Knowledge Management in the Innovation Potential of Enterprises

For a long time, formalized knowledge management was in fact only reserved for large companies. Meanwhile, increase in market competition and the dynamic changes in companies' external environment in recent years have made also small and medium enterprises attach great importance to the issues of knowledge management. It is especially visible in attempts to support knowledge management in the areas which are considered core from the point of view of increasing competitiveness of the company on the market. Knowledge management in the field of company's innovative potential or in the area of the intellectual capital may serve as an example. This situation forces search for new solutions of knowledge management in the field of research and evaluation of the innovative potential of companies. Dedicated IT systems which facilitate gathering and analyzing of data describing the innovative potential of companies may be a partial solution to the aforementioned problems. The author formulated the following research hypothesis: a properly designed IT system improves the efficiency of knowledge management in the area of analysis and evaluation of innovative potential of the company. The main purpose of this article is to present an Internet platform for innovation audit, as a tool which supports knowledge management. It may be a perfect tool for creating knowledge about the company's innovativeness and it may stimulate construction of improvement in the strategy in the field of innovativeness development. The presented solution (which is based on the original IT system) is a research tool developed by the employees of the University of Szczecin.