Chapter 01

Workig Smarter, Not Harder

What is Knowledge Management?
• Each definition of Knowledge Management contains
several integral parts.
• Using accessible knowledge from outside source.
• Embedding and storing knowledge in business processes,
products and services.
• Representing knowledge in databases and documents.
• Promoting knowledge growth through the organization’s
culture and incentives.
• Transferring and sharing knowledge throughout the
organization.
• Assessing the value of knowledge assets and impact on
regular basis.
What is Knowledge Management?
• KM is the process of capturing and making use
of a firm’s collective expertise anywhere in
business- on paper, documents, databases or
people’s head.
• The goal is for an organization to view all its
processes as knowledge process. This includes
knowledge creation, dissemination, upgrade
and application toward organizational survival.
 The Knowledge Organization
• The ideal knowledge organization is one where people
exchange knowledge across functional areas of business
using technology and established processes.
• Figure 1.3.
• Middle layer- KM life cycle- Knowledge creation, knowledge
collection or capture, Knowledge organization, knowledge
refinement, knowledge dissemination.
• Final step- maintain phase which ensures that the
knowledge dissemination is accurate, reliable and based on
company standard.
• Outlier layer is immediate environment of the organization-
technology, culture, supplier and customer intelligence,
competition and leadership.
 What KM is not about?
• Knowledge management is not reengineering
• It is not a discipline
• It is not a philosophic calling
• It is not intellectual capital
• KM is not based on information
• KM is not about data
• Knowledge value chain is not information value chain
• KM is not limited to gathering information from the
company’s domain expert.
• KM is not about knowledge capture.
 Why Knowledge Management
• Create exponential benefits from the knowledge as people
learn from it.
• Has positive impact on business processes.
• Enables the org. to position itself for responding quickly to
customers.
• Builds mutual trust between knowledge workers and
management.
• Builds better sensitivity to brain drain.
• Ensures successful partnering and core competencies with
suppliers, vendors, customers etc.
• Shorten the learning curve, facilitates sharing of knowledge
and quickly enables less trained brokers to achieve
performance level.
• Enhances employee problem solving capacity by providing
access to complied subject, customer references, resources
file available.
 Why Knowledge Management
• Botkin suggests six top attributes of
knowledge products and services.
• Learn
• Improve
• Anticipate
• Interactive
• Remember
• Customize
 Why Knowledge Management
• Companies failed to embed a viable KM operations suffer
from following pitfalls.
• Failing to modify the compensation system to reward
people working as a team.
• Building a huge database that is suppose to cater to the
entire company
• Viewing KM as a technology or human resource area
• Placing too much emphasis on technology
• Introducing KM into the org. via a simple project to
minimize loses.
• Pursuing KM without being ready
• Having poor leadership
 The Drivers
• Technology drivers- Revolution of technology
• Process drivers- Improve work processes,
elimination of mistakes
• Personnel specific driver- create cross
functional team of knowledge workers
• Knowledge related drivers- Knowledge
sharing and knowledge transfer within firm
• Financial drivers- follows law of increasing
returns.
 Key Challenges of KM
• Explaining what KM is- and how it can benefit a
corporate environment
• Evaluating the firm’s core knowledge by
department and by division.
• Learning how knowledge can be captured,
processed and acted upon.
• Addressing the neglected area of collaboration
• Continuing research into KM to improve and
expand its current capabilities
• Learning how to deal with tacit knowledge
 KM Life Cycle
• KM goes through a series of steps, making up an ongoing four steps processes.
• Capturing
– Data entry
– Scanning
– Voice input
– Interviewing
– Brainstorming
• Organizing
– Cataloging
– Indexing
– Filtering
– Linking
– Codifying
• Refining
– Contextualizing
– Collaborating
– Compacting
– Projecting
– mining
• Transfer
– Flow
– Sharing
– Alert
– Push
The End