Knowledge management

. Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights andexperiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizations as processes or practices. An established discipline since 1991 (see Nonaka 1991), KM includes courses taught in the fields of business administration, information systems, management, and library and information sciences (Alavi & Leidner 1999). More recently, other fields have started contributing to KM research; these include information and media, computer science, public health, and public policy. Many large companies and non-profit organizations have resources dedicated to internal KM efforts, often as a part of their business strategy, information technology, or human resource management departments (Addicott, McGivern & Ferlie 2006). Several consulting companies also exist that provide strategy and advice regarding KM to these organizations. Knowledge management efforts typically focus on organizational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, integration andcontinuous improvement of the organization. KM efforts overlap with organizational learning, and may be distinguished from that by a greater focus on the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and a focus on encouraging the sharing of knowledge. It is seen as an enabler of organisational learning[1] and a more concrete mechanism than the previous abstract research.

History
KM efforts have a long history, to include on-the-job discussions, formal apprenticeship, discussion forums, corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programs. More recently, with increased use of computers in the second half of the 20th century, specific adaptations of technologies such as knowledge bases, expert systems, knowledge repositories, group decision support systems, intranets, and computersupported cooperative work have been introduced to further enhance such efforts.[2] In 1999, the term personal knowledge management was introduced which refers to the management of knowledge at the individual level (Wright 2005). In terms of the enterprise, early collections of case studies recognized the importance of knowledge management dimensions of strategy, process, and measurement (Morey, Maybury & Thuraisingham 2002). Key lessons learned included: people and the cultural norms which influence their behaviors are the most critical resources for successful knowledge creation, dissemination, and application; cognitive, social, and

organizational learning processes are essential to the success of a knowledge management strategy; and measurement, benchmarking, and incentives are essential to accelerate the learning process and to drive cultural change. In short, knowledge management programs can yield impressive benefits to individuals and organizations if they are purposeful, concrete, and action-oriented. More recently with the advent of the Web 2.0, the concept of Knowledge Management has evolved towards a vision more based on people participation and emergence. This line of evolution is termed Enterprise 2.0 (McAfee 2006). However, there is an ongoing debate and discussions (Lakhani & McAfee 2007) as to whether Enterprise 2.0 is just a fad that does not bring anything new or useful or whether it is, indeed, the future of knowledge management (Davenport 2008).

[edit]Research
KM emerged as a scientific discipline in the earlier 1990s. It was initially supported solely by practitioners, when Skandia hired Leif Edvinsson of Sweden as the worlds first Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO). Hubert Saint-Onge (formerly of CIBC, Canada), started investigating various sides of KM long before that. The objective of CKOs is to manage and maximize the intangible assets of their organizations. Gradually, CKOs became interested in not only practical but also theoretical aspects of KM, and the new research field was formed. The KM ideas taken up by academics, such as Ikujiro Nonaka (Hitotsubashi University), Hirotaka Takeuchi (Hitotsubashi University), Thomas H. Davenport (Babson College) and Baruch Lev (New York University). In 2001, Thomas A. Stewart, former editor at FORTUNE Magazine and subsequently the editor of Harvard Business Review, published a cover story highlighting the importance of intellectual capital of organizations. Since its establishment, the KM discipline has been gradually moving towards academic maturity. First, there is a trend towards higher cooperation among academics; particularly, there has been a drop in single-authored publications. Second, the role of practitioners has changed. Their contribution to academic research has been dramatically declining from 30% of overall contributions up to 2002, to only 10% by 2009 (Serenko et al. 2010). A broad range of thoughts on the KM discipline exist; approaches vary by author and school. As the discipline matures, academic debates have increased regarding both the theory and practice of KM, to include the following perspectives[citation needed]:

Techno-centric with a focus on technology, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing and creation.

Organizational with a focus on how an organization can be designed to facilitate knowledge processes best.

Ecological with a focus on the interaction of people, identity, knowledge, and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system akin to a natural ecosystem.

Regardless of the school of thought, core components of KM include people, processes, technology (or) culture, structure, technology, depending on the specific perspective (Spender & Scherer 2007). Different KM schools of thought include various lenses through which KM can be viewed and explained, to include:

community of practice (Wenger, McDermott & Synder 2001)[3] social network analysis[4] intellectual capital (Bontis & Choo 2002)[5] information theory[6] (McInerney 2002) complexity science[7][8] constructivism[9] (Nanjappa & Grant 2003)

The practical relevance of academic research in KM has been questioned (Ferguson 2005) with action research suggested as having more relevance (Andriessen 2004) and the need to translate the findings presented in academic journals to a practice (Booker, Bontis & Serenko 2008).

[edit]Dimensions
Different frameworks for distinguishing between different 'types of' knowledge exist. One proposed framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge distinguishes between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge represents internalized knowledge that an individual may not be consciously aware of, such as how he or she accomplishes particular tasks. At the opposite end of the spectrum, explicit knowledge represents knowledge that the individual holds consciously in mental focus, in a form that can easily be communicated to others.[10] (Alavi & Leidner 2001). Similarly, Hayes and Walsham (2003) describe content and relational perspectives of knowledge and knowledge management as two fundamentally different epistemological perspectives. The content perspective suggest that knowledge is easily stored because it may be codified, while the relational perspective recognizes the contextual and relational aspects of knowledge which can make knowledge difficult to share outside of the specific location where the knowledge is developed.[11]

The Knowledge Spiral as described by Nonaka & Takeuchi.

Early research suggested that a successful KM effort needs to convert internalized tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge in order to share it, but the same effort must also permit individuals to internalize and make personally meaningful any codified knowledge retrieved from the KM effort. Subsequent research into KM suggested that a distinction between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge represented an oversimplification and that the notion of explicit knowledge is self-contradictory. Specifically, for knowledge to be made explicit, it must be translated into information (i.e., symbols outside of our heads) (Serenko & Bontis 2004). Later on, Ikujiro Nonaka proposed a model (SECI for Socialization, Externalization, Combination, Internalization) which considers a spiraling knowledge process interaction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi 1995). In this model, knowledge follows a cycle in which implicit knowledge is 'extracted' to become explicit knowledge, and explicit knowledge is 're-internalized' into implicit knowledge. More recently, together with Georg von Krogh, Nonaka returned to his earlier work in an attempt to move the debate about knowledge conversion forwards (Nonaka & von Krogh 2009). A second proposed framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge distinguishes between embedded knowledge of a system outside of a human individual (e.g., an information system may have knowledge embedded into its design) and embodied knowledge representing a learned capability of a human bodys nervous and endocrine systems (Sensky 2002). A third proposed framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge distinguishes between the exploratory creation of "new knowledge" (i.e., innovation) vs. the transfer or exploitation of "established knowledge" within a group, organization, or community. Collaborative environments such as communities of practice or the use of social computing tools can be used for both knowledge creation and transfer.[12]

[edit]Strategies
Knowledge may be accessed at three stages: before, during, or after KM-related activities. Different organizations have tried various knowledge capture incentives, including making content submission

mandatory and incorporating rewards into performance measurement plans. Considerable controversy exists over whether incentives work or not in this field and no consensus has emerged. One strategy to KM involves actively managing knowledge (push strategy). In such an instance, individuals strive to explicitly encode their knowledge into a shared knowledge repository, such as a database, as well as retrieving knowledge they need that other individuals have provided to the repository.[13] This is also commonly known as the Codification approach to KM. Another strategy to KM involves individuals making knowledge requests of experts associated with a particular subject on an ad hoc basis (pull strategy). In such an instance, expert individual(s) can provide their insights to the particular person or people needing this (Snowden 2002). This is also commonly known as the Personalization approach to KM. Other knowledge management strategies and instruments for companies include:

rewards (as a means of motivating for knowledge sharing) storytelling (as a means of transferring tacit knowledge) cross-project learning after action reviews knowledge mapping (a map of knowledge repositories within a company accessible by all)

communities of practice expert directories (to enable knowledge seeker to reach to the experts) best practice transfer knowledge fairs competence management (systematic evaluation and planning of competences of individual organization members)

proximity & architecture (the physical situation of employees can be either conducive or obstructive to knowledge sharing)

master-apprentice relationship collaborative technologies (groupware, etc.) knowledge repositories (databases, bookmarking engines, etc.) measuring and reporting intellectual capital (a way of making explicit knowledge for companies)

knowledge brokers (some organizational members take on responsibility for a specific "field" and act as first reference on whom to talk about a specific subject)

social software (wikis, social bookmarking, blogs, etc.) Inter-project knowledge transfer

Motivations

A number of claims exist as to the motivations leading organizations to undertake a KM effort.[14] Typical considerations driving a KM effort include:

Making available increased knowledge content in the development and provision of products and services

Achieving shorter new product development cycles Facilitating and managing innovation and organizational learning Leveraging the expertise of people across the organization Increasing network connectivity between internal and external individuals Managing business environments and allowing employees to obtain relevant insights and ideas appropriate to their work

Solving intractable or wicked problems Managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the workforce (such as the expertise and know-how possessed by key individuals)

Debate exists whether KM is more than a passing fad, though increasing amount of research in this field may hopefully help to answer this question, as well as create consensus on what elements of KM help determine the success or failure of such efforts (Wilson 2002).[15] Knowledge Sharing remains a challenging issue for knowledge management, and while there is no clear agreement barriers may include time issues for knowledge works, the level of trust, lack of effective support technologies and culture (Jennex 2008).

[edit]Technologies
Early KM technologies included online corporate yellow pages as expertise locators and document management systems. Combined with the early development of collaborative technologies (in particular Lotus Notes), KM technologies expanded in the mid-1990s. Subsequent KM efforts leveraged semantic technologies for search and retrieval and the development of e-learningtools for communities of practice[16] (Capozzi 2007). Knowledge management systems can thus be categorized as falling into one or more of the following groups: Groupware, document management systems, expert systems, semantic networks, relational and object oriented databases, simulation tools, and artificial intelligence [17] (Gupta & Sharma 2004) More recently, development of social computing tools (such as bookmarks, blogs, and wikis) have allowed more unstructured, self-governing or ecosystem approaches to the transfer, capture and creation of knowledge, including the development of new forms of communities, networks, or matrixed organizations. However such tools for the most part are still based on text and code, and thus represent explicit knowledge transfer. These

tools face challenges in distilling meaningful re-usable knowledge and ensuring that their content is transmissible through diversechannels[18](Andrus 2005). Software tools in knowledge management are a collection of technologies and are not necessarily acquired as a single software solution. Furthermore, these knowledge management software tools have the advantage of using the organization existing information technology infrastructure. Organizations and business decision makers spend a great deal of resources and make significant investments in the latest technology, systems and infrastructure to support knowledge management. It is imperative that these investments are validated properly, made wisely and that the most appropriate technologies and software tools are selected or combined to facilitate knowledge management. Knowledge management has also become a cornerstone in emerging business strategies such as Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) with companies increasingly turning to software vendors to enhance their efficiency in industries including, but not limited to, the aviation industry.[19]

[edit]See

also

Knowledge community Knowledge ecosystem Knowledge engineering Knowledge management software Knowledge transfer Ignorance management Legal case management Knowledge map Knowledge modeling Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Journal of Knowledge Management Journal of Knowledge Management Practice
1. ^ Sanchez, R (1996) Strategic Learning and Knowledge Management, Wiley, Chichester 2. ^ "Introduction to Knowledge Management". Unc.edu. Retrieved 15 January 2010. 3. ^ (PDF). http://www.crito.uci.edu/noah/HOIT/HOIT%20Papers/TeacherBri dge.pdf. Retrieved 15 January 2010.

4.

^ (PDF). http://files.gk-facfil.webnode.com/200000004-ecf7fedf15/grothecscw03-ws.pdf. Retrieved 01 February 2013.

5.

^ Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellows Program; Observations in Knowledge Management: Leveraging the Intellectual Capital of a Large, Global Organization with Technology, Tools and Policies . IBM, Global Business Services. 2002. Retrieved 15 January 2010.

6.

^ "Information Architecture and Knowledge Management". Iakm.kent.edu. Archived fromthe original on June 29, 2008. Retrieved 15 January 2010.

7.

^ Snowden, Dave (2002). "Complex Acts of Knowing Paradox and Descriptive Self Awareness". Journal of Knowledge Management, Special Issue 6 (2): 100 111.

8.

^ SSRN-Knowledge Ecosystems: A Theoretical Lens for Organizations Confronting Hyperturbulent Environments by David Bray. Papers.ssrn.com. Retrieved 15 January 2010.

9.

