1.      Background Introduction

The corporation in the Silicon Valley took a move in a California court to restrict sales of Samsung's new Galaxy Nexus handset, broadening Apple's legal arguments against the Korean giant, whose market share in the Smartphone filed has been increasing (Sherr, Ian & Vascellaro, Jessica E., 2012). In 2007, Apple Inc. is the third-largest mobile phone maker all over the world after Samsung and Nokia. However in 2012, the situation change a lot that Nokia is going through the hardest time and Apple becomes the second largest (Owen, 2007). In 2008, Fortune magazine respected Apple as the most admired company in the US (Fisher, 2008; Colvin, 2009; Markoff, 2007). The competition of smartphone and tablet market has getting severe. So were the intellectual possession arguments between two of its largest enterprises. All year, a patent war between Apple and Samsung has been waged through more than 21 different issues in 10 countries (Business/Technology Editors, 2001). For instance, Apple illustrated that the Galaxy models of music files synchronization measured the files' length and sizes based on Apple’s invention (Li, Zhou & Li, 2011). However, according to the judge, the Samsung devices do not breach Apple's patent since they only compare file sizes. (Anonymous, 2012) Moreover, the newest Samsung phones have two features the iPhone doesn't have (Svensson, 2012), shows Samsung is not any weaker in creativity. It seems that even in the smallest area of patent, the two corporations would not retreat so as to compete in a speedy growing smartphone market. Indeed, expert O'Rourke (2011) claimed that business is business and they still need each other after all.

 

2.      Understanding

In order to have a better discussion about the case mentioned above, the first thing to do is to better understand the key words, to understand what knowledge is, what knowledge management is and what innovation is. Only after accurate understanding can the relation of them be revealed.

 

2.1  Knowledge

Nowadays, taking care of knowledge is important for every company. Knowledge is acknowledged as a significant asset along with traditional resources such as money and raw materials (Gao, Li and Clarke, 2008). How to make the best use of knowledge within an organization becomes one of the most important question that need to be answered in KM area. (Ilvonen, 2010). According to Gavrilova and Andreeva (2012), a significant part of knowledge and experience in a corporation belongs not to the organization itself, but to the individuals it employs. Acquiring knowledge from knowledgeable individuals, therefore, should be included in knowledge management (KM) missions.

Because of the significance of knowledge, how to make good use of it requires skills, which is called knowledge management.

 

2.2  Knowledge management

From ancient time, people get knowledge. But until modern time people get to know how to manage knowledge and the program of managing knowledge in organizations are called knowledge management, in short KM (Xu et al, 2010). For many enterprises especially technology one, knowledge management is increasingly becoming a complete business functions as they realize that competitiveness rely on efficient and effective management of knowledge and intellectual resources (Grover & Davenport, 2001; Randeree, 2006).

Penrose (1959), Bell (1973) and Drucker (1993a) offer us with a good basis for linking knowledge to 21th century business enterprises. Drucker declares knowledge with symbol. People move into the "knowledge society" (Drucker, 1993b), as the key resource for individual firms and the key driver of competitive advantage for developed nations, competing in knowledge-based industries is knowledge.