Managing the processes related to learning and the application of knowledge will be one of the most important performance excellence challenges facing organizations in the 90s and into the next century. This challenge is a natural outcome of the information economy an economy in which a large part of the value added in products and services derives from knowledge. While plant, equipment, and buildings start to depreciate from the moment they are put into operation, knowledge is an appreciating asset.
Physical goods exist in finite amounts.
At any given time someone can have more of a good only if someone else has less of it. Not so with knowledge knowledge can be shared with others without diminishing ones own stock of it. It is important to distinguish between knowledge and information. Information can be considered as the codified and formal part of knowledge. Knowledge also consists of a tacit component procedures and rules that are not codified or articulated.