With stock markets on a roller coaster, interest rates soaring in India and business confidence levels diving south across all sectors, from capital goods to software exports, the war for success in the corporate and retail marketplace can be expected to intensify in the months to come. This will call for accuracy in pinpointing and targeting customer segments, efficiency in sales, design and operations and reengineering of all support and staff functions to optimize investments and costs. It is at times like this that the efficient management of all resources becomes the difference between winners and losers and the most important and least managed corporate resource is the knowledge of the collective corporate. Knowledge is embedded in the history of the firm, in every transaction and every decision that is taken in the course of conducting business. The harnessing of knowledge as it is created in the course of business and its effective storage, dissemination and use by the right constituents in the firm is a process that can no longer be left to chance or the stewardship of a few veteran managers. Knowledge management is now a science that deserves attention and investment. One of the missions that we have taken up in the National Knowledge Council of the CII for 2011 and 2012 is to develop symbiotic partnerships between industry academia and business consulting houses. These partnerships will dive deep into the knowledge creation and usage processes in firms in key sectors, identify best in class processes among competing firms, nationally and internationally and formulate best practices, cultures and technologies that lead to effective management of knowledge in the firm. The first of these partnerships involving one of India’s leading business schools will focus on knowledge management in the supply chain process that spans the manufacturing retail and distribution industry sectors in India. Improvements in these sectors which lie at the heart of the economy with their huge employment potential being an added booster for the country’s success can transform the fortunes of vast sectors of society. In India, with the notable exception of some of the larger manufacturing players, information intensity of firms has been notable short of global best in class and the deployment and use of effective enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, customer relationship management and business intelligence tools have often fallen short. During the course of the next four to six months, it is expected that best practices from global majors will be researched and both diagnostic and prescriptive tools and frameworks developed for Indian firms in these sectors. Knowledge Management technologies have come a long way since the early days of collaborative working where Lotus Notes and a handful of Microsoft tools were the only known tools in the hand of business process owners. Today Learning and Collaboration tools are available in abundance and the extensive use of Business Intelligence and Analytics has enabled effective intra-firm and inter-firm collaboration. Exploring adjacencies through social networking, cloud computing and software as a service also brings the power of best practice sharing and knowledge management to smaller firms in each sector. The knowledge manager’s quiver is full of arrows and there will be no dearth of targets in a precarious economic situation to score points against the opposition. Knowledge Management practitioners and sector CEOs would of course do well to recognize that proliferation of technology is only one aspect of successful knowledge management. A major research project conducted in the IIT Bombay School of Management in a few years ago had shown that the management of knowledge in an organization is facilitated by the availability of efficient business processes and technology is effective only if it is deployed after the business process reengineering and optimisation is completed. Active participation of firm leadership in the encouragement of knowledge sharing and providing rewards to exemplary knowledge sharing is also a requirement for successful transition of firms from KM initiation to action to maturity. The overall culture of the organisation is also a key enabler and in some cases the reasons why there can be an unfortunate regression into old ways of information secrecy and knowledge hoarding. The IT Services providers, not just from India but also the US and Europe have demonstrated that it is possible to attain and sustain a high level of KM maturity by a balanced focus on process, technologies, leadership and culture and many other services sectors including banking and healthcare have started the process of developing standards and frameworks to improve predictability and effectiveness of their internal and external processes. For the country’s firms to compete and succeed against best-in-class players in their respective sectors and for the country as a whole to demonstrate that “made in India” or “served from India” has a quality mark attached to it, a strong focus on Knowledge Management is essential – it is hoped that the current CII initiative will enable that outcome!