^ http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/wyssusek02sociopragmatic.html

10. ^ "SSRN-Literature Review Knowledge Management Research at the Organizational Level by David Bray". Papers.ssrn.com. Retrieved 15 January 2010. 11. ^ Hayes, M.; Walsham, G. (2003). Knowledge sharing and ICTs: A relational perspective In M. Easterby-Smith and M. A. Lyles (Eds.), The Blackwell handbook of organizational learning and knowledge management. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 5477. ISBN 978-0-631-226727. 12. ^ "SSRN-Exploration, Exploitation, and Knowledge Management Strategies in Multi-Tier Hierarchical Organizations Experiencing Environmental Turbulence by David Bray". Papers.ssrn.com. Retrieved 15 January 2010. 13. ^ (PDF). http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~chens/PDF/IRI00_Rathau.pdf. Retrieved 15 January 2010. 14. ^ http://tecom.cox.smu.edu/abasu/itom6032/kmlect.pdf 15. ^ (PDF). http://myweb.whitman.syr.edu/yogesh/papers/WhyKMSFail.pdf. Retrieved 15 January 2010.
[dead link]

16. ^ "p217-ricardo.pdf" (PDF). Retrieved 15 January 2010. 17. ^ Gupta, Jatinder; Sharma, Sushil (2004). Creating Knowledge Based Organizations. Boston: Idea Group Publishing. ISBN 1-59140-163-1.

18. ^ "Knowledge Management". www.systems-thinking.org. Retrieved 26 February 2009. 19. ^ Aviation Industry Group. "Service life-cycle management"
[dead link]

, Aircraft

Technology: Engineering & Maintenance, FebruaryMarch, 2005.

[edit]References
This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.

Addicott, Rachael; McGivern, Gerry; Ferlie, Ewan (2006). "Networks, Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management: NHS Cancer Networks". Public Money & Management 26(2): 8794. doi:10.1111/j.14679302.2006.00506.x.

Alavi, Maryam; Leidner, Dorothy E. (1999). "Knowledge management systems: issues, challenges, and benefits". Communications of the AIS 1 (2).

Alavi, Maryam; Leidner, Dorothy E. (2001). "Review: Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues". MIS Quarterly 25(1): 107 136. doi:10.2307/3250961. JSTOR 3250961.

Andriessen, Daniel (2004). "Reconciling the rigor-relevance dilemma in intellectual capital research". The Learning Organization 11 (4/5): 393 401. doi:10.1108/09696470410538288.

Andrus, D. Calvin (2005). "The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community". Studies in Intelligence 49 (3). SSRN 755904.

Benbasat, Izak; Zmud, Robert (1999). "Empirical research in information systems: The practice of relevance". MIS Quarterly 23 (1): 3 16. doi:10.2307/249403. JSTOR 249403.

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Booker, Lorne; Bontis, Nick; Serenko, Alexander (2008). "The relevance of knowledge management and intellectual capital research". Knowledge and Process Management 15 (4): 235246. doi:10.1002/kpm.314.

Capozzi, Marla M. (2007). "Knowledge Management Architectures Beyond Technology". First Monday 12 (6).

Davenport, Tom (2008). "Enterprise 2.0: The New, New Knowledge Management?". Harvard Business Online, Feb. 19, 2008.

Ferguson, J (2005). "Bridging the gap between research and practice". Knowledge Management for Development Journal 1 (3): 4654.

Gupta, Jatinder; Sharma, Sushil (2004). Creating Knowledge Based Organizations. Boston: Idea Group Publishing. ISBN 1-59140-163-1.

Lakhani, Karim R.; McAfee (2007). "Case study on deleting "Enterprise 2.0" article". Courseware #9-607-712, Harvard Business School.

Liebowitz, Jay (2006). What they didn't tell you about knowledge management. pp. 23.

McAdam, Rodney; McCreedy, Sandra (2000). "A Critique Of Knowledge Management: Using A Social Constructionist Model". New Technology, Work and Employment 15 (2).

McAfee, Andrew P. (2006). "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration". Sloan Management Review 47 (3): 2128.

McInerney, Claire (2002). "Knowledge Management and the Dynamic Nature of Knowledge". Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 53 (12): 10091018. doi:10.1002/asi.10109.

Morey, Daryl; Maybury, Mark; Thuraisingham, Bhavani (2002). Knowledge Management: Classic and Contemporary Works. Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 451. ISBN 0-262-13384-9.

Nanjappa, Aloka; Grant, Michael M. (2003). "Constructing on constructivism: The role of technology". Electronic Journal for the Integration of Technology in Education 2 (1).

Nonaka, Ikujiro (1991). "The knowledge creating company". Harvard Business Review 69 (6 NovDec): 96104.

Nonaka, Ikujiro; Takeuchi, Hirotaka (1995). The knowledge creating company: how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 284.ISBN 978-0-19-509269-1.

Nonaka, Ikujiro; von Krogh, Georg (2009). "Tacit Knowledge and Knowledge Conversion: Controversy and Advancement in Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory". Organization Science 20 (3): 635 652. doi:10.1287/orsc.1080.0412.

Sensky, Tom (2002). "Knowledge Management". Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 8 (5): 387395. doi:10.1192/apt.8.5.387.

Snowden, Dave (2002). "Complex Acts of Knowing Paradox and Descriptive Self Awareness". Journal of Knowledge Management, Special Issue 6 (2): 100111.doi:10.1108/13673270210424639.

Spender, J.-C.; Scherer, Andreas Georg (2007). "The Philosophical Foundations of Knowledge Management: Editors' Introduction". Organization 14 (1): 5 28.doi:10.1177/1350508407071858. SSRN 958768.

Serenko, Alexander; Bontis, Nick (2004). "Meta-review of knowledge management and intellectual capital literature: citation impact and research productivity rankings". Knowledge and Process Management 11 (3): 185 198. doi:10.1002/kpm.203.

Serenko, Alexander; Bontis, Nick; Booker, Lorne; Sadeddin, Khaled; Hardie, Timothy (2010). "A scientometric analysis of knowledge management and intellectual capital academic literature (1994 2008)". Journal of Knowledge Management 14 (1): 13 23. doi:10.1108/13673271011015534.

Thompson, Mark P. A.; Walsham, Geoff (2004). "Placing Knowledge Management in Context". Journal of Management Studies 41 (5): 725 747. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6486.2004.00451.x.

Wenger, Etienne; McDermott, Richard; Synder, Richard (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge Seven Principles for Cultivating Communities of Practice. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. pp. 107136. ISBN 1-57851-330-8.

Wilson, T.D. (2002). "The nonsense of 'knowledge management'". Information Research 8 (1).

Wright, Kirby (2005). "Personal knowledge management: supporting individual knowledge worker performance". Knowledge Management Research and Practice 3 (3): 156 165.doi:10.1057/palgrave.kmrp.8500061.

Akscyn, Robert M., Donald L. McCracken and Elise A. Yoder (1988). "KMS: A distributed hypermedia system for managing knowledge in organizations". Communications of the ACM 31 (7): 820835.

Benbya, H (2008). Knowledge Management Systems Implementation: Lessons from the Silicon Valley. Oxford, Chandos Publishing.

Langton, N & Robbins, S. (2006). Organizational Behaviour (Fourth Canadian Edition). Toronto, Ontario: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Maier, R (2007): Knowledge Management Systems: Information And Communication Technologies for Knowledge Management. 3rd edition, Berlin: Springer.

Rhetorical Structure Theory (assumed from the reference of RST Theory above) http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/W/W01/W01-1605.pdf

Rosner, D.., Grote, B., Hartman, K, Hofling, B, Guericke, O. (1998) From natural language documents to sharable product knowledge: a knowledge engineering approach. in Borghoff Uwe M., and Pareschi, Remo (Eds.). Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Verlag, pp 3551.

The RST site at http://www.sfu.ca/rst/ run by Bill Mann Jennex, M. E. (2008). Knowledge Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 13808).

Knowledge Management, (KM) is a concept and a term that arose approximately two decades ago, roughly in 1990. Quite simply one might say that it means organizing an organization's information and knowledge holistically, but that sounds a bit wooly, and surprisingly enough, even though it sounds overbroad, it is not the whole picture. Very early on in the KM movement, Davenport (1994) offered the still widely quoted definition: "Knowledge management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge." This definition has the virtue of being simple, stark, and to the point. A few years later, the Gartner Group created another second definition of KM, which is perhaps the most frequently cited one (Duhon, 1998): "Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers." Both definitions share a very organizational, a very corporate orientation. KM, historically at least, is primarily about managing the knowledge of and in organizations. The operational origin of KM, as the term is understood today, arose within the consulting community and from there the principles of KM were rather rapidly spread by the consulting organizations to other disciplines.

The consulting firms quickly realized the potential of the Intranet flavor of the Internet for linking together their own geographically dispersed and knowledge-based organizations. Once having gained expertise in how to take advantage of intranets to connect across their organizations and to share and manage information and knowledge, they then understood that the expertise they had gained was a product that could be sold to other organizations. A new product of course needed a name, and the name chosen, or at least arrived at, was Knowledge Management. The timing was propitious, as the enthusiasm for intellectual capital in the 1980s, had primed the pump for the recognition of information and knowledge as essential assets for any organization. Perhaps the most central thrust in KM is to capture and make available, so it can be used by others in the organization, the information and knowledge that is in people's heads as it were, and that has never been explicitly set down. What is still probably the best graphic to try to set forth what KM is constituted of, is the graphic developed by IBM for the use of their KM consultants, based on the distinction between collecting stuff (content) and connecting people, presented here with minor modifications (the marvelous C, E, and H mnemonics are entirely IBM's):

COLLECTING (STUFF) & CODIFICATION

DIRECTED INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE SEARCH EXPLOIT

CONNECTING (PEOPLE) & PERSONALIZATION

Databases, external & internal Content Architecture Information Service Support (training required) data mining best practices / lessons learned/after action analysis

community & learning directories, "yellow pages" (expertise locators) findings & facilitating tools, groupware response teams

(HARVEST)
SERENDIPITY & BROWSING EXPLORE

(HARNESS)

Cultural support current awareness profiles and databases selection of items for alerting purposes / push data mining best practices

Cultural support spaces - libraries & lounges (literal & virtual), cultural support, groupware travel & meeting attendance

(HYPOTHESIZE)

(HUNTING)
From: Tom Short, Senior consultant, Knowledge Management, IBM Global Services

Another way to view and define KM is to describe KM as the movement to replicate the information environment known to be conducive to successful R&Drich, deep, and open communication and information accessand deploy it broadly across the firm. It is almost trite now to observe that we are in the post-industrial information age and that an increasingly large proportion of the working population consists of information workers. The role of the researcher, considered the quintessential information worker, has been studied in depth with a focus on identifying environmental aspects that lead to successful research (Koenig, 1990, 1992), and the strongest relationship by far is with information and knowledge access and communication. It is quite logical then to attempt to apply those same successful environmental aspects to knowledge workers at large, and that is what in fact KM attempts to do.

Explicit, Implicit and Tacit Knowledge

In the KM literature, knowledge is most commonly categorized as either explicit or tacit (that which is in people's heads). This characterization is however rather too simple, but a more important point, and a criticism, is that it is misleading. A much more nuanced and useful characterization is to describe knowledge as explicit, implicit, and tacit. Explicit: information or knowledge that is set out in tangible form. Implicit: information or knowledge that is not set out in tangible form but could be made explicit. Tacit: information or knowledge that one would have extreme difficulty operationally setting out in tangible form. The classic example in the KM literature of true "tacit" knowledge is Nonaka and Takeuchi's example of the kinesthetic knowledge that was necessary to design and engineer a home bread maker, knowledge that could only be gained or transferred by having engineers work alongside bread makers and learn the motions and the "feel" necessary to knead bread dough (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). The danger of the explicit-tacit dichotomy is that by describing knowledge with only two categories, i.e., explicit, that which is set out in tangible form, and tacit, that which is within people, is that it then becomes easy to think overly simplistically in terms of explicit knowledge, which calls for "collecting" KM methodologies, and tacit knowledge, which calls for "connecting" KM methodologies, and to overlook the fact that, in many cases, what may be needed is to convert implicit tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, for example the after action reports and debriefings described below.

What does KM really consist of? What operationally constitutes KM?

