KM Czar
Quote: "Knowledge management efforts that create significant return on investment (ROI) cannot have a bottom-up focus. This is not to say that popular bottom-up KM concepts such as fostering communities of practice are necessarily detrimental. It's just that they just will not generate significant ROI."
Comment: At first read, I disagreed with this article...cold ROI calculations often overlook the improved capacity of employees to better perform their work...or i improved innovations in an organizations that allow it to meet new challenges.
However, on second read...I agree that organizations need a global focus to truly leverage ROI (the insurance example in the article explains this well). This global focus needs to come from commitment higher up in an organization...i.e. an elearning/KM initiative needs a leader who is in a position to mobilize corporate-wide resources. With that said, the innovate project in need of a leader is one that is developed at a grassroots level. Don't expect innovation from upper management...expect implementation of innovation from them. Innovation in organization always happens in small fringe groups...find the fringe groups and give them room to play.