New propositions for Strategic Knowledge Curation
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Han Byungsuk , Bae Kyounghun , Kang Hyoung-Goo 
Published: October 2019

How to acquire and to produce important information is critical. How to manage knowledge is also a significant topic in social science. Recently, as the amount of information has exploded, it becomes more important how to organize existing information and to turn much information into valuable knowledge. Furthermore, it is crucial for people to select the right information for themselves. In other words, in the vast ocean of information, we must be able to gather and classify useful information.
Knowledge curation, as a management process of reorganization of information, is a promising strategy. Knowledge curation is an interesting concept. Curation originally meant the selection and care of objects to be shown in a museum, but now is used as a reorganization of the information. Knowledge curation services have grown due to both demand and supply factors. From the demand side, as there are too many choice alternatives about contents, the demand for contents curation increases. Contrary to common sense, too many choice alternatives can reduce the utility of consumers. From the supply side, as the cost of contents decreases, curation becomes cheaper. In addition, big data technologies make it possible to offer customized knowledge curation to consumers.
However, existing knowledge management literature has not clearly incorporated this new concept yet. In this paper, we suggest a novel framework for knowledge curation in line with existing knowledge management literature. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to catalog knowledge curation on its goals and processes. This paper will make this emergent concept more useful and in turn, contribute to the body of knowledge management literature.
We classify knowledge curation based on its process and its orientation. This classification yields four approaches to knowledge curation: news approach, museum approach, networking approach and open innovation approach. Four types of knowledge curation are summarized as below. When knowledge curation is to communicate existing knowledge in unilateral direction, it becomes the news approach. When it is to communicate existing knowledge through multilateral flow, it becomes the networking approach. When the goal of knowledge curation is creating new knowledge through unilateral information flow, the museum approach emerges. Lastly, when knowledge curation aims to create new knowledge through multilateral interactions between participants, it is the open innovation approach.
And we suggest required roles for knowledge curator according to each approach. The news approach requires curators to become lecturer, the museum approach does researcher, the network approach does moderator, and the open innovation approach does innovation manager.
Also, we suggest how to implement knowledge curation successfully. The suggested process describes the generic process that can be applied to all models of knowledge curation. It is desirable to repeat this procedure until the marginal cost of the procedure iteration is greater than the marginal utility. Future research can enrich this research with further qualitative and quantitative analysis.