So what is involved in KM? The most obvious point is the making of the organization's data and information available to the members of the organization through portals and with the use of content management systems. Content Management, sometimes known as Enterprise Content Management, is the most immediate and obvious part of KM. For a wonderful graphic snapshot of the content management domain go to realstorygroup.com and look at their 2012 Content Technology Vendor Map. In addition to the obvious, however, there are three undertakings that are quintessentially KM, and those are the bases for most of what is described as KM.
(1) Lessons Learned Databases

Lessons Learned databases are databases that attempt to capture and to make accessible knowledge that has been operationally obtained and typically would not have been captured in a fixed medium (to use copyright terminology). In the KM context, the emphasis is typically upon capturing knowledge embedded in persons and making it explicit. The lessons learned concept or practice is one that might be described as having been birthed by KM, as there is very little in the way of a direct antecedent. Early in the KM movement, the phrase typically used was "best practices," but that phrase was soon replaced with "lessons learned." The reasons were that "lessons learned" was a broader and more inclusive term and because "best practice" seemed too restrictive and could be interpreted as meaning there was only one best practice in a situation. What might be a

best practice in North American culture might well not be a best practice in another culture. The major international consulting firms were very aware of this and led the movement to substitute the new term. "Best Practices" succeeded by "Lessons Learned" became the most common hallmark phrase of early KM development. Nothing of course is totally new and without something that can be viewed as a predecessor. One such possible antecedent was the World War II debriefing of pilots after a mission. The primary purpose was to gather military intelligence, but a clear secondary purpose was to identify lessons learned, though they were not so named, to pass on to other pilots and instructors. Similarly, the U. S. Navy Submarine Service, after an embarrassingly lengthy fiasco of torpedoes that failed to detonate properly and an even more embarrassing failure to follow up on sub captains' consistent torpedo failure reports, instituted a system of widely disseminated "Captain's Patrol Reports" with the intent of avoiding any such fiasco in the future. The Captain's Patrol Reports were very clearly designed to encourage analytical reporting, with reasoned analyses of the reasons for failure and success. It was emphasized that a key purpose of the report was to make recommendations about strategy for senior officers to mull over and about tactics for other skippers to take advantage of (McInerney and Koenig, 2011). The military has become an avid proponent of the lessons learned concept. The phrase the military uses is "After Action Reports." The concept is very simple: don't rely on someone to make a report. There will almost always be too many things immediately demanding that person's attention after an action. There should be a system whereby someone, typically someone in KM, is assigned the responsibility to debrief, separate the wheat from the chaff, create the report, and then ensure that the lessons learned are captured and disseminated. The concept is by no means limited to the military. Larry Prusak (2004) opines that in the corporate world the number one KM implementation failure is that so often the project team is disbanded and the team members reassigned before there is any debriefing or after-action report assembled. Organizations operating in a project team milieu need to pay very close attention to this issue and to set up an after- action procedure with clearly delineated responsibility for its implementation. A wonderfully instructive example of a "lesson learned" is recounted by KM consultant Mark Mazzie (2003). The story derives from his experience in the KM department at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Wyeth had recently introduced a new pharmaceutical agent primarily for pediatric use. They expected it to be a substantial success because, unlike its predecessors, it needed to be administered only once a day, which would make it much easier for the caregiver to ensure that the child followed the drug regimen. Sales of the drug started well, but soon turned disappointing. One sales rep (what the pharmaceutical industry used to call detail men), however, discovered, by chatting with her customers, the reason for the disappointing sales and discovered the solution. The problem was that kids objected strenuously to the taste of the drug, and caregivers were reporting to prescribing physicians that they couldn't get their kid to continue taking the drug. The solution was orange juice. A swig of orange juice quite effectively masked the offensive taste. If the sales rep illuminated the physician that the therapy should be conveyed to the caregiver as the pill and a glass of orange juice taken simultaneously first thing in the morning, then there was no dissatisfaction and sales were fine. The implementation of a lessons learned system is complex both politically and operationally. Many of the questions surrounding such a system are difficult to answer. Who is to decide what constitutes a worthwhile lesson learned? Are employees free to submit to the system un-vetted? Most successful lessons learned implementations have concluded that such a system needs to be monitored and that there needs to be a vetting and approval mechanism before items are mounted as lessons learned. How long do items stay in the system?

Who decides when an item is no longer salient and timely? Most successful lessons learned systems have an active weeding or stratification process. Without a clearly designed process for weeding, the proportion of new and crisp items inevitably declines, the system begins to look stale and usage and utility falls. Deletion, of course, is not necessarily loss and destruction. Using stratification principles, items removed from the foreground can be archived and moved to the background but still made available. All these questions need to be carefully thought out and resolved, and the mechanisms designed and put in place before a lessons-learned system is launched. Inattention can easily lead to failure and the tarring of subsequent efforts
(2) Expertise Location

If knowledge resides in people, then one of the best ways to learn what an expert knows is to talk with that expert. Locating the right expert with the knowledge you need, though, can be a problem. The basic function of an expertise locator system is straightforward: it is to identify and locate those persons within an organization who have expertise in a particular area. Such systems were commonly known as "Yellow Page" systems in the early days of KM. In recent years, the term expertise locator or expertise location has replaced yellow pages as being rather more precise. There are now three areas which typically supply data for an expertise locator system, employee resumes, employee self identification of areas of expertise, typically by being requested to fill out a form online, or by algorithmic analysis of electronic communications from and to the employee. The latter approach is typically based on email traffic but can include other social networking electronic communications such as Twitter and Facebook. Commercial packages to match queries with expertise are available. Most of them have loadbalancing schemes so as not to overload any particular expert. Typically such systems rank the degree of presumed expertise and will shift a query down the expertise ranking when the higher choices appear to be becoming overloaded. Such systems also often have a feature by which the requester can flag the request as a priority, and the system will then try to match higher priority requests with higher presumed (calculated) expertise rank.
(3) Communities of Practice (CoPs)

CoPs are groups of individuals with shared interests that come together in person or virtually to tell stories, to share and discuss problems and opportunities, discuss best practices, and talk over lessons learned (Wenger, 1998; Wenger & Snyder, 1999). Communities of practice emphasize the social nature of learning within or across organizations. Conversations around the water cooler are often taken for granted, but in geographically distributed organizations the water cooler needs to become virtual. Similarly, organizations find that when workers give up a company office to work online from home or on the road, the natural knowledge sharing that occurs in social spaces must be replicated virtually. In the context of KM, CoPs are generally understood to mean electronically linked communities. Electronic linkage is not essential, of course, but since KM arose in the consulting community from the awareness of the potential of Intranets to link geographically dispersed organizations, this orientation is understandable and inevitable. The classic example of the deployment of CoPs is that of the World Bank. When James Wolfensohn became president in 1995, he focused on the World Bank's role in disseminating knowledge about development. To that end he encouraged the development of CoPs. A CoP might, for example, focus on road construction and maintenance in arid conditions, and the point would be to include not only participants from the World Bank and the country where the relevant project was being implemented, but also participants from elsewhere who

had expertise in building roads in arid conditions, such as staff from the Australian Road Research Board and the Arizona Department of Transportation. The organization and maintenance of CoPs is not a simple or easy undertaking. As Durham (2004) points out, there are several key roles to be filled, which she describes as manager, moderator, and thought leader. They need not necessarily be three separate people, but in some cases they will need to be. For a CoP some questions that need to be thought about are:

Who fills the various roles of: manager, moderator, and thought leader? How is the CoP managed? Are postings open or does someone vet or edit the postings? How is the CoP kept fresh and vital? When and how (under what rules) are items removed? How are those items archived? Who reviews the CoP for activity? Who looks for new members or suggests that the CoP may have outlived its usefulness?

The Stages of Development of KM

Looking at KM historically through the stages of its development tells us not only about the history of KM, but it also reveals a great deal about what constitutes KM.

First Stage of KM: Information Technology

The initial stage of KM was driven primarily by IT, information technology. That first stage has been described using an equestrian metaphor as by the internet out of intellectual capital. The concept of intellectual capital provided the justification and the framework, the seed, and the availability of the internet provided the tool. As described above, the consulting community jumped at the new capabilities provided by the Internet, using it first for themselves, realizing that if they shared knowledge across their organization more effectively, then they could avoid reinventing the wheel, underbid their competitors, and make more profit. The first use of the term Knowledge Management in the new context appears to have been at McKinsey. They realized quickly that they had a compelling new product. Ernst and Young organized the first conference on KM in 1992 in Boston (Prusak, 1999). The salient point is that the first stage of KM was about how to deploy that new technology to accomplish more effective use of information and knowledge. The first stage might be described as the If only Texas Instruments knew what Texas Instruments knew stage, to revisit a much quoted aphorism. The hallmark phrase of Stage 1 was first best practices, to be replaced by the more politic lessons learned.

Second Stage of KM: HR and Corporate Culture

The second stage of KM emerged when it became apparent that simply deploying new technology was not sufficient to effectively enable information and knowledge sharing. Human and cultural dimensions needed to be addressed. The second stage might be described as the If you build it they will come is a fallacy stagethe recognition that If you build it they will come is a recipe that can easily lead to quick and embarrassing failure if human factors are not sufficiently taken into account.

It became clear that KM implementation would involve changes in the corporate culture, in many cases rather significant changes. Consider the case above of the new pediatric medicine and the discovery of the efficacy of adding orange juice to the recipe. Pharmaceutical sales reps are compensated primarily not by salary, but by bonuses based on sales results. What is in it for that sales rep to share her new discovery when the most likely result is that next year her bonus would be substantially reduced? The changes in corporate culture needed to facilitate and encourage information and knowledge sharing can be major and profound. KM therefore extends far beyond just structuring information and knowledge and making it more accessible. As this recognition unfolded, two major themes from the business literature were brought into the KM fold. The first was Senges work on the learning organization (Senge, Peter M., 1990 The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.) The second was Nonakas work on tacit knowledge and how to discover and cultivate it (Nonaka, Ikujiro & Takeuchi, Hirotaka, 1995 The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation.) Both were not only about the human factors of KM implementation and use; they were also about knowledge creation as well as knowledge sharing and communication. The hallmark phrase of Stage 2 was communities of practice. A good marker of the shift from the first to the second stage of KM is that for the 1998 Conference Board conference on KM, there was for the first time a noticeable contingent of attendees from HR, human resources, departments, and by the next year, 1999, HR was the largest single group, displacing IT attendees from first place.

Third Stage of KM: Taxonomy and Content Management

The third stage developed from the awareness of the importance of content, and in particular the awareness of the importance of the retrievability of content, and therefore of the importance of the arrangement, description, and structure of that content. Since a good alternative description for the second stage of KM is the its no good if they dont use it stage, then in that vein, perhaps the best description for the new third stage is the its no good if they try to use it but cant find it stage. Another bellwether is that TFPLs report of their October 2001 CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer) Summit reported that for the first time taxonomies emerged as a topic, and it emerged full blown as a major topic (TFPL, 2001 Knowledge Strategies Corporate Strategies.) The hallmark phrases emerging for the third stage are content management (or enterprise content management) and taxonomies.. At KMWorld 2000 a track on Content Management appeared for the first time, and by the 2001 KMWorld Conference, Content Management had become the dominant track. In 2006, KMWorld added a two-day workshop entitled Taxonomy Boot Camp, which still exists today. The hallmark terms for the third stage of KM are taxonomy and content.

Other KM Issues
One issue is the need to retain the knowledge of retirees. Of course the fact that the baby boomer bulge is now reaching retirement age is making this issue particularly salient. KM techniques are very relevant to this issue. One technique is the application of the lessons learned ideajust treat the retirees career as a long project that is coming to its end and create an after action report, a massive data dump. This idea seems obvious, but only in special cases is it likely to be very useful. Much more likely to be useful is to keep the retiree involved, maintain him or her in the CoPs and findable through expertise locater systems. The real utility is likely to be found not directly in the information that the retiree leaves behind, but in new knowledge created by the interaction of the retiree with current employees. The retiree says "it occurs to me that ..." and elicits a response something like yes, but here ..., a discussion

unfolds, the retiree contributes some of the needed expertise, and a solution is generated. The solution arises not directly from the retirees knowledge but rather from the interaction. Another major development is the expansion of KM beyond the 20th century vision of KM as the organizations knowledge as described in the Gartner Group definition of KM. Increasingly KM is seen as ideally encompassing the whole bandwidth of information and knowledge likely to be useful to an organization, including knowledge external to the organizationknowledge emanating from vendors, suppliers, customers, etc., and knowledge originating in the scientific and scholarly community, the traditional domain of the library world. Looked at in this light, KM extends into environmental scanning and competitive intelligence.

