Introduction to Knowledge Management

Todd Groff, Thomas Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781138171824
• eBook ISBN: 9781136392405
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book introduces readers to a wide range of knowledge management (KM) tools, techniques and terminology for enhancing innovation, communication and dedication among individuals and workgroups. The focus is on real-world business examples using commonly available technologies. The book is set out in a clear and straightforward way, with definitions highlighted, brief case studies included that illustrate key points, dialogue sections that probe for practical applications, and written exercises. Each chapter concludes with discussion questions, review questions, and a vocabulary review. An Online Instructor's Guide is available.

Chapter 1

Introducing KM

An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today; knowledge that would probably suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but it is dispersed and unorganized. We need a sort of mental clearing house for the mind: a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared.

—H.G. Wells in The Brain: Organization of the Modern World, 1940

Chapter One Learning Objectives

Learn why knowledge is considered the “Infinite Asset.”

See the key differences between data, information, and knowledge.

Learn to recognize both tacit and explicit knowledge.

Begin exploring the concept of “scope creep.”

Faster, better, cheaper—this is the call of the wild for business in today’s rapidly changing market. Each new class of eager young students graduating from our schools shows up more computer literate and Web savvy than the class before it, only to find their costly training becoming obsolete at a frightening pace. Workers entering the job market today had better be armed with the latest tools, techniques, strategies, and information resources if they hope to succeed. For those hoping to start a small business, the need is even greater.

To prepare you for this hostile, fast-paced environment, we have put together our comprehensive knowledge management (KM) study as a series of explanations, demonstrations, and practical applications. We hope these concepts will help you effectively harness the infinite asset of shared knowledge.

How to Use This Book

The icon key describes how each section will be annotated to allow you to quickly navigate to the section of the text that you are looking for.

About the Case Studies

Case studies are taken from real-world businesses struggling daily to re-create themselves for success in the information economy. They are intended to provide students with an understanding of how KM practices can drastically impact the bottom line of any business.

What is Knowledge Management?

The Infinite Asset

Knowledge is often called the infinite asset because it is the only asset that increases when it is shared.

In recent years, the meaning of the term knowledge management (KM) has been debated, defined, and redefined repeatedly. In our book, KM is taken as the tools, techniques, and strategies to retain, analyze, organize, improve, and share business expertise. Traditional businesses have aimed to ensure success based primarily on the management of finite physical resources. Now, information economy companies pursue rapid innovation, business agility, and just-in-time learning. They hope to develop and retain their “infinite assets,” the knowledge of their people. Unlike most assets, knowledge is not depleted when it is shared. In fact, sharing knowledge almost invariably results in increased knowledge for both parties.

It has been argued that knowledge management is a poor term because knowledge cannot be managed. This is because knowledge lives primarily in the mind. Information management doesn’t prove to be much of an improvement in terminology because it carries with it decades of baggage and preconceptions that focus solely on technology. Effective management of your infinite assets requires a much broader focus that includes the philosophies, techniques, and infrastructure components necessary to drive collaboration, innovation, and business agility. KM focuses on utilizing new ways to channel raw data into meaningful information—and hopefully knowledge.

Knowledge is NOT simply information. Knowledge resides in the users of information, not the containers. Several key factors distinguish among knowledge, information, and data. Understanding the differences is central to effectively leveraging them.

Data, Information, and Knowledge

Data: The nature of data is raw and without context. It simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence. It can exist in any form, usable or not. A spreadsheet generally starts out by holding data, such as a list of dollar figures.

Information: Information is data that have been given meaning by way of context. A spreadsheet is often used to make information from the data stored within it. A good example would be an income statement for your business. It is still a list of dollar figures, but now it has a relevant context.

Knowledge: Knowledge is information combined with understanding and capability; it lives in the minds of people. Typically, knowledge provides a level of predictability that usually stems from the recognition of patterns. The astute executive knows the significance of the dollar figures on his or her company’s income statement, and this makes him or her capable of taking positive action. Knowledge guides action, whereas information and data can merely inform or confuse.

Figure 1.1 Venn diagram shows the relationship between information and knowledge.

There are two main types of knowledge; the first and most common type of knowledge is called tacit knowledge. The second type is called explicit knowledge.

Tacit knowledge refers to personal knowledge embedded in individual experience and involving intangible factors such as personal belief, perspective, and values. Tacit knowledge can be extremely difficult to transfer. This is a point that any parent should recognize immediately. If you have ever tried to teach your child something as seemingly simple as how to properly hold a pencil, you have realized that many things that are easy for you to do are almost impossible for you to explain.

