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In the last decade, knowledge asset management has attracted great attention in both academia and in business. Many researchers have used various perspectives to propose taxonomies for classifying knowledge assets. As knowledge assets never change their type once they have been classified, we argue that these taxonomies should be regarded as “static”. This is mainly because existing taxonomies classify knowledge assets by their peculiarities rather than by their environmental factors. Unlike previous studies, this study proposes a “dynamic” taxonomy, using two dimensions: “impacts on sustainability of competitive advantage (SCA)” and “impacts on appropriability”. This classifies a firm's knowledge assets into four types: core knowledge assets, dynamic knowledge assets, supportive knowledge assets and low-value knowledge assets. The proposed taxonomy possesses two main characteristics: one is of it being dynamic and the other is its alignment with strategy. To elaborate this taxonomy, several examples related to the four types of knowledge assets are presented and several propositions are introduced in this study.

Recently, knowledge management has attracted many business managers’ attention, so a large number of firms intend to conduct knowledge management initiatives in order to obtain competitive advantage. During this process, however, the first challenge a firm inevitably confronts is how to identify the firm's knowledge assets. To this end, a variety of taxonomies for classifying knowledge assets have been proposed in the literature (Hall, 1992 and Hall, 1993; Kogut and Zander, 1992; Nonaka et al., 2000; Housel and Bell, 2001; Marr et al., 2004; Debowski, 2006). The taxonomies in previous research classify knowledge assets by either their repositories in a firm or their functions. In existing taxonomies, knowledge assets never change their type once they have been classified and so this study argues that these taxonomies should be regarded as “static” ones. Undoubtedly, these taxonomies can help a firm to manage their knowledge assets, but we believe that these existing static taxonomies cannot assist a firm in when it comes to aligning knowledge asset management with a firm's strategies. Hence, this paper focuses on proposing a novel taxonomy to remedy the deficiencies of existing taxonomies. We supposed, to begin with, that if the underlying dimensions of a taxonomy are highly related to the formulation of a firm's strategies, then the taxonomy may also possess high relevance with a firm's strategies. Then, we surveyed the literature for suitable dimensions, and concluded that “sustainability of competitive advantage (SCA)” and “appropriability” are appropriate, because both are significant measures of a firm's strategies. From this, we use “impacts on SCA” and “impacts on appropriability” as two dimensions to construct a novel taxonomy and classify knowledge assets of a firm into the following four types: core knowledge assets, dynamic knowledge assets, supportive knowledge assets and low-value knowledge assets. By measuring the dimensions, all knowledge assets in a firm can be classified into one of the four categories based on this taxonomy. In addition, there is an interesting finding that most knowledge assets eventually change their types within the taxonomy as “impacts on SCA” and “impacts on appropriability” of knowledge assets change. This implies that the proposed taxonomy has the characteristic of being dynamic rather than static. At the same time, a firm can recognize the distribution of all its knowledge assets in this taxonomy and so can be a great help to formulate a firm's strategies. This suggests that the proposed taxonomy has great potential to make a close linkage between knowledge assets management and a firm's strategies. This study proposes a novel taxonomy to extend our understanding of knowledge assets by taking a dynamic view and makes a contribution to academic researchers as well as business practitioners. For academic researchers, the proposed taxonomy can lead to further research directions such as the transformation of knowledge types and the analysis of a variety of knowledge gaps. Practitioners, on the other hand, can use this taxonomy to investigate all knowledge assets in a firm and the result can suggest directions of knowledge assets development and strategies formulation. The next section is a review of the key literature in relevant arenas. In Section 3, the determinants of the two dimensions underlying the taxonomy are discussed, and the novel taxonomy is proposed. Exhaustive explanations, examples and propositions for the proposed taxonomy are presented in Section 4. The discussion and implications for academic researchers and business managers are addressed in Section 5. The final section contains the conclusion of this paper.

Classification of knowledge assets has become an imperative for firms that attempt to introduce a knowledge management program. Choosing an appropriate taxonomy for classifying knowledge assets, in a sense, means to choose a good base for formulating a knowledge strategy. Though the existing taxonomies listed in Table 3 all have made substantial contributions, knowledge assets classified by anyone of them would be stuck in one knowledge type and never change. However, the environment is constantly changing and unpredictable. Therefore, we argue that only if the taxonomy can change, the types of knowledge assets in accordance with the pace of the changing environment can it make a close linkage with a firm's strategies. In order to conquer the deficiencies of existing taxonomies, this study selected “impacts on SCA” and “impacts on appropriability” as two dimensions to construct a taxonomy that classifies knowledge assets in a firm into four types: core knowledge assets, dynamic knowledge assets, supportive knowledge assets and low-value knowledge assets. Since the two measures of a knowledge asset are always changing according to environmental factors, a knowledge asset can change its type in terms of the taxonomy. Also the two dimensions are strategic measures, and in our opinion managing knowledge assets by this taxonomy can contribute to making a close linkage with a firm's strategies. We suggest that this taxonomy accommodates the characteristics of being dynamic as well as having alignment with strategy. In addition, IT contributes to playing a role in keeping the knowledge asset staying in one type of knowledge type for longer. It is our view that this taxonomy can provide profound insights to a firm in managing knowledge assets under either a stable or turbulent context, and it is the main contribution of this study