Is KM here to stay ?
The answer certainly appears to be yes. The most compelling analysis is the bibliometric one, simply counting the number of articles in the business literature and comparing that to other business enthusiasms. Most business enthusiasms grow rapidly and reach a peak after about five years, and then decline almost as rapidly as they grew. Below are the graphs for three hot management topics (or fads) of recent years:

Quality Circles, 1977-1986 Source: Abrahamson ,1996

Total Quality Management, 1990-2001 Source: Ponzi & Koenig, 2002

Business Process Reengineering, 1990-2001 Source: Ponzi & Koenig, 2002

KM looks dramatically different:

This graphs charts the number of articles in the business literature with the phrase Knowledge Management in the title. If we chart the number of articles in the business literature with the phrase Knowledge Management or the abbreviation KM in the title, we get the chart below, with an order of magnitude more literature:

It does indeed look as though KM is no mere enthusiasm; KM is here to stay.

References
Abrahamson, E. & Fairchild, G. (1999). Management fashion: lifecycles, triggers, and collective learning processes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 708-740. Davenport, Thomas H. (1994), Saving IT's Soul: Human Centered Information Management. Harvard Business Review, March-April, 72 (2)pp. 119-131. Duhon, Bryant (1998), It's All in our Heads. Inform, September, 12 (8).

Durham, Mary. (2004). Three Critical Roles for Knowledge Management Workspaces. In M.E.D. Koenig & T. K. Srikantaiah (Eds.), Knowledge Management: Lessons Learned: What Works and What Doesn't. (pp. 23-36). Medford NJ: Information Today, for The American Society for Information Science and Technology. Koenig, M.E.D. (1990) Information Services and Downstream Productivity. In Martha E. Williams (Ed.), Annual Review of Information Science and Technology: Volume 25, (pp. 55-56). New York, NY: Elseview Science Publishers for the American Society for Information Science. Koenig, M.E.D. (1992). The Information Environment and the Productivity of Research. In H. Collier (Ed.), Recent Advances in Chemical Information, (pp. 133-143). London: Royal Society of Chemistry. Mazzie, Mark. (2003). Personal Communication. McInerney, Claire. M and Koenig, Michael E. D., (2011), Knowledge Management (KM) processes in Organizations: Theoretical Foundations and Practice , Morgan and Claypool. Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge creating company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press. Ponzi, Leonard., & Koenig, M.E.D. (2002). Knowledge Management: Another Management Fad?" Information Research, 8(1). Retrieved from http://informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper145.html Ponzi, L., & Koenig, M.E.D. (2002). Knowledge Management: Another Management Fad?", Information Research, 8(1). Retrieved from http://informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper145.html Prusak, Larry. (1999). Where did Knowledge Management Come From?. Knowledge Directions, 1(1), 90-96. Prusak, Larry. (2004). Personal Communication. Senge, Peter M.. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. New York, NY: Doubleday Currency. Wenger, Etienne C. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, Etienne C. & Snyder, W. M. (1999). Communities of practice: The organizational frontier. Harvard Business Review, 78(1), 139-145.

nowledge management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge. (movement, Davenport, T. 1994). A discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of enterprises assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously uncaptured expertise and experience in individual workers. (Duhon, 1998). The Third definition by McLnerney, C (2002)

is that Knowledge Management is an effort to encrease useful knowledge within the organization. the principles and practise of KM have develop in a very conducive enviroment, given that in this post-industrial information age, an increasingly larger proportion of the polulation consists of information workers. A logical development then to attempt and apply those successful enviromental aspects to knowledge workers at large. Work becomes more effective and efficient if the coorporate use the Information System and Information Technology with good. the work is certainly not just IS / IT is a major focus, because the organization in a corporate environment also becomes an important aspect of the sustainability of the road business. The book was explained about four stage to development a management knowledge. The Three Stages of KM Stage 1 : By the internet out of intellectual Capital. certainly the use of the Internet can help facilitate access to data and information for companies to access information from internal and ekesternal companies, and provide uptodate the data and information. Stage 2: Human and cultural dimension, the HR, Human Relation stage. is, if a company has employees who have manners, good behavior, obey the rules, etc. The company must be able to control every employee can work in accordance with whatthe want and achieve the targets the company set. (do communication with employees, a good culture of the organization in the company,etc.) Stage 3: Content and Retrievability. must know what the content, structure in management company. Stage 4: Access to External Information. emphases upon external information and the recognition of the important of context and external information, external information related to the company off course. resource

Knowledge Management (KM) Process in Organization that was writen by Claire R. McInerney and Michael E.D. Koenig
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and your business model. Dilip Bhatt, takes a close look at the model developed by the European Foundation for Quality Management, and using the "hybrid skills" he has honed since serving as a geophysicist in the 70's and 80's, links knowledge management strategies directly to business policies and strategies. Bhatt is currently a Principal Consultant with ICL ltd. located in the U.K. where he provides strategic KM consultancy to banks, government agencies, as well as to other business organizations. He's actively assisting in developing ICL's own KM strategy and capacities associated with their cultural changes. In his prior positions of information and product manager, training manager, business analyst he has been working on the KM front lines since the early 90's. While at Schlumberger Corp, where he was Information Manager from 1994 to 1998, he pioneered the use of the "Net" and was responsible for a sister company, GrecoPrakla's, (an oil exploration company of Schlumerger) group-wide implementation of their Intranet. The author says, "Arm people with the right information, so they are able to make better judgements, smarter decisions and create environments in which to encourage innovation, in order to be able to provide a high quality service to its customers. All this, by implication, means a KM-centric company is a successful company." In this article he tells you how to align this action with your own business model. Bhatt is someone others describe as being more of a Practitioner than a Consultant, as his clients say he, "practices what he preaches." He can be reached atdilipbhatt@aol.com

EFQM Excellence Model and Knowledge Management Implications

by Dilip Bhatt

Introduction
In spite of all the discussions and publications about Knowledge Management, many business executives are still asking, What does it mean? How can it work in my organization? What benefits will it bring?" and What will it cost?" Without a doubt there is an inclination to believe in KM conceptually, but how it works in practice remains in question. The author has concluded that KM must be articulated in a given context. KM is unique to any given organization, just like a fingerprint. A solution suitable for one will most certainly not be appropriate to a another, even if the two companies have similar products, services and are the

same size. To help resolve the uncertainty of what KM is about and apply it in a given context, the author shows how to link KM implications to your business model. The idea is to articulate the issues around business terms and not KM by itself. KM should be seen as a set of concepts that could be tailored to meet business needs. Please be aware, KM is not a substitute for a Quality system; it does not replace TQM but helps to achieve the objectives in a smart fashion. It does this by developing a certain mindset in the organization. It develops a different way of thinking, of working solo and as a team member, it helps to run a business dependent on the drivers and objectives. If the company is a productbased organization, then KM implementation is set accordingly; if its customer-based, a slight different approach is needed. KM supports and enhances the way the business operates. It does not replace one's strategy setting, but the strategy itself will be flavored differently if one adopts a KM mindset. In time KM will became simply M, a way of managing the business. Typically most organizations will develop their strategy around a well-recognized business model. Therefore it would seem logical to map KM issues to a recognized business model, also. For the purposes of this article, the business model used is the one developed by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) and refereed to as the Excellence Model.

EFQM Model
European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) has developed a Model (fig 1) which is being widely adopted by thousands of organizatio ns.

Fig 1 - EFQM Excellence Model

Prior to discussing how KM can be mapped to the model, a clear understanding of the model components and fundamentals is required and highlighted in this section.

Fundamental Model Concepts

Results Orientation Excellence is dependent upon balancing and satisfying the needs of all relevant stakeholders (this includes the people employed, customers, suppliers and society in general as well as those with financial interests in the organization). Customer Focus

The customer is the final arbiter of product and service quality and customer loyalty, retention and market share gains are best optimised through a clear focus on the needs of current and potential customers.
Leadership & Constancy of Purpose

The behaviour of on organizations leaders creates a clarity and unity of purpose within the organization and an environment in which the organization and its people can excel.
Management by Processes & Facts

Organizations perform more effectively when all inter-related activities are understood and systematically managed and decisions concerning current operations and planned. improvements are made using reliable information that includes stakeholder perceptions.
People Development & Involvement

The full potential of an organizations people is best released through shared values and a culture of trust and empowerment, which encourages the involvement of everyone.
Continuous Learning, Innovation & Improvement

Organizational performance is maximised when it is based on the management and sharing of knowledge within a culture of continuous learning, innovation and improvement.
Partnership Development

An organization works more effectively when it has mutually beneficial relationships, built on trust, sharing of knowledge and integration, with its Partners.
Public Responsibility The long-term interest of the organization and its people are best served by adopting an ethical approach and exceeding the expectations and regulations of the community at large.

Overview of the EFQM Excellence Model

The EFQM Excellence Model is a non-prescriptive framework based on nine criteria. Five of these are Enablers and four are Results. The Enabler criteria cover what an organization does. The Results criteria cover what an organization achieves. Results are caused by Enablers. The Model, recognizing there are many approaches to achieving sustainable excellence in all aspects of performance, is based on the premise that: Excellent results with respect to Performance, Customers, People and Society are achieved through Partnerships and Resources, and Processes. The arrows emphasize the dynamic nature of the model. They show innovation and learning helping to improve enablers that in turn lead to improved results.

Model contents structure

The Models 9 boxes, represents the criteria against which to assess an organizations progress towards excellence. Each of the nine criteria has a definition, which explains the high level meaning of that criterion. To develop the high level meaning further each criterion is supported by a number of subcriteria. Sub-criteria pose a number of questions that should be considered in the course of an assessment. ENABLERS - how we do things LEADERSHIP - How leaders develop and facilitate the achievement of the mission and vision, develop values required for long term success and implement these via appropriate actions and behaviors, and are personally involved in ensuring that the organization's management system is RESULTS - what we target, measure and achieve CUSTOMER RESULTS - What the organization is achieving in relation to its external customers.

developed and implemented. POLICY & STRATEGY - How the organization implements its mission and vision via a clear stakeholder focused strategy, supported by relevant policies, plans, objectives, targets and processes. PEOPLE - How the organization manages, develops and releases the knowledge and full potential of its people at an individual, team-based and organization-wide level, and plans these activities in order to support its policy and strategy and the effective operation of its processes. PARNERSHIPS & RESOURCES -How the organization plans and manages its external partnerships and internal resources in order to support its policy and strategy and the effective operation of its processes. PROCESSES - How the organization designs, manages and improves its processes in order to support its policy and strategy and fully satisfy, and generate increasing value for, its customers and other stakeholders.

PEOPLE RESULTS - What the organization is achieving in relation to its people

SOCIETY RESULTS - What the organization is achieving in relation to local and international society as appropriate.

KEY PERFORMANCE RESULTS What the organization is achieving in relation to its planned performance.

How it works
Self-Assessment is a comprehensive, systematic and regular review of an organizations activities and results measured against the Excellence Model. All sizes and types of organizations including local government, charities, the military, police forces, hospitals and private companies use it. Some organizations undertake Self-Assessment for the whole organization, others for a department or operational unit. Fig 2 shows the RADAR against which various assessments are made. RADAR is the method for scoring when using the Excellence Model Results, Approach, Deployment, Assessment and Review

Fig 2 EFQM RADAR

THE BENEFITS
Self Assessment against the Excellence Model allows an organization to identify clearly its strengths and those areas in which improvements can be made. It is also an effective means to co-ordinate an organizations quality initiatives (e.g. ISO 9000, Investors in People, Process Reengineering and Charter Mark) to form a cohesive and structured approach to business excellence. A recent survey of British Quality Foundation members who are undertaking Self Assessment identified the top benefits as:

Development of clear, concise action plans Clear and more focused leadership Better and more focused policy and strategy Process improvement enabling achievement of an organizations objectives Improved prioritization of resources Greater motivation and satisfaction of an organizations personnel

Knowledge Implications Enablers

The enabler element of the model is whereby issues related to successful implementation are determined, understood and implemented. This section addresses each enabler and discusses associated KM implications.

