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Knowledge Management: Focus on
Innovation and Labor Productivity
in a Knowledge-Based Economy
-- Madalina Constantinescu
The 21st century brings along the recognition for the necessity to understand and measure the activity of Knowledge
Management (KM), because of which organizations and system organizations, together with decisional governmental factors, do their best
to develop policies that would promote these benefits. Knowledge management implies any activity regarding the capture and
the diffusion of knowledge within the organization. This study analyzes the impacts and dimensions of KM upon the innovation
and labor productivity within the organization. A key component of KM is to provide access to stored knowledge components in order
to improve decision-making and facilitate knowledge acquisition by the user. Though new, KM is changing. There are at least
three accounts of how it is changing and about how one should view The New Knowledge Management (TNKM).
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
The Variable Time: Crucial to Understand Knowledge Economics
-- Bhekuzulu Khumalo
Though time is a concept mostly associated with physics and philosophy, the concept of time needs to be understood in the
discipline of economics. This paper attempts to highlight the importance of time in knowledge economics, the discipline of economics that
looks into the primary commodityknowledge. The paper attempts to take into account the non-linear time concepts that have been
very important, since Einstein published his papers back in 1905. Without understanding time in a comprehensive manner, it is
not possible to have a firm grip on the process of the economic progression of all societies. A theory must hold true in all societies,
the characteristics of time must be the same in all societies, just as an atom must behave in the same manner in similar
laboratory conditions in all societies. This paper will illustrate that without understanding the variable time, it is not possible to fully
comprehend knowledge economics.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Open Source Licensing and Business Models
-- Alberto Onetti and Sameer Verma
License affects the business activitiesof software companies. While proprietary software vendors create custom licenses,
open source companies have lesser flexibility. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) defines a list of 72 licenses as open source
(OSI approved). For a project to follow open source licensing, it has to pick licenses from this set. Logically, one expects an open
source company to define its business model around the license that it selects. Thus, one can assume that business model decisions
follow license choice. In this research, it is found that in some cases, open source companies removes these license constraints for
business reasons. Cases of open source companies moving from one OSI approved license to another or companies innovating by
adding additional terms were observed. In all these cases, the decision of change is based on the license being a poor fit with their
business goals. Not all open source companies are entitled to change the license because this option is available only to companies that
own intellectual property. If they do not, they can try to reshape their business models, but that remains a suboptimal option.
Whether cognizant of it or not, organizations are implicitly choosing a business model when they select a license. Therefore, it is very
important to address licensing and business model decisions as one system, instead of a disjointed two-step process. For this purpose, the
paper introduces: (1) an evolutionary model where license selection and business model impact each other; and (2) a taxonomy
that addresses both licensing and business models. Our approach helps practitioners include revenue considerations in the
licensing choice and researchers to more accurately study the antecedents and consequences of license choice.
© 2009 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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