Entitled "Managing Knowledge in a Network Economy: Developing Knowledge Management Practices and Communities in Asia Pacific," the Second Asia Pacific Conference on Knowledge Management was organized by the Hong Kong Productivity Council, Asian Benchmarking Clearinghouse and Mindtheme Consulting Ltd.

In response to the challenges of the New Economy, companies from all business sectors are striving to transform themselves into knowledge organizations, and the sharing and deploying of knowledge has become a pressing issue, Acting Branch Director of Hong Kong Productivity Council Edmund Sung said at the opening ceremony of the conference.

"There has been a surge in the adoption of knowledge management as a key strategic tool in the Asia Pacific region since we organized our first conference a year ago," Sung said.

According to Sung, this year's conference aims to provide companies with case studies of market leaders that have succeeded in transforming their organizations into knowledge-based operations.

Participants believed that the difference between a company's market value and book value can be directly attributed to its intangible assets and tapping into customer and employee knowledge is one of the first steps to build a more successful organization.

Intangible assets refer to an organization's internal structure, external structure and employee competence, they said, adding that knowledge management is the art of creating value by leveraging the intangible assets of a corporation.

They also believed that an employee's competence is managed by creating environments conductive to increasing creativity, learning and knowledge, and most of it really belongs to the area of management.

Topics discussed in the conference included managing and measuring knowledge and tangible assets, creation of knowledge and innovation, knowledge sharing in an Asian business culture and empowering e-commerce for value networks.

(People's Daily 11/28/2000)