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Discusses 10 myths surrounding knowledge management

Many organizations don't know what they know. Why does knowledge move slowly w/in organizations-a phenomenon known as "stickiness?" Wharton prof Gabriel Szulanski explains why. (free registration required)

Technology improvements provide portals for every taste and job requirement

Article tracks some of the features and lessons learned from Intranet strategies to manage employee and expert knowledge at Booz-Allen, Arthur Andersen, E&Y and KPMG.

About 40% of Fortune 1000 companies now have chief knowledge officers, yet knowledge management remains focused more on data than knowledge, according to the authors. They examined knowledge management practices and found that traditional IS methodologies can be applied to the field of knowledge management. Their paper defines an integrated approach for those seeking a high-level, academic understanding of knowledge management processes.

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Paul Quintas is Professor of Knowledge Management at the Open University Business School (OUBS) and founding Director of the Management of Knowledge and Innovation Research Unit. In this Spotlight, Professor Quintas talks to editor Sarah Powell about the concept of knowledge management and its development, and his role and research in the field.

In this series Baruch Lev, of NYU's Stern School of Business, alerts us to potentially hidden sources of value in our organizations - the intangibles. As the value of these assets become an increasingly important component of total value, management must understand how to not only maximize their value, but also how to communicate it to capital markets.

As Lev explains in Episode 1, intangibles are those assets that are not physical in nature - they are derived from the knowledge an organization holds. Assets such as patents, brands, processes, investments in employee training, and risk sharing agreements are all very difficult to measure. By following Lev's strategies for managing (Episode 2) and measuring (Episode 3) these assets, we can increase overall corporate value.

Most companies underestimate the importance of intangible assets such as knowledge, creativity, ideas, and relationships. All these account for more value in our economy than the tangibles. Yet it's difficult for companies to get their arms around intangibles, so they rarely protect them as carefully as they do bricks and hardware. What would you do if your smartest people suddenly left? How can you ensure that what one department or division learns is widely shared throughout the company? The discipline of knowledge management (KM) was designed to answer questions such as these.
Here are four proposed steps.

"Technology change management is not an isolated activity but a process that touches many of the socio-technical activities at work in an organization. This bigger picture of technology change management includes business and work processes and technical systems as well as processes related to group dynamics and collaboration. The connection is clear. When we ask people to change how they do their work, as we do in improvement or technology adoption efforts, we are asking them to learn. If you pay attention to how people learn, you will be capable of more effective change management. Learning and technology change management reinforce one another. If you are smart about how you manage change, you will help make your workplace a learning organization, and that will pay off in many ways."

Article takes a high-level look at the problems associated with identifying, codifying and using knowledge in knowledge management implementation efforts.

What can be done to ensure that the CKO unlocks a company's latent potential? To find out, we asked CKOs at various companies for their views about the make-or-break factors. Although the CKOs had different experiences, all concurred that success depends on two things: first, on the ability of senior management to agree about what it hopes to gain from managing knowledge explicitly and from creating a performance culture (which raises the staff's demand for knowledge) and, second, on how well the CKO develops and executes a knowledge-management agenda.

Emin Civi asks 'What is knowledge management?' and 'Why is it important?' and discusses issues associated with knowledge and identifies five general steps to knowledge management success.

Senior executives at many of the largest corporations around the world have embraced knowledge or learning as part of their long-term vision. A focus on knowledge and learning makes sense: knowledge is increasingly an important source of competitive advantage. However, the business impact of most knowledge management or learning organization programs is modest at best. We estimate that about one-sixth of these programs achieve very significant impact within the first two years; half achieve small but important benefits; and the remaining third -- the failures -- have little business impact. Based on our five years of involvement in knowledge and learning organization programs we believe that effectively managed learning can have a significant strategic impact on most companies within the first two years. The purpose of this article is to provide C.E.O.'s with sufficient guidance to lead and manage learning and to insure that their organizations achieve significant strategic benefits quickly.

As its title suggests, this article presents knowledge management as the new challenge for the 21st century (it was written in late 1999). The authors define the concept and what it involves, and discuss its potential significance for business. They also present a selection of case studies and make recommendations of "best practices."

