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Knowledge Management
People today are less content to watch, listen and The next wave of knowledge management systems
passively consume information. A new era has will emphasize “know-who” rather than “know-how”
spawned a collective ambition to create and actively or “know-what.” The objective is to identify valuable
engage with all forms of content. As more people and relevant connections for people and let them
are empowered to produce and share photos, music, take action. Connect people who should be
video and writing for personal and business use, connected.
the need to manage all this information has become
a hot issue. Information management is one aspect
of knowledge management.
Information as a River
TechTV’s Catalog of Tomorrow, 2002
Monitoring knowledge flow Can transparency and Database alternatives While centralized databases
privacy coexist? In a networked environment, every- have their place in organizations for the collection
thing we do can be monitored. Many companies of specific, structured information, they are poor
want to use this capability to compile data—what managers of fluid knowledge. New alternatives
information is being shared and by whom—in order are springing up.
to improve workflow. They know the standard org
chart doesn’t necessarily indicate those who most • K-logs—“knowledge logs” or K-logs, is a term
influence decision making and knowledge sharing. coined by John Robb, creator of Userland (a popu-
A current big issue involves encouraging employees lar blog creation site). K-logs are a relatively new
to work transparently. Some examples include: concept with huge possibilities. They potentially
allow anyone in an organization to post material,
• Reality mining – A study by MIT in 2004 found points of view, links, documents, important e-mails
80 percent of work time is spent in spoken conver- and pictures to the corporate intranet, where that
sation, and many pieces of critical information posted content can be searched, browsed and
are transmitted in this unstructured, serendipitous archived. In essence they enable the easy sharing
fashion. How to expand digital data mining of information and knowledge. Robb notes that K-
(monitoring e-mail and IM) to include these casual logs capture the elusive benefits of conversational
face-to-face conversations? MIT says the answer is style, as info can be published just a bit at a time
in a new form of data mining they call reality and is emergent over time.
mining: detecting tone of voice, body language
and vocabulary through wearable sensors. • K-log security will be provided at the individual
level, not managed by the enterprise. In the same
• 3D data mining – In 2003 HP’s Bernardo way that employees determine which hard-copy
Huberman developed Shock, a peer-to-peer documents can be shared with whom, they’ll set
system for harvesting community knowledge up “subscription” access to their K-log categories
inside organizations. They started by studying correspondingly. Each individual’s subscribable,
more than 200,000 internal e-mail logs of 485 personally indexed K-log becomes a surrogate
HP employees. Data, with specifics on who sent for the individual when that person is not
what and when it was sent, was collected from available personally.
the company’s e-mail server. Every person became
a node in the graph. Researchers got a look at
how information flows through online communities
and identified key ringleaders who, like a network
hub, served as a busy intersection for e-mail
traffic. By using 3D visual analysis and zoom
graphs, Huberman and his colleagues revealed
sub-communities that were rapidly sharing
vast quantities of information.
Embedding information Another recent knowledge/ With “know-how” type information, this approach
information management technique involves has often failed. There is tacit knowledge and
“baking” data directly into tools that knowledge explicit knowledge. Often, making tacit knowledge
workers use day to day. explicit is a process fraught with hurdles: Xerox tried
to embed in a new line of copiers “know-how”
• Brigham and Women’s Hospital – Doctors are information for technicians responding in the field
given a patient history, such as allergic reactions, to calls. They hoped that the technicians could be
and prompted to consider new drugs they may not guided by the system, but the system failed. Xerox
have had time to research as they enter an order found that technicians learned from one another
for their patient. This is a fairly new concept for primarily by sharing stories about how they fixed
doctors who often use intuition in decision making other machines. The expert system could not
and do much of their work away from computer replicate the subtleties and nuances exchanged
screens. Nevertheless, the program has been between the techs, often in face-to-face
successful so far. conversations.
Latin America People lack a culture of electronic Southeast Asia The “right” to certain knowledge
communication. E-mail seems to be a one-way depends on age and gender. Only older men with
communication channel; unanswered e-mails a high economic and social status may have the
are common and tend to pile up in inboxes. right to “know” information or possess knowledge.
Responding to e-mail over the phone is quite
common. Communication here seems to be more Korea An effort to develop a public KM system
effective when it is more personal and is tied to failed because one of the barriers was a concern
the tradition within Latin cultures that favors about expressing oneself openly, regardless of issue
oral communication over written. or expertise, in the presence of one’s superiors.
It just wasn’t “proper” for a subordinate to be
Japan Strong cultural barriers can inhibit knowledge expressing himself by voluntarily offering his opinion
sharing. The pattern of sharing information from or expertise in the presence of his superior—
senior to junior, in top-down rather than in flat at least not in public.
structures, remains immutable. The imbedded culture
is such that knowledge comes from above and
is disseminated in a way that is rank-specific.
Key takeaways • The new wave of social software will • Knowing what we know and finding
help employees find who knows what, what we need relies less on technol-
connect with the right people and ogy and more on understanding
effectively share knowledge. Modern human behavior.
knowledge management will foster
rather than replace human interaction.
Language Reality mining Nanomedia Generation C (for Content) SPOT Smart personal
A form of data mining Aggregated and Not really a generation object technology: every-
that captures body summarized information but people of all ages day objects, such as
language, gestures and who embrace the trend clocks, pens, key-chains
vocal intonation as well PAN Personal area net- of content generation and billfolds, that are
as verbal content via work, a term used by the as part of everyday made smarter, more
a wearable sensor inventors of the eVest to experience (posting pho- personalized and more
refer to the networking tos to the web, video- useful through the use
Data smog of several devices worn making, blogging, etc.) of special software
The overabundance of on the body
low-quality information
Hypertasking High-
intensity multitasking
Examples of practice Homeland Security uses Lockheed Martin and DSpace: MIT and HP
Groove Networks. Ofoto use Tacit came up with a web-
Knowledge Systems. based repository for
the more than 10,000
papers and data files
and video clips, etc.,
produced by MIT
researchers each year.
Differences from other
repositories of knowl-
edge: anyone can
access MIT research
for free, and MIT has
partnered with other
schools to share
knowledge.
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, “Balancing Act: “Generation C,” www.trendwatching.com, 4/7/04
How to Capture Knowledge Without Killing It,”
Harvard Business Review, 6/00 Louise Story, “Helping People on the Move Keep
Addresses Up to Date,” New York Times Online,
Thomas Davenport, “Just in Time Delivery Comes to 4/5/04
Knowledge Management,” Harvard Business Review,
7/02 Jeremy Wagstaff, “The Latest Turnoff? Surprise,
It’s E-mail,” Wall Street Journal Online, 3/8/04
“Email Profiling,” www.redherring.com, 3/11/04
Jeremey Wagstaff, “No More Information Overload,”
James Fallows, “Human vs. Computers, Again,” Wall Street Journal Online, 6/25/03
New York Times Online, 4/18/04
David Weinberger, Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A
David Gilmour, “How to Fix Knowledge Unified Theory of the Web, 2002
Management,” Harvard Business Review, 12/03