Description: This symposium will discuss the results of the first phase of a research project entitled 'KM Plus - SME Knowledge Exploitation and Learning through Knowledge Management' (www.kmplus.org). The project aims to improve the knowledge situation of small enterprises by using the informal knowledge and skills within the firms as a starting point to develop the capability to learn in these organisations. The project produces a set of tools to enhance the knowledge developments in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is done by primary testing in six European countries (three SME cases per country). An outer group stretching all across Europe will be instrumental in piloting the developed toolkit and disseminating the project improvements and results into further countries. Four contributors to this project (research and development project network) will present short papers in order to discuss the question of transforming knowledge into learning processes in SMEs and to find out in which respect we still fail to understand many aspects of this complex topic. This can serve as a means to formulate a future agenda for research into knowledge construction and development especially in small organisations. The literature on management in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in general, assumes that SMEs are laggards in adopting management practices and philosophies such as Total Quality Management, Benchmarking, Business Process Reengineering, Learning Organization and most recently Knowledge Management (KM) (GHOBADIAN, A. and GALLEAR, D., N., 1996). The laggardness of SMEs is mainly blamed on the short-term vision of SMEs, the lack of the founder/owner's management skills, and scarce resources in terms of finance and qualified manpower. The thesis underlying in this project is that the knowledge base of small and medium enterprises is best fostered by enhancing the learning processes amongst the actors and to develop the skills and resources to identify knowledge to develop techniques for acquisition of new knowledge as well as best forms of sharing and storing knowledge. The knowledge economy is a well accepted concept, but especially SMEs in general are facing difficulties in managing their learning processes when they are cut off from knowledge intensive environments. There a lot of KM relevant tools and techniques for large enterprises, but they are not well adapted to the needs and resources of SMEs. This means that these tools are infrastructure-oriented as well as labour and cost intensive. Thus, they are in this respect failing to help smaller organisations with limited resources and skills. The guiding main question is what can help SMEs to find out where they perform well as well as what should be strengthened and emphasized, concerning their process(es) of knowledge transformation. Eric Davoine, Chaire Ressources Humaines et Organisation, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, will outline problems of SMEs in KM and learning processes by showing results from a survey in 8 EU countries and in 18 companies out of service and industry sector (www.unifr.ch/rho). From this basis, he will show how KM is enrolled. He will compare results with other studies in the field and will evaluate the central challenges for SMEs in order to develop their knowledge processes. Duskoc Ursic, Prof. at Maribor University, Faculty of Business Adminstration and Economy, Slovenia will give an introduction to general trends and main aspects of the difference in perception and design of the next / "third generation" of management tools introducing Change Management in European SMEs. He will also show similarities and differences between SMEs from central and eastern European countries. Joerg Kluger, managing partner of BFU Consulting, Essen, Germany will give an introduction to the diagnostic, strategic and organisational learning and development tools developed in the KMplus project and beyond. He will bring together field experiences and lessons learnt from SMEs cases with the internal and external view on KM and SMEs as Learning organisations. Ludger Deitmer and Eileen Luebcke from ITB - Institute Technology and Education at Bremen University - http://www.itb.uni-bremen.de/, will present their reflections on a set of tools to enhance KM and learning in small firms, which have been tested in six European countries. They will round up the picture of KM by evaluating challenges, successes and limitations of KM enrolment processes in SMEs. Methodology: The symposium will proceed as follows: " Introduction into the thematic field by E. Davoine followed by D. Ursic, J. Kluger and L. Deitmer / E. Lübcke (each 15 Minutes presentation, 20 minutes to allow discussion) " Discussant will be Graham Attwell, research consultant, Pontydusgy, Wales (10 minutes). Mr. Atwell has recently evaluated the project and gives a short picture on strength and weaknesses as well future topics for debate and development. Conclusions: The symposium will contribute to: " an understanding of the barriers that SMEs face in using existing tools for Knowledge Management: lacking of essential ICT infrastructure and skills; not taking into account the tacit knowledge and informal communication base in small firms and a time frame which allows them to get efficient support without much resources; " an understanding of role of communication skills which enables the Small Firms to increase their knowledge sharing and acquisition skills for new knowledge. This symposium will address the overall objectives of the 2006 ECER conference through examining how knowledge transformation takes place at the level of small organisations.