Although knowledge management has been widely adopted, few organizations have made it a universal practice or fully integrated it into their main business processes and management decisions. Most organizations have unfinished knowledge agendas. Some functions, such as R&D and marketing are further ahead with its use than others. It is also accepted culturally in some countries more than others. It has yet to make a significant impact in areas such as corporate audit and accounting, outsourcing, risk management, merger and acquisition planning. As such, it still has several years before it is part of everyday organizational activity. When that happens, it may simply be an integral part of every manager's job, rather than a separate initiative. The name knowledge management may even be subsumed into something new.

As it evolves, knowledge management will spawn specialist branches, such as knowledge mapping and intellectual capital measurement. There will also be flavours that integrate more closely with existing activities such as R&D, marketing and customer relationship management (CRM). Ever improving technologies and software solutions will stimulate more innovative methods and new opportunities to harness knowledge. Knowledge will be more portable and packaged, allowing workers to access knowledge wherever they are. Artificial intelligence will allow computers to act as symbiotic partners with knowledge workers, adapting their actions to user behaviour by predicting their knowledge needs and searching and retrieving it in advance. In many situations, knowledge management will be seamless and invisible, its processes being embedded into computerized processes. There are...