Despite their best efforts, most companies continue to squander what may be their greatest asset in today’s knowledge economy: the wealth of expertise, ideas, and latent insights that lies scattered across or deeply embedded in their organizations. And that’s a shame, because capitalizing on those intellectual resources—using existing knowledge to improve performance or combining strands of knowledge to create something altogether new—can help companies respond to a surprising array of challenges, from fending off smaller, nimbler rivals to integrating businesses shoved together in a merger.

Many companies have tried, with mixed success, to leverage this underused asset by centralizing knowledge management functions or by investing heavily in knowledge management technology. We suggest another approach, one that requires managers to change their behavior and the way they spend their time. The approach is novel but, when properly implemented, quite powerful. Read this great HBR article to find out more