Knowledge Management in Lithuanian Innovative Business Organizations

Knowledge management is a practical way to gain competitive advantage in the modern organization. Today competitiveness is closely related to creation of innovation. New ideas and gained knowledge are the main sources in this process. Knowledge environment, where the organizations are competing today, is structurally much more complex than that existing several centuries ago. The ability to obtain the necessary ideas, to develop competence in creation, thinking, risk management, and applying of all the mentioned factors to the product for it to become competitive and to meet economic and social tendencies - this makes a innovative knowledge organization different from a traditional one. Knowledge management helps a business organization to achieve interaction between business processes by joining activities, experience and accrued knowledge. It also helps to reach high quality of client servicing by applying the prior accrued knowledge on clients and their needs; to ensure higher competitiveness by using new knowledge so that the organization expenses would be reduced and the clients' expectations would be optimally satisfied; to minimize activity expenditures and risk by applying the existing accrued knowledge and abilities to quickly adapt to environmental changes; to achieve greater efficiency of employees; to encourage innovations when implementing new technologies, training employees, developing and improving the supplied production. Information and knowledge are seen as a cornerstone of economic development in order to create or improve more and more personalized services and products. Satisfaction of the market demands requires systematic not only internal, but also external processes of creation and use of productive knowledge, while striving to create innovations that would satisfy consumer needs. Lithuania takes 16th place among 144 countries by the number of people having higher education; however, it takes 47th place among 144 countries by innovation and business flexibility sub-index according to researches of the World Economic Forum. This background evokes the following question: how could organizations use all knowledge to create and develop the innovation? In order to answer this question a theoretical integral knowledge management model, which should lead to continuous innovation creation, is constructed. The model consists of the three main blocks: strategic; knowledge management processes and innovation. The article provides the first stage of the knowledge management research, which is related to the processes of knowledge management in innovative Lithuanian organizations, with striving to clear out what knowledge management processes are the most important in the organizations, which are constantly carrying out innovative activity.