ABSTRACT
When an organization buys goods and routine services, it is usually (reasonably) easy to determine whether, and to what extent, the required contractual deliverables have in fact been delivered. This chapter establishes some ground rules for ensuring that knowledge transfer is planned, executed and measured in a systematic way that will give the knowledge buyer confidence that his or her organization's investment will prove effective. Every organization must from time to time carry out a formalized assessment of its knowledge base. There is a sense in which organizations (and individuals) do this intuitively and on a daily basis. A commercial organization finds that it must change its business processes in order to take advantage of new market opportunities and move away from market segments that have become saturated, with too many players chasing too few customers. It quickly becomes apparent that there can be a number of variations on the buddy-buddy system.