It used to be thought that knowledge was only to be found in a select group of experts - today it is more widely recognized that useful knowledge has built up throughout the organization. This article cites the examples of knowledge-sharing systems at Ford, British Petroleum and Lockheed-Martin as illustrative of this changed thinking.

This excellent article starts out with an introduction and a good overview of issues surrounding knowledge management and then proceeds to discuss the results of an empirical study that examined the extents of KM systems operating within sample UK enterprises with respect to each company's use of teamwork, level of bureaucracy and centralisation of decision making, innovativeness, and the ability to cope with change. Respondents' views on the contributions of KM to marketing management were also examined.

"While KM is attractive to managers during a recession, the same conditions that make it look good also make it more complicated to apply, if you take into account the cooperation of the keepers of the intellectual capital - the employees. KM asks them to act like a team in an environment in which the company may not return the favor. If it is my skill (knowledge) that makes me valuable to the company, why on earth would I give it away only to be sent packing? People will not share their flashes of individual brilliance or hard-won expertise with co-workers if their workplace does not support learning, cooperation and openness. One business, for example, sought to increase worker collaboration and knowledge reuse while simultaneously downsizing that same work force. The combination proved untenable. While jobs hang in the balance, asking employees to dole out insights or record their tacit knowledge is fruitless. Under those circumstances, any employee would suspect that KM was simply a tool of manipulation."

Managing knowledge is hot! Before we get carried away, why not stop to link knowledge and strategy?

Note: Darwin Magazine is now dead. Some articles are moving to CIO. I will try to update the links when I have time...

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The biggest challenge of getting employees to work together online isn't a technological problem--it's a cultural and organizational one. Here are 10 recommendations for getting employees to adopt collaborative tools and use them in an effective way.

Although communities of practice develop organically, a carefully crafted design can drive their evolution. In this excerpt from a new book, the authors detail seven design principles. The payoff? Knowledge management that works.

Editor's Note: see related article at
http://www.cio.com/archive/051502/excerpt.html

When you're forced to cut costs in your business, you must carefully weigh what's most important to your competitive edge. The recently-constructed, expensive institutions supporting Knowledge Management (KM) may be the first to go - after all, their contribution to the bottom line is hard to measure, and they represent high fixed costs for the firm. But is this necessarily the right move? Professors Elie Ofek and Miklos Savary explain that when you consider your competitive goals, your approach to KM will make a difference.

What is the Big Lie of the Information Age? That knowledge is power...

"Cultural barriers" to sharing knowledge has more to do with how you design and implement your knowledge management effort than with changing your culture. It involves balancing the visible and invisible dimensions of culture; visibly demonstrating the importance of sharing knowledge and building on the invisible core values.

Idea management may help validate knowledge management.

If you go to the expense and trouble of sending an employee to an event, you'd better capture that knowledge for your organization. How? The answer: Integrate the art of debriefing into everyday corporate life, writes media consultant Jimmy Guterman in the Harvard Management Update.

Knowledge remains the strongest force for business-building - if you're willing to link it to the bottom line and borrow inspiration from everywhere.

This paper discusses the basic definitions of knowledge and KM followed by KM events, practices, and challenges. It concludes with remarks on the future of KM.

You know effective knowledge creation when you see it - firms use it to create, innovate and grow successfully. But how can you tell what's behind it, making up those winning formulas? Are antecedents of new knowledge creation specific to the firm (individual absorptive capacity and informal networking), the contextual environment (the nature of problem situations being faced by the firms), or both? Dr. Christine Soo, Professor Timothy Devinney and Professor David Midgley broaden and refine their previous research on knowledge creation, guiding managers to the factors that matter the most.

If you look at how companies approach knowledge management, you can see that the problem is in the execution. Companies commonly make catastrophic mistakes by falling for one of these seven myths.

Note: Darwin Magazine is now dead. Some articles are moving to CIO. I will try to update the links when I have time...

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The battle plan for the KM czar begins with determining if KM
is the right answer.