These conditions are very much at play in the e-knowledge industry. Just scan the participant list of the multi-enterprise repositories cited above. While traditional market leaders are participating in ventures, they are not dominating the field. The leadership that will lead to the emergence of innovative, horizontal content marketplaces is coming from ventures and competitors outside the traditional publishing communities. e-Knowledge marketplaces of various kinds are likely to be one of the killer applications of the e-Knowledge Industry.

The emergent horizontal marketplaces are likely to support exchange of a wide range of highly granular learning objects and other knowledge offerings, including syntheses of new insights compiled by respected experts (mentats), marketplaces of knowledge, and services available from government and non-profit agencies; directories to communities of practice and access to distilled insights or participation privileges (ranging from lurking to full membership); recommended aggregations of content by industry/professional leaders, and such like. Indeed, the mechanisms for knowledge marketplaces can be applied to a wide variety of knowledge needs.

An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today; knowledge that would probably suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but it is dispersed and unorganized. We need a sort of mental clearing house: a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified, and compared.

H.G. Wells, 1940

Trust: The Tie That Binds

e-Knowledge as we describe it is impossible without the existence of trust. Trust is what enables the processes of knowledge sharing and consensus building. These processes drive two outputs: 1) the development of technology that works and 2) conformance testing with agreed upon standards. Trust that e-knowledge will be accessed, metered, and exchanged in conformance with agreed upon terms and conditions is fundamental to e-knowledge repositories and marketplaces. And trust is essential to developing enterprise infrastructures, processes, capabilities and cultures that will enable individuals and enterprises to achieve order-of-magnitude enhancements in their abilities to acquire, assimilate and share knowledge.