Capturing the knowledge in an organization is not purely about technology. The approach needed depends on the kind of business, its culture, and the ways in which people solve problems (Dalkir, 2005, p.78). However, knowledge has to be captured and codified in such a way that it can become a part of the existing knowledge base of the organization (Dalkir, 2005, p.79).

Approaches to knowledge capture represent a multidisciplinary methodology that integrates what has been found to be successful in a variety of other fields such as

• knowledge acquisition for the development of expert systems
• instructional design techniques for course content creation and organization
• task analysis techniques used in the development of performance support systems, and
• taxonomic approaches that originate from library and information studies (Dalkir, 2005, p.77).

In most organizations, explicit or already identified and coded knowledge typically represents only the tip of the iceberg. Traditional information systems departments deal primarily with highly structured data that makes up much less than 5% of a company's information. In knowledge management, we need to also consider knowledge that we know is present in the organization, which we can then set out to capture (Dalkir, 2005, p.78).

Knowledge capture can span a whole host of activities, from organizing customer information details into a single database to setting up a mentoring program (Dalkir, 2002, p.78). Competitive advantage is to be gained by making individual knowledge available within the organization, transforming it into organizational knowledge. Organizational knowledge complements individual knowledge, making it stronger and broader (Dalkir, 2005, p.79).

The best knowledge management tools create knowledge and then leverage it across multiple channels, including phone, e-mail, discussion forums, etc (Dalkir, 2005).