Abstract: Identifying the knowledge gap in an organization is a prerequisite for the organization to make integrated innovations, but the existing studies on the methods of identifying the organizational knowledge gap are rarely concerned with the internal structural characteristics of the organizational knowledge. Therefore, the concept of organizational knowledge structure is introduced in this paper and a method to identify the organizational knowledge gaps is proposed from the internal relationship of the organizational knowledge. Firstly, the method adopts the tree-shaped structure to indicate the organizational knowledge structures and builds up the knowledge structures of knowledge needs and knowledge reserves. Then it uses the tree matching algorithm to match the knowledge structures of knowledge needs and knowledge reserves to identify the organizational knowledge gaps. Finally, the method is tested on the background of the LED patents. The test results show that the method is effective in not only identifying accurately the knowledge which the organization lacks currently and the hierarchical relationship among different knowledge, but also helping the organization develop accurately and rapidly the strategies for filling the knowledge gap.

Key words: knowledge gap, knowledge needs, knowledge reserves, organizational knowledge structure, identifying knowledge gaps