Leadership
LEADERSHIP - How leaders develop and facilitate the achievement of the mission and vision, develop values required for long term success and implement these via appropriate actions and behaviors, and are personally involved in ensuring that the organization's management system is developed and implemented. Knowledge Implications Typically Leaders will set business direction based on influences and/or direct knowledge about customers needs, product trends, technology advances, competitors pressures, share holders objectives, financial performance and market share being the prime drivers. Leaders by themselves cannot change direction without the workforce. Often major changes in direction are required and without the support and the movement of the organization pulling in the same direction, visions will not be realized. Leaders are changing the way they lead, different styles and methods are being used to generate the movement required. To drive towards a vision, to which the whole organization can relate, requires considerations to the softer issues, which are primarily cultural. The entire workforce should be able to directly influence Senior Managers and Executives in direction-setting. People at the coal face are most likely to be in tune with customer needs, competitors status, business constraints, valueblockers, resource requirements and technology advances. Its the people in the front-line who have the answers and who know where the potential solutions exist. The Executives need channels to listen to the staff and to tap into the vast knowledge base that exists. But the organization needs to go a step further. Staff should be encouraged to voice their opinion (good and bad), in the style of openness. A good example, is ICL Ltd. They have developed a conversation for change program whereby all employees are asked to provide input in direction-setting. Keith Todd, CEO, invites all employees to participate in the program. In addition, Keith Todd and other Board Executives also use online chat sessions to discuss with staff issues in an open and non-judgmental environment. This style of openness generates a feeling of wanting which can be very powerful in generating commitment and loyalty. Staff feels their views and opinions are wanted and whatever they say will influence the future vision. Every view is considered valid and important. This CEO has also set up a web space, whereby any questions asked of him are posted with replies for all to see. ICL is one example of many companies where leaders are changing the way they lead. These leaders are not simply providing lip service, but genuinely believe that knowledge is a key asset and that asset largely consists of the people in the organization.

In the new economy the empowerment of the staff is a key issue and leaders are starting to understand the value and the power of openness. It can be messy at times, discussing issues in the open that have too long remained buried, but in the long term it builds trust, commitment and loyalty. Everyone feels they play a part in the future direction and it is everyones responsibility to contribute. It is not just management to determine the future. For large organizations, developing a sense of oneness can be problematic. However, every effort should be made to engage people from different geographies and cultures. Use your technology to share and discuss company vision. All parts of the organization can became a community using Teleconferencing and other collaborative tools; staff should not feel isolated due to being sited away from HQ. The engagement of the entire organization in conversation and dialogue in order to share and develop a companys vision is vital and should be encouraged. On a wider issue, vision realization will only come about through getting into the peoples emotional side. Leaders will need to learn how to achieve that. Command and Control behavior does not operate when the objective it to develop a common vision. Leadership will have to provide a vision by means of creating excitement, telling stories in order to entice, energizing and inspiring people towards a common goal. In summary it comes down to the leaders listening to the workforce to determine a future vision, in addition to the other elements that typically influence vision setting. Open communications channels, fostering a no-blame culture, listening to all levels of the organization and individual of all grades are some of the key elements of a high performance organization. People in the organization must be able to share in the vision, believe in a common sense of direction, take ownership of shared objectives and feel they play a part in success (or failure) of the organization. Gain-share for the employees and staff will encourage them to feel they have a stake in the company and engage the staff in achieving the vision.

Policy and Strategy

POLICY & STRATEGY How the organization implements its mission and vision via a clear stakeholder focused strategy, supported by relevant policies, plans, objectives, targets and processes. Knowledge Implications Top Management must stimulate not control. Its role is to provide strategic directive, to encourage learning and to make sure there are mechanisms for transferring lessons to demonstrate to people that they are capable of achieving more then they could achieve and they should never be satisfied with where they are now. John Browne BP To add to John Brownes statement, the strategies being developed need to ensure the people capital is utilized and the extract is imbedded in the polices and strategies of the company. Plus

the strategies should have flexibility, so that they can be changed and adopted by new learning and new ideas emerging from the rank and file of the company. A key element of a KM concept is a requirement to address People, Process and Technology issues in tandem and not focus on any one element. Fig 3 provides details of the subelements.

Fig 3 Knowledge Management Components and sub-elements

Most likely any strategic implementation will impact ALL the elements to some degree. Therefore careful consideration must be made to all implication of any strategic implementation. A holistic approach is needed in strategy setting. This is an area where many companies fail, whereby KM is seen as a technical implementation. A typical example would be a strategic requirement to share knowledge. A company would implement, say an Intranet, and wait for the benefits to kick in. Sadly, the company will gain little from its investment. The Intranet is a powerful infrastructure element BUT it needs to be established with People and Process implications not just Technology and must be tied with a desired business objective. Change management considerations are paramount to the technology implementation. KM will yield maximum benefits only when all the implications are addressed.

That does not mean to say technology is the least important of the elements. The point is ALL the elements are important; however, the Technology element is probably the easiest and quickest to implement. KM gurus often say that Technology is 10% of the effort required, Process is 20% and 70% being people/cultural issues. While technology is possibly the easiest and quickest to implement, tapping into cultural and people issues, at the other extreme, will most likely take longer and cost more. The true benefits will only be realized when people-related issues are addressed and kick in. However, there is no reason why small projects cannot be started, in manageable chunks to get the strategies rolling. Implement the classic case of start small but think big. The strategy should also address specific implementation issues, such as an awareness campaign, understanding skills required to maximize knowledge, developing a rewards scheme and developing measuring requirements. In other words, a full change management program must be developed and implemented. A wider policy implication would be to establish an innovation and learning culture within the organization. New products of tomorrow are residing in people's heads. Give them a channel to experiment. A learning environment is key to new learning that takes place in the company. People need time to reflect and question. Attending a training course is only a small element of learning that takes place. Most learning takes place by the coffee machine or attending a seminar or a departmental meeting. Tacit to Tacit exchange is possible and is proving to be one of the most important aspects of learning. This needs to be considered when developing policies and strategies. This should include softer issues such as considerations to family issues, working from home, leave entitlement, offering counseling services, etc. Stressed, over-worked staff members without the organizational support or time for family will not remain productive. Leave it to the staff to organize they way they work. In addition, a knowledge audit is required that aligns with the business strategy. Not only will the audit show gaps BUT also highlight areas where information which is currently being created in fact adds no value. Numerous times the author has questioned Why is this report produced?" only to be told "Because we have always done it." By eliminating no value information chains, a great deal of work can be scrapped and help to address the working balance and reduce the burden. Strategy should also include staff development with a wider scope. In other words, leave it to the individual to develop new skills and set career direction. An organization can play a vital supporting role in staff development; this is particularly true in a learning organization,' where staff are encouraged to learn and accept that training courses are only a subset of learning. Learning has many components and a right culture should be developed to foster learning.

In summary, KM strategies must be aligned with the business vision and management and must ensure that staff are clearly onboard. They must understand why knowledge is important, chiefs must practice what they preach. They must have channels for discussion and allow a flow of ideas. Feedback must be given and above all trust must be developed between the executive and the staff. Split the KM program into manageable units; think big, but start small.

Partnerships and Resources

PARNERSHIPS & RESOURCES -How the organization plans and manages its external partnerships and internal resources in order to support its policy and strategy and the effective operation of its processes. Knowledge Implications The shift in forming partnerships is clear in the knowledge economy. These include suppliers, customers and even competitors. Dependent on the companies services and products, a value chain is an important element. Sharing of knowledge assets will lead to quicker and smarter customer solutions. Examples of partnerships are banks that offer cars for sale to general public, telecons and IT companies to develop WAP services, management consultancies and IT service companies to provide clients with total solutions, cable TV and leisure industry to provide interactive TV (Video on demandetc). Why the partnerships? In essence, to leverage on knowledge and to delivery a premium service. Clearly for such partnerships to flourish, knowledge needs to be transferred and be made available between the key parties. The greater the collaboration between the supplier and the client, the better the product/service, not to mention lower development costs. Beware of software single vendors that offer complete out of the box solutions. Its very unlikely that all KM issues can be addressed by a single vendor, in particular IT suppliers. The mindset should be: deliver an appropriate solution and understand the knowledge/information chain required to meet the partnership requirements. A KM audit would be ideal at the early stage to understand Where, What and How the knowledge exists and is used in the organization. The audit should be conducted for the full length of the information chain and not stop at organizational boundaries. By understanding the information requirements, processes should be modified to embrace the partnership and provide effective development of solutions. CRM is one example of a service/product that could cut across organizational boundaries and provide/share customer information between the partnership organizations. Terms such as B2B (business to business) are becoming common place. For example, companies want to link IT with their customers and suppliers not only to provide smart solutions, as mentioned above, but also to primarily reduce cost. The B2B will use IT to include process integration, knowledge chains and product/service transfer where applicable. To achieve this, a clear knowledge audit is required to determine the requirements and integration with people, processes and technology.

BP Exploration is perhaps one of the best examples of internal resources put to good use in a large corporation. Virtual Team Network project launched in 1995, used Videoconferencing and collaboration technology and information systems. Virtual teams were able to work on problems with the team members distributed globally and consisting of not only internal staff but also third party contractors. This is an excellent example of tacit to tacit knowledge transfer. New processes were introduced, new technology was used effectively. Utilization of the right people to resolve challenges being the prime objective. A key to the project was the early realization that people will need to work differently. They realized working practices and behaviors would need to change. BP felt that having a network in itself meant little and could not be forced upon the staff. However, as people were showed the benefits, the project just took off. BP estimates, the Virtual Network produced at least $30 million in value in its first year Armys After Action Review (AAR) is another example of a excellent process that ensures that lessons are learned after the event. BP have introduced a version of this plan, whereby prior to undertaking a large project, they learn before, learn during and learn after. Major costing savings have been realized by introducing learning processes. Another example would be Chevron. They introduced a simple learning tool for their drilling operations. Every time they drill in a particular area lessons are recorded. Next time drilling takes place in a similar area, lessons learned during the last drilling operations are available. This results in fewer errors and less reinventing the wheel. Again, Chevron have recorded waste savings in their drilling operations.

People
PEOPLE - How the organization manages, develops and releases the knowledge and full potential of its people at an individual, team-based and organization-wide level, and plans these activities in order to support its policy and strategy and the effective operation of its processes. Knowledge Implications To enable people in knowledge-centric organizations is possibly the hardest task of all. Changes required will impact most likely deep- rooted cultural mindsets. The approach suggested is based around recognition of individual contribution to the organization. Motivation not only comes from the wage packet but also recognition of individual contribution. If staff can see that they make a difference, then they feel part ownership of the organizations successes (and/or failure). Therefore, it is suggested that a strong engagement of people is required in maximizing on peoples ability to learn and bring about change. Early adopters of KM have realized the power of knowledge and the rewards due to staff empowerment. Most organizations have recognized that its the individuals that are the key contributors to success. Its due to people that new learning takes place, new processes are developed and old ones enhanced, and new products/services developed through the culture of innovation and experimentation. Its the individual that brings about change and the organization acts as the supporting mechanism.

Vast savings have been recorded by various organizations through exchanges of tacit knowledge. The key to success is the cultural mindset of the organization regardless of the key business drivers, be it time to market, operational excellence or new products. Its the people that will drive the change. The method and leadership of mobilizing the peoples knowledge will determine the speed of transformation in the knowledge economy. The faster the company can develop and adapt to change then the chances of survival are increased. Vast knowledge typically exists in any organization in both the explicit and tacit forms. If people can NOT trust or perceive a benefit for sharing this knowledge then the organization is doomed for failure. The cultural issues also relate to organizational makeup, some of the most successful companies foster an environment, which maximizes on staff development and on recognition that the staff are key to maximizing the companys intellectual property. Key cultural issues include:

Deliver awareness and/or direct training relative to impact of practices/tools/processes. Allow experimentation and time for learning new ways of working. Develop "out of the box" thinking. Encourage feedback to on company performance and issues that people feel strongly about. Foster learning environment, allow staff time to reflect to improve skills but also to create an environment for creation of ideas and innovation. Focus should be on people rather then systems. Workgroup should believe they can change the environment they work in and not wait for the management to establish it. Accept failures and exchange best practices and lessons learned. People have a massive capacity to generate ideas and innovation, encouragement and freedom to explore is key. These ideas are the products and services of tomorrow, some will work others not, and yet some will leap us into the higher plane of profits and competitive strengths. Take a holistic approach to problems; do not focus on narrow or short-term fixes. Encourage open communications up and down the hierarchy of the organization. Foster a no-blame culture. Shared commitments, aims and a common language are vital elements of a learning organization. People working within a framework of Trust, Co-ordination and Corporation are the corner stones of team-working. Self regulated teams, with team leaders that act as mentors and stewards are fundamental to knowledge sharing community. Knowledge and learning are inter-related; knowledge leads to learning and evaluating. Learning is far bigger then training alone. Allow for variation; dont impose a standard blanket. Listen to the needs of individuals, groups, organization level and to external parties. There is no such thing as wrong information, unless it is inaccurate.

