Definition of Knowledge Management

There are several different, and sometimes quite confusing statements that claim to be a
definition of Knowledge Management' and there are different perspectives on what
Knowledge Management is. For example:

▪ KM is about systems and technologies

▪ KM is about people and learning organisations

▪ KM is about processes, methods and techniques

▪ KM is about managing knowledge assets

▪ KM is a holistic initiative across the entire organisation

▪ KM is not a discipline, as such, and should be an integral part of every knowledge

workers daily responsibilities

What is most important, is for you to have your own definition of Knowledge
Management; what KM is to you and your organisation. What is even more important is
that you and your colleagues have a 'common shared understanding' of what KM means
for you all.

To help you get started, we have included immediately below a few definitions of what
KM means to some organisations. We suggest you consider them, together with any other
definitions you may have, and see if there are any words or phrases that particularly
'resonate' with what you are trying to do. This will help you formulate your own
definition of knowledge management.

At the end of this page, we invite you to share with us all, any definitions you have
discovered and/or formulated. We can then all comment and rate the usefulness of each
definition as we wish. This then provides us, at the bottom of this page, with a list of KM
Definitions, listed in highest rated/ranked order, to help us even further. So please share
your definitions and/or any comments or rating to definitions.

Some well known KM Definitions

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"If only HP knew what it knows it would make three times more profit tomorrow"

Lew Platt, ex CEO Hewlett Packard

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"Knowledge Management is the discipline of enabling individuals, teams and entire
organisations to collectively and systematically create, share and apply knowledge, to
better achieve their objectives"

Ron Young, CEO/CKO Knowledge Associates International

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"Most activities or tasks are not one-time events. Whether its drilling a well or
conducting a transaction at a service station, we do the same things repeatedly. Our
philosophy is fairly simple: every time we do something again, we should do it better
than the last time".

Sir John Steely Browne, BP, Harvard Business Review, 1997.

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"The capabilities by which communities within an organisation capture the knowledge

that is critical to them, constantly improve it and make it available in the most effective
manner to those who need it, so that they can exploit it creatively to add value as a
normal part of their work"

GlaxoSmithKline

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"Knowledge management will deliver outstanding collaboration and partnership working.

It will ensure the region maximizes the value of its information and knowledge assets and
it will help its citizens to use their creativity and skills better, leading to improved
effectiveness and greater innovation".

West Midlands Regional Observatory, UK

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"We recognise that our most important asset is people and their knowledge. We
understand Knowledge Management (KM) as the cultivation of an environment within
which people are willing to share, learn and collaborate together leading to
improvement".

Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP)

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"Knowledge Management ('KM') comprises a range of practices used by organisations to

identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge. It has been an established discipline
since 1995 with a body of university courses and both professional and academic journals
dedicated to it. Many large companies have resources dedicated to Knowledge
Management, often as a part of 'Information Technology' or 'Human Resource
Management' departments. Knowledge Management is a multi-billion dollar world wide
market.

Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organisational objectives such as

improved performance, competitive advantage innovation, lessons learnt transfer (for
example between projects) and the general development of collaborative practices.
Knowledge Management is frequently linked to the idea of the learning organisation
although neither practice encompasses the other. Knowledge Management may be
distinguished from Organisational Learning by a greater focus on specific knowledge
assets and the development and cultivation of the channels through which knowledge
flows"

Wikipedia

What is Knowledge Management?

Although, throughout history, we have always managed our knowledge as best we could,
it was the introduction of some new tools, new methods, new processes and new
strategies that enabled us to think, for the first time, very differently about knowledge,
and how to make some substantial improvements in the way we manage knowledge, as
individuals, teams, organizations, and between organizations. We started to realise that
there are now some radical and fundamentally new ways to accelerate learning and
knowledge processes.

During the early 1990's we started to think more about the knowledge processes of
identifying, creating, storing, sharing and applying knowledge.

KM Definitions

A good way to start to understand what we mean by the term knowledge management is
to consider a popular definition.

"Knowledge Management is the discipline to enable individuals, teams, organizations

and communities, more collectively and systematically capture, store, share and apply
their knowledge, to achieve their objectives."

What is new here?

What is new is that there are now much better ways that we can do this 'more
collectively' and 'more systematically'.

But there are several different approaches to knowledge management, so we recommend

that you :
Click here for a list of popular KM definitions

KM Fundamentals eBook

Read the transcript (slides and text) of a one day KM seminar presented by Ron Young
CEO of Knowledge Associates, together with delegate questions and answer session.

KM Fundamentals ebook

4 Dimensions of Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management is a holistic discipline that asks everybody to take personal

responsibility and accountability for their knowledge. In other words,

'Knowledge Management is for everyone'

To successfully implement knowledge management initiatives, it is necessary to consider,

at least, 4 key dimensions of KM:

1. Personal Knowledge Management

2. Team Knowledge Management

3. Organizational Knowledge Management

4. Inter-Organizational Knowledge Management

You may also be interested in a 5th dimension of knowledge management

Global Knowledge Management

Have you ever sat back for a few moments and thought about what is happening with
knowledge management, collectively, around the world?

Imagine that you wake up one day to discover that you have been appointed as the 'Chief
Knowledge Officer' of Planet Earth!

What would you see?

You would see a rapidly growing internet and World Wide Web. In January 2010 we
were told by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet, that there are, at least 1
trillion public web pages (1,000,000,000,000 pages). The World Wide Web is radically
and fundamentally changing the way we create, share and apply knowledge and
knowledge economics.
You would see a blogsphere of hundreds of millions of bloggers writing and sharing their
ideas, insights, learnings, knowledge, jokes and information.

You would see millions of people engaged in 'massive collaboration' in creating and
improving knowledge on wiki's for millions of other people to access and apply.

You would see hundreds of millions of people sharing pictures and videos in services like
Facebook and Linkedin.

You would see hundreds of millions of people sharing their details and building
relationships in social networks like Facebook.

Millions would be tweeting from mobile phones all over the world about everything.

Hundreds of millions of people would be searching for information they need.

And most, if not all of this, would be freely provided by service providers storing and
organizing your data and information 'in the cloud', that is, hosted and managed on their
own servers 'somwhere'.

This is simply a staggering example of some of the things that are happening across the
planet to accelerate and improve our planetary knowledge.This is global knowledge
management at its greatest.

So, in this section of the website, we will gradually build and share our knowledge about
global knowledge management.

This is a continual work in progress but please come back and visit these pages from time
to time. One thing is for sure. Global knowledge management will develop and grow
exponentially.

We start off by looking at:

Hi,friends this is final inivitation from students knowledge management classes will start
tomorow 9.30 am at AER please utilise opertunity