The first two chapters have introduced the two main themes of this book - knowledge as an exploitable asset and e-business as an important new way of conducting business. The next few chapters draw these themes together by examining in more detail the strategies and practicalities for building an online knowledge business, a k-business. As we have seen, trading on the Internet is a tricky challenge. You can end up much richer or much poorer. How do you start to plan a course through this exciting but hazardous territory? Two of the early strategic decisions that have to be made are: (1) what role to play in the overall knowledge trading system; and (2) what online business model to adopt. This chapter evaluates the options.

We start by reviewing the different potential knowledge roles that can serve as the basis of your k-business focus. These can be in any part of the knowledge supply chain, from content creator to knowledge shop. There are also many positions for intermediaries such as aggregators and market makers. If your organization has completed a knowledge management audit (see page 11), it will have already identified some knowledge domains and value-adding knowledge processes in which you excel. Any of these or a combination can serve as the basis for market positioning. What must be borne in mind is that the Internet changes the dynamics of knowledge value systems, leading to the emergence of innovative roles or...