As can be seen, learning or knowledge acquisition is a complex arena with a spectrum of soft issues that must be considered. These soft issues are also difficulty to implement and will take time before the benefits are evident. However, it is clear in the knowledge economy that individuals knowledge has capital value. Each person has know-how and know-why which must be utilized to gain competitive advantage, operational excellence and to create the products and services needed tomorrow. Intellectual knowledge is now seen as an asset, just like the Personal Computer or a building. Financial Analysts are working towards attaching a

value to the knowledge of the organization, which includes knowledge in peoples heads. These figures in time will be reported in annual reports. Fig 4 shows the elements that constitute market value of a company.

Fig 4 Market Value Components Larry Prusak in an article in Ground Work titled "American Accounting Association Wrestles with Intangibles," Oct 1996) comments: "Common account measures captures only 20-30 % of the real worth of the company." As we have seen in the dot.coms the market value is high even though financially most are not making any money (as yet.) Continuous skills development is required as technologies and/or customer requirements change. Flexibility to learn and adapt to new ideas will be the characteristics of the workers in the knowledge economy. KM organizations use peoples ability to change and enhance business objectives, to develop standard processes to capture best practices in order to codify the knowledge and technology and to enable the practices and process to happen. Care must be taken not to became too formalized or control-centric. There is a strong need to recognize that one of the best practices for sharing knowledge is human interactions itself. These take place in the coffee room, in the staff restaurant or in the

hallways. The social aspects are very important for Tacit to Tacit exchange and is a key element of learning and knowledge creation. Knowledge-intensive companies should, in fact, encourage dialogue and conversation, encourage staff to talk freely up and down the chains of command. These informal structures must be insured as a part of the companys ethos and policy. Some of the knowledge-centric companies have or are designing office buildings that foster informal structures. Knowledge leaders of tomorrow will not lead teams but support them; a whole new way of working is required in a knowledge-centric organization. Emphasis is moving away from the old style command and control into more support and develop. Wages today are based on length of service, age, scope of responsibility but likely tomorrow the reward will be on know-what and know-how, the ability to handle a wide range of job, range of skills learned and amount of knowledge shared. Organizations are introducing knowledge-sharing incentives in various shapes and forms. They recognize that knowledge-sharing should be rewarded just like when someones spends extra time at work and is paid overtime for the extra hours. Be prepared to re-engineer organizational cultures and working models, and beware that the hierarchical structures will not necessarily yield the highest benefits. People working in communities of products, services, skills, experiences and/or interests will be required to maintain a competitive edge. New models will mean new networks of specialist experts working in teams, not the structures we are all used to. ICL Ltd. has changed its entire organization into communities. These fall into two types: Professional and Interests. All employees belong to a Professional community dependent on their function (Sales, Project Management, Consultancy, etc) and any employee can also belong to any one or more communities of Interest (KM, Quality Improvement, etc). For example, a Consultant will belong to a Professional Community of Consultants and work and develop within the consultancy framework. The Consultant can also specialize in KM and therefore belong as a member of the KM Community. S/he is able to discuss, share and develop in the KM field. The KM community, for example, meets at regular intervals, guest speakers are invited to the meeting, lots of tacit exchange takes place. It develops into a true community spirit. The Interest community will typically regulate itself and have an administrator to facilitate the web space and other co-ordination activities. Speed of solutions, products and services will be key to success in order to maintain the competitive advantage. People will need to react fast to changing environments and will require tools and support to meet the demands. New skills in problem solving and team working will be required. Reward systems for knowledge sharing should be developed, whereby staff are rewarded for sharing tacit and explicit knowledge. The sharing of knowledge as well as the transfer needs to recognize all parties as providers and recipients. Appraisal systems that measure knowledge-sharing need to be developed. The rewards can take many forms from bonus payments to free training on any subject they desire, to extra days' holidays. Suggested reading on this complex issues is Frances Horibe's book Managing

Knowledge Workers (1999.) It discusses key issues related to managing people in a knowledge-centric company. A case example where a process has became a core element of an organization is, perhaps, Xerox, where they implemented a system for technicians to share knowledge. Technicians share tips on service repairs on their Web based system. Xerox have commented that their service costs have been reduced by 10%; it seems clear that any help given to technicians to increase their tacit knowledge and make it available will be worth the cost. Xerox have also extended the system to include customer questions. The systems holds hundreds of thousands of customer questions, which allow Xerox to track common questions and split them into categories. They are then able to track patterns and resolve issues accordingly. In summary, people-development issues are largely cultural. Systems, processes and technology can all enable but they cant make change happen. Only with the appropriate cultural climate will staff flourish and maximize upon their own potential. There is only way to get any competitive advantage and its not by having smarter people then anybody else. If you can get your people to interact in fundamentally better ways than other organizations then you have something that is absolutely cannot be copied John Old, Texaco Q, What are the three critical factors in KM? A, Culture, Culture, Culture. Bob Buckman, President and CEO of Bulab Holdings

Process
To determine the KM implications related to processes, it may help to revisit the strategy and determine the following:

Identify processes that implement strategy. What are the information requirements for the process both in terms of input and output? How are processes ineffective due to information fragmentation? What needs to be done to improve the fragmentation? Does the process chain include partner and suppliers? develop a plan for process improvements.

In addition to the process/knowledge audit, questions could be asked, such as:

Are we differentiating by using our knowledge? Do have a smarter way of working? Are we leveraging on the knowledge of the organization?

Key fundamentals:

Determine and understand key information requirements of the organization. but beware that knowledge will mean different things to different people. What is key to one is not

key to another; do not judge what is important at a global level, but leave that judgement to the individual. Keep in mind there are varying needed levels of detail. A sales person will require detailed knowledge about client organizations and its key contacts; the marketing people will need a different level of detail, and a VP may require a summary only. The key is to conduct a knowledge audit and determine what information does the company need to do its business, and then establish the source of the information. Fig 5 shows a table that could be used to determine knowledge requirements at the process/function levels.

Fig 5 Function/Process - Assessment toolkit

Knowledge will exist in peoples heads, in company procedures and in information islands either geographically and/or organizational levels. It will exist in a form of Tactic or Explicit knowledge, it may have a short life span or be long term. But above all it must have value to the reader. This is a tricky problem to address: how does the person that shares knowledge know the value the recipient attaches to it? Ask the recipient. Information can be classified: some is mission critical, other highly confidential and some open knowledge. Information will exist in variety of sources, formats and devices. It will be found anywhere from peoples heads, databases, Intranets, Partners, Clientsetc.

Ownership and legal requirements: information is generated and owned by an author; understand that people have rights (data protection) as to what is shared, organizations have legal requirements dependent on the company type.

The KM process strategy, needs to therefore consider the following elements:

Information share, usage, flow requirements. To assist with maximizing information usage. Need to map knowledge sources, dependencies, owners and targets audiences, which will help to determine knowledge gaps, highlighted areas of frequently and infrequently used information, show mission critical information paths, provide an inventory of information. To maximize on best practices, share ideas and exploration. Extract expert knowledge and share widely. Foster environment for learning and improve Training. New skills are needed in the knowledge economy, such as how to work in team environments, ability to problem solve, experiment and mentor. Maximize on IC and improve business intelligence Determine key information requirements for mission critical functions and ensure as a minimum these are maximized in terms process, people and technology. Understand the knowledge transfer process has recognized elements see Fig 6. All these elements must be considered in developing processes for information/knowledge transfer.

Fig 6 KM Transfer Process Processes should be global wherever possible; they should reduce the risk of re-inventing the wheel and also introduce best practices in the organization. Processes should follow standard practices and procedures and conform to the companys business model and quality system. An example of one KMtype process is the Problem Solving Process within Rank Xerox. Rank has a group-wide single process for problem solving, used for all sorts of purposes and at all levels of the organization.

On a wider issue, with the advent of data warehousing and neural networks, companies are able to develop new processes to take advantage of new technologies. But be aware that while these data- rich applications can perform pattern recognition, they still require human intellect to make a judgment in terms of the value of the newly generated knowledge. Mapping the knowledge chain will help to determine the process required. Some elements of the process can and should be automated by use of workflow technology. However, any process design and implementation must be flexible enough such that it does not require high costs and time to re-engineer as the requirements change. Bespoke application and closed systems are typically barriers to information flow, but in some cases it is recognized that those barriers cannot be avoided. Results
Operational performance can be measured in a variety of ways. Most companies will use statistical tools in some shape or form. The tools themselves are not discussed here but mainly what needs to be measured.

Customer
CUSTOMER RESULTS - What the organization is achieving in relation to its external customers. Knowledge Implications

Key indicators to success are positive financial results but wider issues can also indicate success, larger market share being one. One key KM requirement is to ensure company performance is measured using several indicators not just financial. Knowledge-centric organizations are using detailed customer information (using CRM) to collect client information. Information collected is both tangible and intangible, in order to develop products and services that the customers will need tomorrow. Customers can play a key role in determining business strategy; however, clearly, we need learn and develop accordingly. Partnerships and strategic alliances are common-place today. Service providers have learned that customers are sources of value and in more then just revenue terms. As mentioned by Dr Karl-Erik Sveiby, In a world where customers are more interested in the knowledge and the intangible benefits you provide them with than the tangible product, the customer relations become partnerships and your product delivery becomes a co-creation of solutions. Knowledge flows both ways; you learn as well as the customer. Customers bring more than financial revenues, they also bring intangible revenues: product ideas, competitive intelligence, feedback, referrals, etc. You know this, of course. But have you ever tried to measure the intangible revenues? To manage them consciously? To put them in the strategic plan?

If you do, you will take the first steps towards making your organization more knowledge focused. To be knowledge focused is to take the intangibles seriously, to see your organization as if it consists of nothing but intangible assets and the flows of knowledge between them. They provide training for employees, they can act as references, they talk to each other and so spread the word and the image, and their demands encourage the development of new products. Revenues arising from intangible assets take intangible forms. Most companies use customer projects to develop new methods. As anyone who has worked in sales will tell you, projects undertaken successfully for "high-profile" customers are, irrespective of how profitable they are, invaluable aids in selling, because they attract attention and can be used as "reference accounts" for years afterwards." As Sveiby points out, customer relationship is an important element. But be careful, he says, not to rely on CRM based systems alone. Visit customer sites, watch them as they use your products, involve them in the development and project management processes. As well as specific process, companies should also introduce wider policies/processes in terms of measuring customer and employee satisfaction and exit interviews. This is in addition to the quality management systems in place.

Society

SOCIETY RESULTS - What the organization is achieving in relation to local and international society as appropriate. Knowledge Implications The main issues center around participation and information. Society in general will have expectations, in particular for public organization, Governments, Public agencies. Society will expect these organization to adhere and understand environmental standards and issues. They will also expect to be able to voice their opinions, to feel they are participating and that they form listening culture. Organizations are also expected to adhere to international HSE and occupational standards within their organizations. Audits are performed to ensure compliance. On a wider issue, society expects companies to work under a caring culture where family values are part of the companys ethics and values. The caring extends to partners and suppliers, but also towards the environment. That may include issues from waste disposal to building design. It might also include design of products that are environmentally and ergonomically friendly. Society will also expect organizations to support the local community and environment and ensure compliance to global, regional and local regulations and rules. Information access with regards to all these regulations and policies is important and sources of which will reside with the policy making bodies. Therefore, links (through the Internet and/or direct) should be established with these organizations. Furthermore, the company should publish its successes and failures, progress and policies for public view via the companys Intranet.

