By establishing personal responsibility for knowledge, organizations are recognizing that individuals must be supported and made accountable for identifying, maintaining, and expanding their own knowledge as well as renewing and sharing their knowledge assets. Companies are now realizing the value of each knowledgeable and capable employee and recognize the key fact that the development of their skills lay with employee themselves and not with the organization. Some firms are building incentives into their appraisal system and offering other motivators to encourage the development of a knowledge-intensive culture. Another important strategy revolves around leveraging assets such as patents, technologies, operational and management practices, customer relations, organizational arrangements, and other structural knowledge assets and concentrates on renewing, organizing, valuing, safekeeping, increasing availability of, and marketing these assets. The final strategy, innovation and knowledge creation emphasizes the creation of new knowledge through basic and applied research and development. Organizations adopting these strategies need to ascend the knowledge spiral and continually discover new and better ways of functioning and innovating. They recognize that innovation is central to growth and that unique knowledge and expertise enhanced their comparative value in market price.