Measuring Knowledge Management Capabilities

As business professionals know, creating awareness of a problem and its impact is a critical first step toward the resolution of the problem. That which does not get measured, does not get managed (Redman, 1998). In fact, measurement is a precursor to improvement. This is true for knowledge management (KM) capabilities of an organization. “In today’s knowledge-based economy,” Alan Greenspan recently said, “70% of organizational assets are knowledge assets.” Knowledge assets are intangible capabilities, and there is a recognized need to “make a greater effort to quantify the value of such intangible assets” (Teece, 1998b). How does one measure the worth of an organization’s knowledge assets? What does one mean by knowledge assets anyway?