It’s important for companies to preserve institutional knowledge because collective intellectual capital is a form of intellectual property. Experiences, insights, and skills accumulated on the job and over time are just as valuable as patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. If you preserve institutional knowledge, you can prevent knowledge from leaving the building, help new hires succeed, address information silos, improve efficiency and productivity, accelerate decision-making and reduce risk, adapt to business change, provide consistent customer experiences, increase employee engagement and retention, support organizational learning and innovation, and create a competitive advantage.