Is "Knowledge Management" Dead?
From Wikipedia: Knowledge Management (KM) refers to a range of practices used by organisations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness and learning across the organisation.
Ever try to sell a KM solution? It's not easy. While most organizations would like higher knowledge reuse, many corporate executives eye the softer ROI associated with knowledge management with some skepticism. In some ways, customers think of KM initiatives like data warehouses (long project cycles, slow returns). That's changing. As technology pushes forward and enables more contributors within a corporate environment, KM principals become easier to implement. One of the re-branding efforts in the marketplace today is calling for “Knowledge Management 2.0” (in the spirit of Web 2.0). There was an interesting article in CIO Magazine by Scott Spanbauer on Knowledge Management 2.0 (http://www.cio.com/archive/120106/fea_tec.html?action=print). For those invested in KM solutions, it's an interesting read. KM is not dead... but it is re-inventing itself. More employees contributing (via blogs and wikis); better search engines that tie the data together into a single result set; better tools for tagging and connecting data. This is good stuff! Below are a couple of quotes from Scott's article that emphasize these points...
The problem with e-mail... is one of reach: "You may be aware of only some subset of people that may have an interest in what you're working on“. Sharing information via a blog brings those people back into the loop. "You're not determining and limiting who your potential audience may be."
"It can be very difficult to make a pitch to senior management about why knowledge management is important, because it's not real to them," ... Now, just show them blog users engaged in explaining their projects to coworkers.