People
PEOPLE RESULTS What the organization is achieving in relation to its people. Knowledge Implications In our new knowledge world, the managers' power base is their relative level of Knowledge. The role shifts from supervising subordinates to supporting colleagues. As well as traditional training and skills development that most organizations have in place, a new emphasis is now required. Measures could include, competence utilization, value added, knowledge flows, customer image and staff attitudes. The old indicators of, for example, staff retention and numbers trained is not enough. New measures could include, new ideas proposed, processes/service/products improvements due to staff feedback, sharing of knowledge, skills acquired. A good example of positive results achieved by using its intellectual capital is the smart use of peoples capability to improve and innovate by Texas Instruments Inc. By using people resources to improve productivity and hence increase capacity, T.I. were able to save $500

million in building another fabrication plant by increasing capacity in two existing plants. See the article "Measuring up Intellectual Capitalism" in CIO Magazine, May, 1998. 3M encouraged a culture of innovation and experimentation and is able to continually develop new products. In fact the company has over 60,0000 products and constantly maintains a 30% revenue on new products ratio. That is 30% of total revenue comes from products less than four years old. This high turnover of products requires an effective knowledge transfer and sharing culture. In the end it comes down to the cultural mindset of the organization. People should be encouraged at all levels and at all disciplines. Just because you work in, say HR, does not mean you have no channel to pursue an idea or suggest a product improvement. ALL should play a part in product development and if necessary the person should be given time and resources to develop the idea further. Once an idea has been validated. then there is no reason why the inventor can not play a key role in commercialization of that product. At 3M, all the employees are subject to a 15 percent rule. They are encouraged to spend 15% of their work time to develop new ideas and generally think about process improvement. According to Geoffrey Nicholson, one of the 3Ms VPs, says "Some people take more than 15 percent; others less. But it's not the 15 percent thats important. Its a message that its OK to dream." Specifics to people-results ensure staff surveys are conducted regularly. These can be in a form of company-wide satisfaction surveys, conducted six monthly or yearly. The results should be published for all to see and be part of the balanced scorecard measurement (see below). To supplement the company surveys, staff should have an opportunity to provide 360-degree feedback of their Managers' performance. These could be done during annual appraisal whereby both parties discuss performance of the other. This is a sensitive issue and most staff would feel reluctant to appraisal their direct Manager. As with the subordinate appraisal, if performance is based on facts and evidence then there is no reason why the Manager will not accept the subordinate's feedback.

Key Performance
KEY PERFORMANCE RESULTS - What the organization is achieving in relation to its planned performance. Knowledge Implications Key issues to consider are organizational performance measures, which should be more than just financial. Bottom-line figures are traditionally seen as indicators of success. The emphasis in the knowledge centric organization has shifted to a much wider arena. New indicators are now considered based around, customers, processes, people and use of technology.

Wider issues Whatever the measures, they must go down to the individual level; individuals must be able to gauge how they are performing in the framework of the overall and/or specific strategy. These measures also evolve with time. What is considered important to measure today may not be the case tomorrow. The organizational dynamics, people-contribution, services/products, suppliers, partnerships and customers base will determine what should be measured at a given point in time. Although financial figures provide important indications of performance of the company to, say shareholders, and CEOs are hired and fired based on these indicators, to the individual working on the shop floor,' financial indicators are a source of information only and often they are not able to perceive their own contribution to the overall success nor have any direct contribution. And often they dont have direct responsibility for achieving or managing financial targets/results. Therefore, at certain levels, non-financial performance improvements should be established. People who actually do the work (as opposed to a Manager) have important intimate knowledge; they know competitors and customers very well. They understand processes and practices of their work environment. The key is to tap into the knowledge and allow staff to consider process/service/product improvements. The management task is to listen to the shop floor. As improvements are suggested and implemented, they should be recognized and rewarded accordingly. Managers will also need to consider if these ideas/suggestions may have wider implications and possibly could be adopted in other areas of the company. Some new ideas could also mean new products and services. Each business function within the organization has to be part of any measures introduced. These indicators could be consolidated at the group level as appropriate. However, measures must be marketed with care; the indicators should be used to determine areas of improvement and not to be used in a political game. An example of two business units providing the same client service/product can have completely different performance levels. Allowance must be made for local influences and practices; therefore, it is critical to derive several indicators for each business unit. A set of indicators will provide a wider prospective and each business units will not feel prejudiced by being measured on only one indicator. One of the key hot topics right now is Balanced Scorecards to measure intellectual capital. Many organization have balanced scorecard initiatives in place or are working on one. As stated above, financial measures are not sufficient to gauge performance. Balanced Scorecards devised nowadays address the issues of deriving measures for elements that impacts the companys strategy. In fact, Balanced Scorecards are meant to be designed to put in place the companys strategy and then measure against it. The scorecards will measure at group, sub-group and individual levels. Other key element of performance measures can include better use of patents and maximizing revenues on licensed products

Details of performance measures are discussed in the next section.

Measures
This section provides a framework for self-assessment. The RADAR framework provides an indication of results achieved for each element. However, direct measures will be required in order to form an assessment and the concept of using balanced scorecards is also discussed below to supplement the RADAR.

Balanced Scorecards
As we have mentioned, one of the key topics of today is Balanced Scorecards (BS) which provides an ability to measure intellectual capital and not just financial indicators. As stated above, financial measures are not sufficient to gauge performance and certainly give very little indication of the know-how of the company. BS addresses the issues of deriving measures for elements that impacts the companys strategy. Therefore, BS should be designed so that they aid in measuring a set of indicators which provide an indication of the companys movement in terms of strategy. The scorecards will measure at group, sub group and individual levels. An example of balanced scorecard (edited) is highlighted below, as devised by Michael S. Malone, from an article A New Age. Other scorecards also exist devised by Karl Svieby 1997 and Kaplan & Norton 1996. As can be noted the various indicators are presented for all the main business functions. The list below is by no means the complete set, each business needs to determine their own based on the specific strategy and business drivers. FINANCIAL Total assets ($) Total assets/employee ($) Revenues/total assets (%) Profits/total assets (%) Revenues resulting from new business operations ($) Revenues/employee ($) Profits/employee ($) Revenues from new customers/total revenues (%) Market value ($) Return on net asset value (%) Value added/employee ($) Value added/IT-employees ($) Investments in IT ($) HUMAN Leadership index (#) CUSTOMERS Market share (%) Number of customers (#) Annual sales/customer ($) Customers lost (#) Average duration of customer relationship (#) Average customer size ($) Customer rating (%) Customers/employee (#) Field salespeople (#) Satisfied customer index (%) IT investment/salesperson ($) Support expense/customer ($) RENEWAL & DEVELOPMENT Competence development

Motivation index (#) Empowerment index (#) Number of employees (#) Employee turnover (%) Average employee years of service with company (#) Number of managers (#) Average age of employees (#) Share of employees less than 40 years (%) Time in training (days/year) (#) Number of full-time or permanent employees (#) Annual turnover of full-time permanent employees (#) 20. Percentage of full-time permanent employees (%) Per capita annual cost of training, communication, and support programs ($)

expense/employee ($) Satisfied employee index (#) Marketing expense/customer ($) Share of training hours (%) Share of development hours (%) R&D expense/administrative expense (%) Training expense/employee ($) Training expense/administrative expense (%) Share of employees below age 40 (%) IT expenses on training/IT expense (%) R&D resources/total resources (%) Average customer income ($) Average customer duration with company (months) (#) Training investment/customer ($) New market development investment ($) Ratio of new products (less than 2 years old) to product family (%) R&D invested in basic research (%) R&D invested in product design (%) R&D invested in processes (%) Average age of company patents (#) Patents pending (#)

Company managers with advanced degrees: business (%), science and engineering (%), liberal arts (%) PROCESS Administrative expense/total revenues (%) Cost for administrative error/management revenues (%) Processing time, outpayments (#) Contracts filed without error (#) Function points/employee-month (#) IT expense/employee ($) IT expense/administrative expense (%) Change in IT inventory ($) Corporate quality goal (#) Corporate performance/quality goal (%)

KM implications for measurement and assessment will require a framework of processes that will determine and support the measures. Plus technology is needed to gather and consolidate

the data into performance indicators. The measures will vary from simple to more complex indicators, each of which needs to be developed with a clear business purpose. Be aware that Business Scorecards are not suitable for every business case, and implementation can be a costly exercise. Another consideration is the number of indicators; clearly, more indicators that require tracking and reporting will increase the cost of administration. The purpose is to keep the numbers to a minimum and to remain focused on measuring the effectiveness of the business strategy.

Transformation
Now that we have discussed the main KM implications, the next step is to formulate a movement for change. Developing a transformation plan towards being a knowledgecentric organization is a complex task. Careful preparation and planning are vital to success. The exact nature of the transformation will be dependent on the urgency and the organization type. However, there are some fundamentals that apply. Six steps described by Beer, Eisenstat and Spector (1990) are relevant in the context of KM. The steps are as follows:

Mobilize commitment to change through joint diagnosis of business problems. Develop a shared vision of how to organize and manage change for competitiveness. Foster consensus for the new vision, competence to enact it and cohesion to move it along, Spread revitalization to all functions and departments Institutionalize revitalization through formal policies, systems and structures, Monitor and adjust strategies in response to problems in the revitalization process.

The steps described above are referred to as the bottom-up approach to transformation in the Strategy Safari, H Mintzberg, B Ahlstrand and J Lampel (1998). As often mentioned, people involvement is key in a knowledge organization. The deeper and wider the involvement, the faster the change. It is also recommended that any transformation be in a shape of a program within the organization. Do not create a KM department; it will act only as another silo. Everyone is responsible for knowledge and sharing it, not just a new formed KM department. Developing a KM program will assist the organization through the transformation process. Plus the transformation should be seen as a change/benefit for the staff and not something imposed from the executive. Buy-in and commitment will come through the staff themselves developing and implementing the transformation for change.

onclusions
Knowledge implications applied to the Excellence model are applicable to all types of organizations. Some fundamentals are addressed in the document, some will be inherent in current practices while others will be new. Simple messages that could be emphasized are that cultural and process issues are critical for KM success. Implementing an Intranet, although important in itself, is not sufficient. Often cries are heard, My intranet does not get

used! Why? Because it was not developed in the context of business objectives or staff needs. Most likely, it does not address the way people work and/or the processes that should be implemented to support the Intranet. This may be a simplistic conclusion and the reasons for failure are probably far more complex, but the point being any implementation MUST address people, processes and technology NOT in isolation to each other but holistic. Organizations tend to do the easy aspects first. Implementing technology is relatively simple compared to changing the whole organizational culture(s). This is not to say that technology plays a second fiddle; no, certainly not. Technical issues can be very complex and problematic to resolve and this needs to be understood before even considering implementation issues. However, full benefits and return on investment will only be realized when People, Process and Technology issues are addressed. However, be cautious; Think big but start small, being the right attitude to adopt. Pilots and proof concepts are needed to demonstrate and get buy-in. Grand campaigns are fine as far as awareness is concerned but not when it come to implementation.KM by definition is complex and dynamic; it requires great attention to detail, and attention to the dynamics of change. Unexpected changes will occur, education will be slower then anticipated, new working practices will be foreign to many. KM implementation is an art form. However, realistic expectations must be set. Issues like cultural change can and will take a long time to implement but the vision once set should be followed through. Holistic strategy is suggested which will embrace all aspects of the organization towards the transformation into a knowledge-centric organization. The change will be less painless if KM is inherently adopted as part of the business model. It should not be implemented in isolation or as a silo function in the company. Leaders will be pivotal, led by example and develop a strategy such that ALL feel they have contributed. Benefits will be slow but sure. Tap into the intangible assets and empower people to maximize their potential. And, finally, let us return to the question: Why KM? In the end, it all means one thing: arm people with the right information, so they are able to make better judgements, smarter decisions and create environments in which to encourage innovation, in order to be able to provide a high quality service to its customers. All this, by implication, means a KM-centric company is a successful company. If a company does not recognize some of the issues raised, then dont be surprised if one day a competitor sails passed carrying your client base. KM is not a fad; we have been doing it for years, but now the focus has changed. Knowledge is a valuable asset and one needs to use to gain that edge. Even if the company does a lot to change cultures and foster knowledge sharing, in the end it comes down to one thing: unless the knowledge is put into action, there is no reward, only pain.

Acknowledgements
I would like express my sincere thanks to Karen Speerstra for her editorial help and guidance whilst developing this document. My thanks also goes to the EFQM organization for the permission to use some of their material.

References
Knowledge Mapping, A Practical Overview, Denham Grey, March 1999,

Intangible Revenues, Dr Karl-Erik Sveiby, August 1998

Leverage your Knowledge, Dr. Karl-Erik Sveiby 2000-01-27 Working Knowledge, T Davenport and L Prusak, Strategic Safari, H Mintzberg, B Ahlstrand and J Lampel (1998) If Only We Knew What We Know, C ODell and C. Grayson JR (1998) Managing Knowledge Workers, F H

Some Principles of Knowledge Management

More than ever, companies are realizing that their real advantage lies in what they know. But how do you manage knowledge?
By Thomas H. Davenport

We do not know one millionth of one percent about anything, said Thomas Alva Edison who probably wouldnt have appreciated Professor Davenports observation that the most valuable asset companies have is the knowledge of their employees. More than ever, companies are realizing that their real advantage lies in what they know. But how do you manage knowledge? Enunciating 10 principles of knowledge management, Professor Davenport establishes a framework which senior company executives can use to govern their approach to knowledge. He also uses the Hewlett-Packard Company, in an accompanying case study, to illustrate how rapidly the knowledge management concept can spread throughout a company even without a top-down mandate. Systems such as the World Wide Web and Lotus Notes are giving managers real opportunities to capture and distribute knowledge. Hewlett-Packards Product Processes Organization (P.P.O.), for example, has formed a Knowledge Management Group and is developing a Web-based knowledge management system called Knowledge Links. The group intends to develop a variety of services with applications not only for P.P.O. but for Hewlett-Packard as a whole. Professor Davenport warns that managing knowledge in organizations will lead to new problems and issues, even resistance by what he calls an 'anti-intellectual' orientation in the United States. But he points out that as free natural resources and cheap labor are exhausted, the last untapped source of commercial advantage is the knowledge of people in organizations.

