Impact of knowledge brokering on performance heterogeneity among business models

Purpose – The strategic management literature lacks a comprehensive explanation as to why seemingly similar business models in the same industry perform differently. This paper strives to explain this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach – The model is conceptualized and accompanied by a case study on the airline industry to explain knowledge brokerage that creates value from the effective utilization of knowledge resources acquired from intra- and inter-firm environments. Findings – The model explains a cyclical view of business model flexibility in which the knowledge-based resource accumulation of the business model is spread across the intra- and inter-firm environments. Knowledge brokerage strategies from the inter- and intra-firm environments result in improved performance of the business model. The flexibility that the business model acquires is determined by how efficiently resource accumulation is aligned with its external environment. Originality/value – The paper effectively integrates the concepts of knowledge brokerage and business models from a resource accumulation-based view and simultaneously arrives at the performance heterogeneity of seemingly similar business models within the same industry. It has performance implications for firms that start out without any distinct resources of their own, or that use an imitated business model, to attain better performance through business model evolution aligned with successful knowledge brokerage strategies. It adds to the resource accumulation literature by explaining how resources can be effectively acquired to create value.

The Role of Knowledge Modeling Techniques in Software Development: A General Approach Based on a Knowledge Management Tool

The aim of the paper is to discuss the use of knowledge models to formulate general applications. First, the paper presents the recent evolution of the software field where increasing attention is paid to conceptual modeling. Then, the current state of knowledge modeling techniques is described where increased reliability is available through the modern knowledge acquisition techniques and supporting tools. The KSM (Knowledge Structure Manager) tool is described next. First, the concept of knowledge area is introduced as a building block where methods to perform a collection of tasks are included together with the bodies of knowledge providing the basic methods to perform the basic tasks. Then, the CONCEL language to define vocabularies of domains and the LINK language for methods formulation are introduced. Finally, the object oriented implementation of a knowledge area is described and a general methodology for application design and maintenance supported by KSM is proposed. To illustrate the concepts and methods, an example of system for intelligent traffic management in a road network is described. This example is followed by a proposal of generalization for reuse of the resulting architecture. Finally, some concluding comments are proposed about the feasibility of using the knowledge modeling tools and methods for general application design.

Application of knowledge engineering acquisition techniques to requirements capture: a case study

In this paper we want to point out, by means of a case study, the importance of incorporating some knowledge engineering techniques to the processes of software engineering. Precisely, we are referring to the knowledge eduction techniques. We know the difficulty of requirements acquisition and its importance to minimise the risks of a software project, both in the development phase and in the maintenance phase. To capture the functional requirements use cases are generally used. However, as we will show in this paper, this technique is insufficient when the problem domain knowledge is only in the "experts? mind". In this situation, the combination of the use case with eduction techniques, in every development phase, will let us to discover the correct requirements.