Knowledge Process Outsourcing or KPO refers to tasks which needs more sophisticated skills. Some of these "sophisticated" skills includes the following: -research skills -analytical capabilities -technical knowledge -decision-making capabilities

These skills are needed because the work that they would be handling are much more challenging as opposed to BPO. Examples of KPO tasks are pharmaceutical R&D (research and development) and patent research.

Personally, I see KPO as a product of the maturing outsourcing industry because these tasks are rather important in a company. The number of companies opting for KPO is rapidly growing whcih proves that outsourcing workers are able to handle these tasks quite well.