Knowledge Management

Overview

Knowledge management, elearning, and performance support are key components of successful organizations in an information economy. Knowledge management is concerned with "who knows what", elearning with "who needs to know what", and performance support with "who needs to know what, right NOW!".

Over the last year, the term knowledge management has become increasingly popular...but, like many concepts, corporations are in danger of embracing it without seeing how it links to other corporate strategies. KM may be a very effective way for organizations to disseminate information. This is especially valuable for organizations that are geographically diverse.

Resources

Grassroots KM through Blogging
An excellent article detailing the role of story telling in sharing knowledge with others.

Knowledge Management - Internet Time Group
"Knowledge management is a high-fallutin' buzz phrase for creating and sharing know-how. A hot item circa 1998, overuse has watered down KM's popularity as a category. To vendors, KM became "whatever I want to sell you," be it document-tracking or warehousing good ideas or building web pages or reinforcing innovation or focusing on intellectual capital."

Some Principles of Knowledge Management
"Many companies are beginning to feel that the knowledge of their employees is their most valuable asset. They may be right, but few firms have actually begun to actively manage their knowledge assets on a broad scale. Knowledge management has thus far been addressed at either a philosophical or a technological level, with little pragmatic discussion on how knowledge can be managed and used more effectively on a daily basis. At this early stage of knowledge management in business, the most appropriate form of dialogue is not detailed tactics, but rather high-level principles. When an organization decides what principles it agrees upon with respect to knowledge management, it can then create detailed approaches and plans based upon the principles."

KM in Education
" ISKME is a educational think tank committed to helping schools and colleges identify, distill, and harness information for institutional and student success."

KMbook
"Having spent last 20 years or so in the design of technology-based systems, I believe that technology is the easier part of the knowledge management equation... or any management equation. The more challenging parts are keeping technology, as well as the business processes and business models built upon it, in sync with the radically changing business environment and the evolving psyche of modern organizations and modern knowledge workers."

KM Wiki
Great listing of KM blogs, newsletters, associations, etc.

Tool Box
Good resource list of KM tools.

KM News
Extensive listing of tools and information relating to KM.

Knowledge Management Primer
" Welcome to the Knowledge Management Primer - 14 modular sections designed as your introduction to this dynamic management field."

Destination KM
Resource-rich KM site.

KM Resource Center
"On this site you'll find a comprehensive collection of KM resources, each of them reviewed and briefly described to help you quickly locate what you're looking for."

KM Portal
Good resources...but the design and navigation could do with some work!

The Human Element - KM's Secret Ingredient
"Capturing individual knowledge so that it can be understood and applied by an entire organization is a key objective of most knowledge management (KM) initiatives. As a result, many companies employ a specific process or technology to index and disseminate large quantities of knowledge to an audience. To accomplish this, they implement a logical-order category scheme that enables more effective search functionality. "

KM Standards
"The scope is to develop and maintain consensus standards for knowledge economics-based knowledge management and knowledge technology. Actions needed to reaffrim, revise, or withdraw a standard using these procedures shall be completed within 5 years from the original standard approval date."

KBnow
"Business is all about knowledge and expertise. But too much of that information often remains locked away in the heads of a few key team members. The same questions are asked again and again; simple vacations wreak havoc on your operations. You need a corporate memory – a knowledgebase that everyone can turn to to get the answers they need. You need something that your people will use!"

KM Vendors

Autonomy
"Virtually every enterprise and organization is becoming increasingly dependant on successfully managing and processing a mountain of digital unstructured information, i.e. human-friendly information such as text, Web pages, e-mails, voice, documents, images or video and semi structured information such as XML. The disparate forms, formats, languages, locations, subjects and quantities in which this information presents itself are significant barriers to these objectives."

Black Pearl
"Our flexible solutions allow companies to be more responsive to change, while retaining the integrity of each organization's unique way of doing business. Knowledge Broker, our flagship product, transforms knowledge that is encapsulated in data and business practices into real-time, actionable information tailored for corporate decision-makers."

Correlate
"Correlate K-Map enables users to "KnowledgeMap" their projects, employee communications, customer information, best practices, sales kits, financial reports and more. Using visual Correlate K-Maps, everyone is quickly oriented and up-to-speed."

Net Perceptions
"Net Perceptions® provides powerful solutions, built around our proven predictive analytics, that convert product, customer and transaction data into actionable intelligence."

Sopheon
"Sopheon is a leading international provider of software and services that enable companies to access internal and external information more efficiently and use it to innovate and to improve key business processes.
We integrate "smart" technology with human expertise to help organizations access information more efficiently and use it to innovate and improve business results."

Tacit
"Tacit is the leading provider of Expertise Infrastructure Software. Tacit’s award-winning software automatically discovers the activity and expertise of the people in an organization and connects them in real time to improve enterprise coordination and productivity."

Tomeye
Some good information on communities of practice (CoPs) and knowledge management..."The company's flagship product, Tomoye Simplify(tm), draws the best from many different types of tools - knowledge management, content management, community, and collaboration - combining all the tools and features you need to support a Community of Practice."

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