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{{A knowledge market is a real or virtual place where knowledge-based products and services are exchanged. They operate in two modes: 1) provider - user, which, like traditional markets focus on the exchange process and 2) a cyclic value-chain in which value is embedded, advanced, and extracted in a continuous loop.}}

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), knowledge is very different from from physical products. For example, it is based on intellectual property, 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), 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), 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), Edvinsson and Malone (1997), and Leonard (1998). At the marketing end of the spectrum, a number of authors, including Bishop (1996), May (2000), and Tapscott et. al. (2000) describe the architecture and processes necessary to succeed in a digital economy.

Simard (2006) describes a cyclic end-to-end knowledge-market model comprising nine stages that embed, advance, or extract value into knowledge products and services along a knowledge services value chain. The stages are: generate, transform, manage, use internally, transfer, add value, use professionally, use personally, and evaluate. The first five stages are internal to a knowledge organization (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.

• Digital Economy
• Electronic business
• Electronic Commerce
• Information economy
• Information Market
• Information Society
• Internet Economy
• Knowledge Economy
• Knowledge organization
• Knowledge services
• Virtual economy

Bishop, Bill. 1996. Strategic Marketing for the Digital Age. Harper Business. 250 p.

Davenport, Thomas and Lawrence Prusak. 1998. Working Knowledge - How Organizations Manage What They Know. Harvard Business School Press. 199 p.

Edvinsson, Leif and Michael S. Malone. 1997. Intellectual Capital. Harper Business. 225 p.

Leonard, Dorothy. 1998. Wellsprings of Knowledge. Harvard Business School Press. 334 p.

May, Paul. 2000. The Business of Ecommerce. Cambridge University Press. 270 p.

Nonaka, Ikujiro. 1991. The knowledge Creating Company. Harvard Business Review, nOV.-dEC, P 14-37.

Simard, Albert. 2005. Global Disaster Information network, in: UN World conference on Disaster Reduction, Kobe Japan, Jan 18-22, 2005.

Simard, Albert. 2006. Knowledge markets: More than Providers and Users. IPSI BgD Internet Research Society Transactions, 2-2:4-9.

Stewart, Thomas A. 1996. Intellectual Capital - The New Wealth of Organizations, McGraw-Hill, 342 p.

Tapscott, Don, David Ticoll, and Alex Lowt. 2000. Digital Capital. Harvard Business School Press. 270 p.

Tapscott, Don and Anthony D. Williams. 2006. Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Penguin Group. 324 p.