paper several KM models are analyzed and one additional model, coherent, integral and applicable in most common problems is proposed. Besides that the paper focuses on discussing the relationships between Knowledge Management, creativity, innovation and technological development. Several partial problems and solutions are considered in this KM study: 1. Organization of knowledge data and information, 2. Utilization of this knowledge in internal processes, 3. New knowledge creation and finally, 4. Integration of new knowledge in the organization.