Jack links to a short article on Getting Full Value from KM (knowledge management). The article tries to break KM down into nice, simple boxes: one for HR (learning knowledge) and the other for IT (storing knowledge). This type of approach is why KM disappoints so often. Learning and storing knowledge are (should) both be functions of use and context (which in itself is almost impossible to achieve). Information without context has limited value (I linked to an article on this last week). Due to the difficulty of attaching context to the piece of information, the process of capturing needs to closely mimic the work tasks occuring at the time the knowledge is captured (i.e. a person should not have to do anything different to share knowledge - it should be a function of the process of working/dialoguing/conversing). Our era of knowledge abundance is making the evaluation of information more important than accessing information. We have the information...we just don't know what it means or what we should do with it (hence the critical need for some type of context).
The extraction of knowledge is equally challenging. Even by attaching a context of use to information, there is no assurance that it will actually be found and interpreted as valuable. We often don't know that we don't know. This is why communities are so important...they provide better digestion of the value of information...and offer insightful dialogue about intended use.