ABSTRACT
Knowledge management (KM) has become one of the most important factors within a company to allow continuity and continuous creation of value. Organizations have to be able to understand how to use and improve knowledge in order to be more competitive on the market. In this introductory chapter we will concisely revise the literature about what knowledge really is and how and why it should be managed in order to obtain positive organizational results. We then focus the attention on how knowledge management may be relevant in internationalization decisions and how cross-functional KM in different business areas should become a fundamental issue to deal with competitors in an international scenario.
