Knowledge management and innovation in UK energy sector SMEs: is there a close link?

Knowledge Management (KM) is crucial in fostering and sustaining competitive innovation processes that create economic and social value through the generation, development and implementation of new ideas. Hence, there is an emerging interest in research linking KM and innovation. However, the organisations which have readily adopted and implemented KM are found to be the larger, well financed and better resourced ones. There are many success stories of KM in large organisations, but these have not been replicated in Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). This paper aims at addressing this gap by reporting on a research project that focused on exploring how KM is linked to innovation processes in SMEs within the UK energy sector and consequently presents an extensive discussion of findings of the study. The research design for the project is based on a survey approach anchored on a conceptual model which was deduced from an extensive literature review process.