Monday, March 18, 2002

 
Posted by Kate 7:14 PM
Manage Knowledge Before It Manages You. Linda graciously left me an opening to add more material about knowledge management. The theme of this material is making the business case, and a good starting point is Knowledge Management Business Case Exploration. If you are considering whether or not knowledge management is worth the effort and resources, the paper titled Risks of No Knowledge Management may help you decide. The paper starts with an attention-grabbing sentence:

Three recent failures in risk management-at Barings Bank, Kidder Peabody, and Metallgesellschaft Refining & Marketing-point to a similar underlying cause: the failure of the firms to manage their organizational knowledge.

It goes on to give some compelling reasons in favor of knowledge management.

As you go deeper into the analysis and decision process you'll find the paper on knowledge management implementation issues to be useful. You'll also find invaluable information in The Quest for a Model of Knowledge Management Evaluation. This paper's abstract illustrates why the information it contains is an important part of the decision making process:

This paper reviews the features of successful knowledge management systems, trying to reveal the general factors and the characteristics of such systems. The aim is to enable managers to distinguish between traditional IT systems labeled KM systems, and real knowledge management systems, enabling companies to use their specific knowledge in order to gain competitive advantage. The list of general characteristics can be used either for examining existing knowledge management systems at different stages of their lifecycle, or as guidelines for planning and starting the design of such a system.

In other words, approach knowledge management from a business perspective, not from the IT view.

A more advanced look at knowledge management is given in Knowledge Reuse, subtitled, The Missing Focus in Knowledge Management: Results of a Case Analysis at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It's a well written case study with information that you can effectively use as you plan your knowledge management strategy.

La Vita Dolce Per Tutti. Rough translation: the sweet life for all. It's a beautiful day in Irvine, California and I am going to take a break and enjoy it. Ciao.