Why we need knowledge management now
Why do we need to manage knowledge? Ann Macintosh of the Artificial IntelligenceApplications Institute (University of Edinburgh) has written a"Position Paper on Knowledge Asset Management"that identifies some of the specific business factors, including:
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Marketplaces are increasingly competitive and the rate of innovation is rising.
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Reductions in staffing create a need to replace informal knowledge with formal methods.
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Competitive pressures reduce the size of the work force that holds valuable businessknowledge.
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The amount of time available to experience and acquire knowledge has diminished.
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Early retirements and increasing mobility of the work force lead to loss of knowledge.
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There is a need to manage increasing complexity as small operating companies are trans-national sourcing operations.
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Changes in strategic direction may result in the loss of knowledge in a specific area.To these paraphrases of Ms. Macintosh’s observations we would add:
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Most of our work is information based.
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Organizations compete on the basis of knowledge.
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Products and services are increasingly complex, endowing them with a significantinformation component.
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The need for life-long learning is an inescapable reality.In brief, knowledge and information have become the medium in which business problemsoccur. As a result, managing knowledge represents the primary opportunity for achievingsubstantial savings, significant improvements in human performance, and competitive advantage.It’s not just a Fortune 500 business problem. Small companies need formal approaches toknowledge management even more, because they don’t have the market leverage, inertia, andresources that big companies do. They have to be much more flexible, more responsive, andmore "right" (make better decisions) — because even small mistakes can be fatal to them.
Emerging Perspectives
Yes, knowledge management is the hottest subject of the day. The question is: what is thisactivity called knowledge management, and why is it so important to each and every one of us?The following writings, articles, and links offer some emerging perspectives in response to thesequestions. As you read on, you can determine whether it all makes any sense or not.Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of practicesused in an organization toidentify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of insightsandexperiences. Such
insights and experiences compriseknowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded inorganizationalprocessesor practice. An establisheddisciplinesince 1991 KM includes courses
taught in the fields of business administration,information systems,management, and library
andinformation sciences. More recently, other fields, to include those focused on information2
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