By the mid-1990s, it became widely recognized that the competitive
edge of some of the world’s leading companies was for the most part due
to the robust knowledge assets of those companies. With this realization,
the management of knowledge suddenly became a mainstream business
objective. At the same time, nurturing knowledge assets such as competencies,
customer relationships and innovations became a focus of attention of
many corporations. And other companies started emulating the knowledge
management practices of the market leaders