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Knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing Knowledge Resource s. There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of Intellectual Property to make knowledge a typical scarse resource, so the traditional Commodity Market mechanism can be applied directly to distribute it. An alternative model is based on treating knowledge as a public good and hence encouraging free sharing of knowledge. This is often referred to as Attention Economy . Currently there is no consensus among researchers on relative merits of these two approaches. HISTORY Markets date from the origins of civilization and the ancient Greek Agora as places where people and businesses meet to buy and sell goods and services. The Knowledge Economy brings with it the concept of exchanging knowledge-based products and services. However, as discussed by Stewart (1996)Stewart, Thomas A. 1996. Intellectual Capital - The New Wealth of Organizations, McGraw-Hill, 342 p., knowledge is very different from from physical products. For example, it can be in more than one place at one time, selling it does not diminish the supply, buyers only purchase it once, and once sold, it cannot be recalled. Further, knowledge begets more knowledge in a never-ending cycle. Understanding of knowledge markets is beginning to emerge. As would be expected, they are very different in form from traditional markets. Knowledge markets have been variously described by Stewart (1996), Davenport and Prusak (1998)Davenport, Thomas and Lawrence Prusak. 1998. Working Knowledge - How Organizations Manage What They Know. Harvard Business School Press. 199 p., and Simard (2000) as a mechanism for enabling, supporting, and facilitating the mobilization, sharing, or exchange of Information and Knowledge among providers and users. This approach assumes that knowledge-based products or services are available for distribution, that someone wants to use them, and that the primary focus of the market is to connect the two. This perspective is appropriate when the market has limited or no interest or control over either the production or use of the Content being exchanged, as is the case for most traditional markets. A provider-user perspective is also appropriate for emerging Social Networking "ideagoras" (Tapscott and Williams, 2006)Tapscott, Don and Anthony D. Williams. 2006. Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Penguin Group. 324 p., in which the primary function of the market is to match existing solutions with problems and problems with those who can find solutions. From a production perspective, processes for creating wealth through the use of Intellectual Capital are explained by Nonaka (1991)Nonaka, Ikujiro. 1991. The Knowledge Creating Company. Harvard Business Review, Nov.-Dec., p.14-37., Edvinsson and Malone (1997)Edvinsson, Leif and Michael S. Malone. 1997. Intellectual Capital. Harper Business. 225 p., and Leonard (1998)Leonard, Dorothy. 1998. Wellsprings of Knowledge. Harvard Business School Press. 334 p.. At the marketing end of the spectrum, a number of authors, including Bishop (1996)Bishop, Bill. 1996. Strategic Marketing for the Digital Age. Harper Business. 250 p., May (2000)May, Paul. 2000. The Business of Ecommerce. Cambridge University Press. 270 p., and Tapscott et al. (2000)Tapscott, Don, David Ticoll, and Alex Lowt. 2000. Digital Capital. Harvard Business School Press. 270 p. describe the architecture and processes necessary to succeed in a digital economy. Simard (2006)Simard, Albert. 2006. Knowledge markets: More than Providers and Users. IPSI BgD Internet Research Society Transactions, 2-2:4-9. describes a cyclic (production and transfer) while the last four stages are external (intermediaries, clients, and citizens). Because the value chain cyclic, it can be used to model either a supply (post-production evaluation ) or a demand (pre-production evaluation) approach to knowledge markets. INTERNET-BASED KNOWLEDGE MARKETS Several ways to create open and functional internet-based knowledge markets have been explored. Fee-based knowledge markets Fee-based knowledge markets are based on traditional market mechanisms that work well for traditional goods. So this approach treats knowledge as common goods. The buyer posts a request, normally in the form of a question and sets a price for the valid answer. Alternatively, the suppliers of knowledge (answerers) can post their bids to have the question answered. Experts-Exchange was the first fee-based knowledge markets using a virtual currency. It provided a marketplace where buyers could offer payment to have their questions answered. Google Answers was another implementation of this idea. This service allowed its users to offer Bounties to expert researchers for answering their questions. The Google site was closed in 2006http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/29/google-has-no-answers/, but Google recently launched a free knowledge exchange alternative (so far only available in Russiahttp://googlerussiablog.blogspot.com/2007/06/google.html). This fee-based model is also implemented by Uclue , Bananask.com and some other site http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=786568. Free Knowledge Markets Free knowledge markets use an alternative model treating knowledge as a public good. 3form Free Knowledge Exchange is likely to be the first internet market of this kind launched in Russia in 1998. It doesn't require to pay cash or virtual currency fee to have a question answered, however the attention of community to each question depends on the value contributed by its author to solving problems of other members of community (Kosorukoff and Goldberg, 2002)Kosorukoff, A, Goldberg D. E. (2002), Genetic algorithm as a form of organization, Proceedings of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO-2002, pp 965-972. Knowledge IN , Yahoo Answers , Windows Live QnA , Ask Metafilter , , Google Questions And Answers and several other websites currently use free knowledge exchange model. However, none of these offer more than an increase in Reputation as payment for researchers, often limiting the quality of the answers. SEE ALSO
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