Once upon a time, there was a magician's closet. It was filled with all sorts of wonders. The problem was that nobody knew exactly what was in the closet, and anyone brave enough to open the door risked having a cascade of bowling balls, snow shoes, Ouija boards, and Erlenmeyer flasks come down on his head. This closet, metaphorically speaking, was Dow Chemical's patent archive—a disorganized mess of intellectual capital. In recent years, Dow undertook the necessary task of putting the closet in order, and thus entered the nebulous world of knowledge management.