Many companies are beginning to understand that the knowledge of their employees is their most valuable asset. Even so, few have actually begun to actively manage that asset on a broad scale. Thus far, they have addressed the issue at a philosophical or a technological level, with little discussion about how knowledge can be used more effectively on a daily basis. For the past two years, I have been working with organizations in this area. The first order of business has been to establish the framework a company will use to govern its approach to knowledge. From that base can flow detailed approaches and plans. Even at this early stage of knowledge management, enough lessons have been learned to offer some basic rules of thumb. What follows then are 10 principles of knowledge management, along with a sense of their real-world implications. 1. Knowledge management is expensive (but so is stupidity!) Knowledge is an asset, but its effective management requires the investment of other assets, namely money and labor. Employees need to be trained in the ways of capturing, packaging and categorizing knowledge. And they will need the right hardware and software tools to do that. While few companies have calculated the cost of knowledge management, there are some quantified estimates. Robert Buckman of Buckman Laboratories estimates that his firm spends 3.5 percent of its revenues on knowledge management. McKinsey & Company has long had an objective of spending 10 percent of its revenues on developing and managing intellectual capital. But while knowledge management is expensive, the obvious retort is that not managing knowledge is even more so. What is the cost of ignorance and stupidity? How much does it cost an organization to forget what key employees know, to be unable to answer customer questions quickly or at all, or to make poor decisions based on faulty knowledge? Just as organizations concerned about the value of quality figured out the cost of poor quality products and services, companies trying to assess the worth of knowledge can attempt to measure the cost of not knowing. Of course, such an assessment could lead to political problems within the organization, but that is the province of another principle. 2. Effective management of knowledge requires hybrid solutions involving both people and technology. "Computers that think are almost here," a Business Week article recently announced, adding that "the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence--human-like reasoning--is within reach." Such a prediction may produce a feeling of dj vu for managers and professionals, who have been hearing about machine-based knowledge since the 1950's. The fact is that companies wishing to effectively manage knowledge still need a heavy dose of human labor. We need to construct a hybrid environment that uses humans and machines. People may be expensive and cantankerous, but they are quite accomplished at certain knowledge skills. When we seek to understand knowledge, to interpret it within a broader context, to combine it with other types of information or to synthesize various unstructured forms of knowledge, humans are the recommended tool. Computers and communications systems, on the other hand, are good at capturing, transforming and distributing highly structured knowledge that changes rapidly. They are increasingly useful--though still a bit awkward--at

performing these tasks on less structured textual and visual material. But it remains the case that most people do not turn to computers when they want a rich picture of what is going on in a particular knowledge domain. Given this mixture of skills, we need to construct hybrid environments for knowledge management that use humans and machines in complementary ways. Just as sophisticated manufacturers have realized that "lights out" factories are not necessarily the most effective or flexible, it is clear that knowledge factories should offer not only the bits and bytes of a computer but also someone to talk to. For example, when compiling computerized databases of organizational knowledge, it makes sense to include "pointers to people." That is what the G.M. Hughes Electronics Corporation did, capturing its best-process reengineering practices in a database that combined human and computerized knowledge. Each entry was submitted to an editor, who screened it for usefulness and relevance. Entries recorded just enough about the practice to pique the reader's interest, and included the name and phone number of a person who could describe it in detail. Use of the database is solid and growing. 3. Knowledge management is highly political. It is no secret that "knowledge is power," and thus it should not surprise anyone that knowledge management is a highly political undertaking. If knowledge is associated with power, money and success, then it is also associated with lobbying, intrigue and backroom deals. If politics plays no part in a knowledge management initiative, it is a safe bet that the organization perceives nothing of value is at issue. What does knowledge politics mean for effective knowledge management? Some managers will argue that politics only gets in the way. But astute managers will acknowledge the value of politics and cultivate its use, lobbying on behalf of knowledge. They will broker deals between those who have knowledge and those who use it. They will cultivate influential "opinion leaders" as early adopters of knowledge management approaches. At the highest level, they will try to shape the governance of knowledge to better utilize it across the organization. 4. Knowledge management requires knowledge managers. Key business resources like labor and capital have substantial organizational functions devoted to their management. Knowledge will not be well-managed until some group within a company has clear responsibility for the job. Among the tasks that such a group might perform are collecting and categorizing knowledge, establishing a knowledge-oriented technology infrastructure and monitoring the use of knowledge. The goal should be to facilitate the creation, distribution and use of knowledge by others. Several professional services firms already have knowledge management roles in place. Booz-Allen & Hamilton, McKinsey, Andersen Consulting, Ernst & Young, Price Waterhouse and A.T. Kearney all have chief knowledge officers. Buckman Laboratories reoriented its information systems organization to become managers of knowledge, and it now calls the group the knowledge transfer department. The Hewlett-Packard Company created one knowledge management group within its corporate products and processes organization, and another within its computer systems marketing group. (See the article at the end of this piece.)

A knowledge management function could inspire resentment and concern within the organization if it seeks to collect and control all knowledge. The goal should merely be to facilitate the creation, distribution and use of knowledge by others. Furthermore, the knowledge managers themselves should not imply by their words or actions that they are more "knowledgeable" than anyone else. In fact, one knowledge manager at Hewlett-Packard argues that the most important qualification for such a role is being "egoless." 5. Knowledge management benefits more from maps than models, more from markets than hierarchies. It is tempting when managing knowledge to create a hierarchical model or architecture, similar to the Encyclopedia Britannica's Propaedia, that would govern collection and categorization. But most organizations are better off letting the knowledge market work, and simply providing and mapping the knowledge that its consumers seem to want. The dispersal of knowledge as described in a map may be illogical, but is still more helpful to a user than a hypothetical knowledge model that is best understood by its creators, and rarely fully implemented. Mapping organizational knowledge is the single activity most likely to yield better access. Knowledge managers can learn from the experience of data managers, whose complex models of how data would be structured in the future were seldom realized. Companies rarely created maps of the data, so they never had any guides to where the information was in the present. Letting the market work means that knowledge managers try to make knowledge as attractive and accessible as possible, and then observe what knowledge gets requested using what specific terms. For example, at Teltech, a Minneapolis company that manages a knowledge network of external experts, clients who call for referrals are unlikely to always use the same terms as the experts use in describing their work. The function of connecting client needs to available expertise is performed by Teltech's online search and retrieval system. Called the Knowledgescope, the system is effectively a map or thesaurus of more than 30,000 technical terms. It is maintained by several full-time knowledge engineers, who add 500 to 1,200 new concepts per month to the database while removing outdated ones. Each technical term has a preferred usage and several possible synonyms. Teltech's goal is to have the terms in the database that are used by clients. Therefore, each day the knowledge engineers receive a list of terms sought unsuccessfully in the database by Teltech's knowledge analysts or by clients accessing the database directly. Many of the unsuccessful searches are misspellings, but valid misses are added to the database. Until recently, Teltech's approach to structuring knowledge had been hierarchical, rather than thesaurus-based. Its previous database was called the Tech Tree and it had several key knowledge branches, including scientific/technical, medical and chemical. However, both the clients and the knowledge analysts found it difficult to navigate through the tree, and new terms tended to be added at inappropriate places. Teltech has found the thesaurus approach to be much more satisfactory. It has mapped the knowledge world rather than modeled it. 6. Sharing and using knowledge are often unnatural acts. If my knowledge is a valuable resource, why should I share it? If my job is to create knowledge, why should I put my job at risk by using your knowledge instead of mine?

We sometimes act surprised when knowledge is not shared or used, but we would be better off assuming that the natural tendency is to hoard our own knowledge and look suspiciously on knowledge that comes from others. To enter our knowledge into a system and to seek out knowledge from others is not only threatening, but also requires much effort -- so we have to be highly motivated to undertake such work. If the knowledge manager adopted this principle, we would not assume that the installation of Lotus Notes will lead to widespread sharing, or that making information available will lead to its use. We would realize that sharing and usage have to be motivated through time-honored techniques--performance evaluation, compensation, example. Some companies are beginning to employ those techniques. The Lotus Development Corporation, now a division of I.B.M., devotes 25 percent of the total performance evaluation of its customer support workers to knowledge sharing. Buckman Laboratories recognizes its 100 top knowledge sharers with an annual conference at a resort. ABB ASEA Brown Boveri Ltd., the Swiss-Swedish conglomerate, evaluates managers not only on the results of their decisions, but also on the knowledge and information applied in the decision-making process. 7. Knowledge management means improving knowledge work processes. It is important to address and improve the generic knowledge management process, but knowledge is generated, used and shared intensively through a few specific work processes. While the details vary by company and industry, these include market research and product design and development, and even more transactional processes like order configuration and pricing. If real improvements are to be made in knowledge management, gains must occur in these key business processes. Knowledge work processes are only rarely addressed in process improvement initiatives. Two colleagues and I recently carried out research involving more than 25 companies that had attempted to improve knowledge work processes. We found processes oriented to creating (e.g., research), packaging (publishing) and applying (system development) knowledge. In general, the most effective improvement approaches struck a middle ground between top-down "re-engineering" of the process and bottom-up design by autonomous knowledge workers. Creative knowledge work required less top-down intervention, and knowledge application processes a bit more. However, surveys of companies on their re-engineering efforts have confirmed that knowledge work processes of any type are only rarely addressed in process improvement initiatives. 8. Access to knowledge is only the beginning. If simple access to knowledge were sufficient, then there would be long lines outside the nation's libraries. Access is important, but successful knowledge management also requires attention and engagement. It has been said that attention is the currency of the information age. More active involvement with knowledge can be achieved through summarizing and reporting it to others, through role-playing and games based on usage of the knowledge and through close interaction with providers. This is particularly important when the knowledge to be received is tacit, as Ikujiro Nonaka has long noted.

Some companies have already begun to help their managers and employees become more engaged with knowledge. Jane Linder, an information (and market research and strategic planning) manager for a division of the Polaroid Corporation, worked with a supportive division president to create a "war games" exercise for managers and professionals. Participants digested market research and then played roles as competitors or as Polaroid in making sales presentations to customers. The marketing-oriented exercises were a big success, and now Polaroid is assessing the use of engagement approaches for other types of knowledge. Toyota and Nissan have both sent car designers to the United States to receive tacit knowledge by fraternizing with particular customer segments. 9. Knowledge management never ends. Managers may feel that if they could only get their organization's knowledge under control, their work would be done. However, the tasks of knowledge management are never-ending. Like human resource management or financial management, there is never a time when knowledge has been fully managed. One reason is that the categories of required knowledge are always changing. New technologies, management approaches, regulatory issues and customer concerns are always emerging. Companies change their strategies, organizational structures and product and service emphases. New managers and professionals have new needs for knowledge. This rapid change in knowledge environments means that companies should not spend considerable amounts of time in mapping or modeling a particular environment. By the time they finished, the environment would no longer exist. Instead, descriptions of environments should be "quick and dirty," and only as extensive as usage warrants. 10. Knowledge management requires a knowledge contract. It is not clear in most organizations who owns or has usage rights to employee knowledge. Is the knowledge of employees owned or rented? Is all of the knowledge in employee heads the property of the employer? How about the knowledge in file cabinets or computer disk drives? What about the knowledge of consultants while they are consulting? Outsourced employees? Few companies have policies to deal with these issues. Many organizations have held that employee knowledge--at least that developed between 9 and 5--is the property of the corporation. However, several societal changes make such an approach problematic. Employees are moving more often to new jobs and new organizations; the distinction between work life and home life is more ephemeral, and there are more contingent workers. In any case, few companies have done a good job of extracting and documenting the knowledge of employees. If knowledge is really becoming a more valued resource in organizations, we can expect to see more attention to the legalities of knowledge management. Perhaps the greatest problem with increased knowledge management is the increased population of lawyers it will engender. Intellectual property law is already the fastest-growing legal field, and it will only grow faster