A Knowledge Value Chain for Knowledge Management

Where is the life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T.S. Eliot, ‘Choruses from the Rock’

Information is not knowledge,

Knowledge is not wisdom, Wisdom is not truth,

Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love,

Love is not music, And music is the best.

Frank Zappa, ‘Packard Goose’

The usual value chain is a powerful tool to identify strategic actions to ensure competitive advantages of the firms. A value chain is a chain of production activities in a firm, starting from the inputs up to the final customer delivery. Products or services pass through all activities of the chain in order and, at each activity, the product or service gains some value. In a knowledge-based economy, the main strategic resource of a company is its knowledge capital. Knowledge management (KM) is then critical to bring competitive advantages. There is a strong need to define what is the value chain for corporate knowledge, in order to manage the knowledge transformation process in the organisation, up to the best knowledge performance. This article proposes a knowledge value chain (KVC), based on the famous but fuzzy DIKW hierarchy (Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom), as a chain of fundamental intellectual tasks (cognitive activities). The added value of each task is explained and discussed. It defines the different concepts, based on the current literature, with some definitions adapted for the KM point of view. Then, the KVC is integrated in a management perspective. Finally, the KVC is interpreted as a continuum of knowledge processes adding new value at each step.