Book excerpt: Success in an increasingly competitive market depends on the quality of knowledge which organisations apply to their major business processes. For example, a supply chain depends on knowledge of diverse areas, including raw materials, planning, manufacturing, and distribution. Likewise, product development requires knowledge of consumer requirements, new science, new technology, and marketing. Knowledge is broadly defined as credible information that is of potential value to an organisation. Knowledge management (KM) is a function of generation and dissemination of information, developing a shared understanding of information, filtering shared understandings into degrees of potential value, and storing valuable knowledge within the confines of an accessible organisational mechanism.