As shown in Figure 4, one of the first steps of a process of knowledge transfer is to
identify the appropriate or valuable knowledge. This is named as ‘knowledge awareness’.
The next step then is to acquire the knowledge, provided that both receiver and source
have the willingness and the ability to do it. This is so-called as knowledge acquisition. It
refers to ‘an organisation’s capability to identify and acquire externally generated
knowledge that is critical to its operations’ (Zahra and George, 2002). Zahra and George
introduce three main attributes that can influence the process of knowledge acquisition,
i.e. intensity, speed, and direction. The intensity and speed of an organisation's efforts to
identify and gather knowledge can determine the quality of a knowledge acquisition
process. The greater the effort, the more quickly the organisation will build its
knowledge-base. However, sometimes, there are limits to an organisation's ability to
achieve this speed. The direction of accumulating knowledge can also influence the paths
that the organisation follows in obtaining external knowledge. These activities vary in
their richness and complexity.