Company-wide knowledge grew exponentially through the creation of wikipages, employee blogs, open discussions forums to exchange ideas and free-flowing best practice information exchanges between workers located in different countries.

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Creation of such knowledge-based goods is the mainstay of many developed economies.

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Participants will aim for an internationally-agreed set of actions to ensure that Higher Education and research play a strategic role in knowledge creation and sharing for a more sustainable, inclusive and development-oriented future.

UNESCO: EDUCATION

This could certainly go a ways toward democratizing the creation of 3D models -- though CAD knowledge and an artistic streak are still keys if you want to make something out of thin air.

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One solution, proposed by Matt Ridley, a British commentator on the social consequences of genetic knowledge (and former science editor of The Economist), might be the creation of medical-treatment funds, similar to pension funds.

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Real-time collaborative information sharing platforms, that are enabled by systems like Socialtext, are speeding knowledge creation and dissemination.

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