Managing knowledge in the framework of the Organizational Evolution of SMEs

This article describes the research project MAEOS. MAEOS is a project about the modelling of the support to the organizational and strategic development of SMEs. The main objective of MAEOS is to improve the efficiency and performance of business advice to SMEs. To achieve this objective, a multi-disciplinary team was created. Two main research areas are represented: artificial intelligence and management sciences. This work aims at establishing a set of methods and software tools for analysis and diagnosis of SMEs. We address three main questions: how to extract knowledge from experts but also practical knowledge from consultants, how to formalize it and how to use it to help a consultant or an entrepreneur. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.