Investigating the use of knowledge management to support innovation in UK energy SMEs: A questionnaire survey

Knowledge is an important organisational asset that needs to be appropriately managed and used. This knowledge management process is crucial in fostering and sustaining competitive innovation processes that create economic and social value through the generation, development and implementation of ideas. These new ideas are behind the production of new or significantly improved products and processes. Hence, the global interest in knowledge management (KM) and the consensus that KM is an ideal innovation vehicle. 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). Although most SME managers claim an interest in KM to support innovation and develop their tangible and intangible assets, there are many obstacles in the successful implementation of KM in SMEs. Therefore, there are only very few published successful cases of KM in SMEs. This paper reports on an ongoing research project that aims at exploring how KM is currently used in SMEs in the energy sector. The research design for the project is based on a questionnaire survey of the sector. A conceptual model deduced from an extensive literature review process informed this questionnaire. This model was compared against a set of KM-Innovation activities, using 400 UK SMEs from the sector, with a response rate of 14%. The questionnaires aimed at identifying issues or discrepancies between the model and activities. The paper presents an extensive discussion of findings of the study.