Purpose - To provide executives and scholars with pragmatic understanding about integrating knowledge management strategy and technologies in business processes for successful performance.

Design/methodology/approach - A comprehensive review of theory, research, and practices on knowledge management develops a framework that contrasts existing technology-push models with proposed strategy-pull models. The framework explains how the "critical gaps" between technology inputs, related knowledge processes, and business performance outcomes can be bridged for the two types of models. Illustrative case studies of real-time enterprise (RTE) business model designs for both successful and unsuccessful companies are used to provide real world understanding of the proposed framework.

Findings - Suggests superiority of strategy-pull models made feasible by new "plug-and-play" information and communication technologies over the traditional technology-push models. Critical importance of strategic execution in guiding the design of enterprise knowledge processes as well as selection and implementation of related technologies is explained. 2004