Explicit knowledge refers to tacit knowledge that has been documented. It has been articulated into formal language and can be much more easily transferred among individuals. Making tacit knowledge explicit is one of the key functions of a KM strategy.

Knowledgebases

Many organizations are now implementing knowledgebases as a strategy for making more of their employees’ tacit knowledge explicit. Knowledgebases are digital databases that attempt to capture almost every imaginable explicit intellectual asset that an organization possesses. They can provide a rich source of research material for problem solving, a powerful archive for organizational best practices, and a shared forum for competitive intelligence.

Constructing Knowledgebases

Knowledgebase construction entails the capture, processing, storage, delivery, and maintenance of huge amounts of information about products, people, processes, and policies. Much of this content doesn’t exist at the beginning of the KM initiative. It has to be created from scratch as relevant facts are discovered. What does exist in the beginning always comes from diverse sources, in diverse formats.

Note:

Details on constructing a knowledgebase for yourself or your workgroup will be covered in a later chapter in this text.

Dialogue

What types of tacit knowledge do you think would be valuable to capture into a corporate knowledgebase?

What benefits for the company do you imagine could be gained from making this knowledge explicit?

Making Tacit Knowledge Explicit

Interview one member of your family, class, or immediate circle of friends. Ask them to describe three of their favorite ways to save money. Next, create a document describing the three methods so that a third party could repeat them from the written documentation alone.

1. Create a list of three money-saving techniques. Try to choose novel or unexpected methods. They may be harder to document, but they are almost always more valuable.

2. Document the exact procedures involved. Documenting an individual’s processes can be quite challenging. Avoid making the procedure so specific that it doesn’t apply to a diverse group of individuals. For example, driving to 7-Eleven to buy bread instead of QuikTrip because it is closer to your home.

Making Explicit Knowledge Retrievable

It is simply not enough to pile all of your electronic files into a folder on a shared drive and call that a knowledgebase. Like any records management system, for a knowledgebase to be effective, the documents contained in the knowledgebase must be easily retrievable, saved in a commonly accessible format, and fully keyword searchable. To make this happen, there are three critical technical components: the user interface, the index fields, and the taxonomy, which must be planned out carefully.

User Interface: The combination of menus, screen design, keyboard commands, command language, and online help, which creates the way a user interacts with a computer. This is important because a poor user interface to your knowledgebase almost assures the eventual lack of acceptance by the intended end users.

Index Fields: Also known as metadata, the index fields in a record hold the unique data that identifies that record from all of the other records in the file or database. File Type, Location, Description, and Author Name are typical index fields. Indexes are defined using very specific data types such as Date Fields, Currency Fields, Number Fields, and Text Fields. Choosing the wrong data type for a property in your index can make your information difficult or impossible to retrieve.

Taxonomy: The rules and principles used to ensure consistent classification of data into ordered categories. For example, taxonomy rules might determine whether you save your recently created security procedures document into the Security category or the Documentation category of your knowledgebase.

When it comes to ease of use and customer acceptance of a knowledgebase, the user interface is where the rubber meets the road. In order to be effective, a knowledgebase user interface (UI) must provide the strict enforcement of your taxonomy rules, easy publishing, easy searching, and rapid summary review of the search results that are returned.

The publishing process includes uploading the user’s document into the system and then allowing the user to enter data for the key index fields. Easy publishing is a must because getting people to author to the knowledgebase is one of the toughest KM challenges you will face. Typical employees who are not trained in KM view authoring to a public knowledgebase as too risky to try without a clearly visible incentive. The drive to increase authoring to the knowledgebase will be difficult enough without having to force users to accept a complicated and/or time-consuming data entry process.

Developing your set of rules for consistent classification of data—your taxonomy—can be one of the most...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1: Introducing KM
• Chapter 2: Personal KM
• Chapter 3: Capture and Corroborate
• Chapter 4: Organize and Secure
• Chapter 5: Analyze and Collaborate
• Chapter 6: Storytelling and Knowledge Transfer
• Chapter 7: Systems Thinking
• Chapter 8: Harnessing Metcalfe’s Law: Utility = Nodes 2
• Chapter 9: 3D Communication
• Chapter 10: Building in Knowledge Exchange
• Chapter 11: Developing KM Strategies
• Chapter 12: The Ethics of KM
• Chapter 13: Metrics and Taming Wicked Problems
• Chapter 14: Careers in KM
• Index