Knowledge has been described as a critical competitive asset of organizations. In the era of the knowledge economy, it is the possession of scarce, valuable, inimitable knowledge resources that support long-term superior organizational performance. The most important strategy in business is converting knowledge into intellectual capital and leveraging it for competitive advantage. As a result, managing knowledge represents the primary opportunity for achieving substantial savings, significant improvements in human performance. Because knowledge has become the single most important factor of production, managing intellectual assets has become the single most important task of business, over a long period, ABEN and the World Council of Nuclear Workers have underscored the importance of the Nuclear knowledge management issue, as demonstrated by the creation of the International Journal of Nuclear knowledge management - IJNKM, the unique scientific journal dedicated to these topics.
Some of the specific business factors which explain why we need to manage nuclear knowledge:
- Marketplaces are increasingly competitive and the rate of innovation is rising.
- Reductions in staffing create a need to replace informal knowledge with formal methods.
- Competitive pressures reduce the size of the work force that holds valuable business knowledge.
- The amount of time available to experience and acquire nuclear knowledge has diminished.
- Early retirements and increasing mobility of the work force lead to loss of nuclear knowledge.
- There is a need to manage increasing complexity as small operating companies are trans-national sourcing operations.
- Changes in strategic direction may result in the loss of nuclear knowledge in a specific area.
- Most of our work is information based.
- Organizations compete on the basis of knowledge.
- Products and services are increasingly complex, endowing them with a significant information component.
- The need for life-long learning is an inescapable reality.
To support such the central position of Nuclear knowledge management as essential to the benefit of the peaceful development of nuclear energy, ABEN has decided to organize in the framework of The International Nuclear Atlantic Conference (INAC 2005) the 1st “International Conference on Nuclear knowledge management”®. It will take place in Mendes Convention Center, Santos - São Paulo, Brazil. This Conference will be hold with the 14'th Meeting on Reactor Physics and Thermal Hydraulics (XIV ENFIR) and the 7th Meeting on Nuclear Applications (VII ENAN), as joint nuclear conferences.
