The ability to manage Knowledge is becomming even more crucial in today's knowledge economy. More and more Knowledge is being regarded as a valuable commodity that is embedded in products (especially high -tech products) and in the tacit knowledge of highly mobile employees.
An organisation in the Knowledge age is one that learns, remembers and acts based on the best available, information, knowledge and know-how.
Organisational knowledge is not meant to replace individual knowledge but rather complement it by making it stronger, more coherent, and more broadly applicative.
KM solutions have proven to be most successful in the capture, storage and subsequent dissemination of knowledge that has been rendered explicit - particularly lessons learned and best practices. (Would this include the Dewey system in a Library?)
ICM (Intellectual Capital Management)- those pieces of knowledge that are of business value to the organisation - referred to as Intellectual Capital or Assets: the majority consist of know-how, know-why, experience and expertise that tend to reside with the head or a few employees. ICM is characterised by less content and only the best are inventoried.
A good definition of KM - involves the capturing & storing of the Knowledge perspective, together with the valuing of intellectual assets: "The deliberate and systematic coordination of an organisation's people, technology, processes and organisational structure in order to add value through reuse and innovation. This coordination is achieved through creating, sharing and applying knowledge as well as through feeding the valuable lessons learned and the best practices into corporate memory in order foster continued organisational learning".
Some typical KM objectives:
* Facilitate smooth transitions between retiring employees and their predecessors.
* Minimise corporate memory loss due to retirement and attrition.
* Identify critical resources and areas of knowledge so that coproration "knows what it knows - and does it well - and why."
* Build up a toolkit of methods that can be used with individuals, with groups, and with the organisation to stem the potential loss of intellectual capital.
Knowledge from the cognitive science or knowledge science perspective:
Insights, understandings and practical know-hows. The principal factor that makes personal, organisational and societal intelligent behaviour possible.
The Process/Technology perspective:
KM- information is turned into actionable knowledge and made available effortlessly in a useable form to the people who can apply it. A continuous flow of knowledge to the right people at the right time enabling efficient and effective decision making in their everyday business.
Wiig(1983) emphasises KM assets and processes.
Multidisciplinary Nature of KM:
* Draws upon a vast number of fields (eg. storytelling, education & training, cognitive science, etc.) this presents some challenges with repect to boundaries:
1. KM deals with information and knowledge.
2. KM deals with knowledge in all its forms (explicit and tacit).
3. KM begins with a needs analysis not an audit of resources.
Why KM is important today?
* Globalisation of business.
* We are doing more and doing it faster.
* We are more mobile in the workforce.
* We are more connected due to advances in technology. today's expectation is that one is "on" all the time. KM is 1 response in trying to manage this overloaded work environment.
* Snowden (2002): we are now entering the 3rd generation of KM one devoted to context, Narrative and content management. This 3rd generation brought about the shared context (eg. social networking sites).
KM for Individuals, Communities & Organisations:
Individuals - helps people do their jobs and save time through effective and effecient decision making and problem solving, builds a sense of community within an organisation, helps people to keep up-to-date, provides challenges an opportunities to contribute.
Communities - develops professional skills, promotes peer mentoring, facilitate more effective networking and collaboration,develops a professional code of ethics that members can follow, develops a common language.
Organisations - helps drive strategy, solves problems quickly, diffuses best practices, improves knowledge embedded in products and services,cross fertilisers ideas and increases opportunity for innovation, enables organisation to stay ahead of the competition better, builds organisational memory.
Some critical KM challenges:
* Manage content effectively
* Facilitate collaboration
* Help knowledge workers connect and find experts
* Help the organisation to learn and make decisions based on complete, valid and well interpreted data, information and knowledge.
KM generations: Containers, communities, content.
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