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   4.1 Technology, knowledge and the food system

      4.1.1 Knowledge in the food system
      4.1.2 Creation and movement of knowledge in the food system
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   4.2 Knowledge management or knowledge navigation?

      4.2.1 Strategic directions for knowledge
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      4.2.2 Knowledge systems
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   4.3 Necessary knowledge for product development

      4.3.1 Technological knowledge
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      4.3.2 Knowledge of the environment
      4.3.3 Sources of knowledge
      4.3.4 Sources of information
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   4.4 Tacit knowledge in product development

      4.4.1 Individual knowledge in product development
      4.4.2 Using tacit and explicit knowledge in product development
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      4.4.3 Changing tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge
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   4.5 Creating knowledge in product development

      4.5.1 Creating knowledge in the company
      4.5.2 Managing creation of knowledge
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   4.6 References

The ability of a company to build a knowledge core and continuously create new knowledge is critical to the success of product development. There are four areas where knowledge is needed for product development:

     the different cultures of the world, their needs, wants and attitudes, and
        how they can assimilate and absorb new products;

     basic knowledge and skills of present raw material production and
        food processing;

     high technological knowledge and problem-solving skills to develop
        new technologies;

     product development systems and organisation.

Basically this is applying the total technology concept to food product development - society, company environment, company resources, knowledge, organisation, techniques and the practice of product development.

Management selects and integrates the knowledge in the company, and provides the conditions for knowledge to be created. There has to be a communications system in the company so that knowledge spreads and grows throughout the company. Knowledge is dynamic, causing change.

It is important to recognise that knowledge is not just information and databases, but it is part of the active development in the company in organising the present system and activities, and also in developing new systems and activities.

Information can be the basis for revealing and creating knowledge, but knowledge is in people - in their heads, in their problem-solving skills. It is in their understanding of the interaction between technology and society and also of the specific interactions of the consumer and the product, the worker and the processing plant, the salesperson and the retail outlet, the cook and the kitchen, and so on.

Knowledge causes change; information is the basis of change. Today, there is increasing emphasis of this being a 'knowledge society', as if knowledge is something new. Knowledge has been around for a long time; there are periods when it increases and sometimes, as in the Dark Ages, when it seemed to lose ground. What is different at the beginning of the new millennium is that communication between people has been made much easier; and communication does increase knowledge if the information is absorbed and used in the minds of people. But what does this increasing interchange mean to the food industry?