You are on page 1of 8

Knowledge Management Forecasting

For any knowledge management forecasting exercise to be at least reasonable in its


overall analysis one needs to understand the history of knowledge management, where it
is today and where it might be tomorrow given the most likely business environment in
the medium-term future. In other words, an accurate as-is picture of knowledge
management needs to be generated, the to-be image needs to be conceptualized and then
a clearly articulated transition strategy from the as-is state to the to-be state is to be put
forth.

The knowledge management v1.0 era was often defined by its emphasis on the creation
of containers of knowledge that were supposed to store the employees’ explicit
knowledge into tacit knowledge form. The early approaches to knowledge management
leaned heavily toward top-down, organizational-wide, monolithic knowledge
management guidelines with a heavy emphasis on technology as a way of connecting
people-to-content. Without a holistic approach to implementing a knowledge
management strategy that would include creating the necessary change in corporate
culture, the efforts made on creating the containers of knowledge failed, as the new
digital libraries were void of relevant content, were awkward to use and as a result usage
rates were low. This failure of implementation has led to the unsatisfied user syndrome in
the context of first (1st) generation knowledge management as the experience for many
users has been no more than that of saving and/or retrieving information and asking
and/or answering questions. As a result, the perceptions built around those early
knowledge management initiatives were that they were yet another attempt to automate
knowledge capture and reuse, that they were complex, costly, difficult to use and overly
bureaucratic. Most importantly they were not helping employees make their jobs any
easier nor better. Overall most companies did a poor job of capitalizing on the wealth of
expertise scattered across their organizations due to their over-reliance on centralized
knowledge management systems and technologies. What was not fully understood was
that such systems were really only good at distributing explicit knowledge, the kind that
could be captured and codified for general use. They were not very good at transferring
tacit knowledge, the kind needed to generate new insights and creative ways of tackling
business problems and opportunities.

The knowledge management v2.0 era learned from previous experiences and its
emphasis swung to focus on people and ways of identifying employees holding expert
knowledge and connecting people-to-people. The knowledge management
implementation approach became increasingly holistic moving beyond technological
tools to include the necessary changes in the other dimensions of operational performance
such as people, processes, governance and corporate culture. Bottom-up, grassroots
adoption of knowledge management initiatives led to greater rollout success as it helped
build trust among the participants and encouraged constructive debate on how best to
integrate knowledge management in daily tasks such that employees would find
relevancy and meaning in the knowledge management activities they would undertake.
From an enabler perspective, technology and the emergence of the web 2.0, has

1|Page
facilitated the progress of knowledge management due to its inherent characteristics to
facilitate social computing, collaboration and collective intelligence. Initiatives such as
Communities of Practice (CoPs), that refer to ‘the process of social learning that occurs
and shared socio-cultural practices that emerge and evolve when people who have
common goals interact as they strive towards those goals’1, started being used in the
context of increasingly robust knowledge management strategies. These collaboration
and collective intelligence-oriented strategies were integrated with business strategies and
backed by meaningful and relevant knowledge management metrics to help measure and
assess the overall effectiveness of the knowledge management implementation.
Employees were encouraged and empowered to share knowledge freely across their
organization while remaining committed to their individual business unit’s performance.
The payoffs of this new step on the knowledge management evolutionary ladder were
significant and included:
• Increased efficiency achieved by transferring best practices, including cost
reductions due to the reuse of solutions previously developed.
• Improved quality of decision making companywide.
• Helped increase revenues through shared expertise.
• Developed new business opportunities through the cross-pollination of ideas.
• Made bold strategic moves possible by delivering a well-coordinated
implementation.

Looking to the future, knowledge management v3.0 needs to build on the success and
learn from the failures of previous knowledge management eras to help businesses grow
sustainably in tomorrow’s business environment. While no two businesses are alike and
no one can predict the business environment of the future, it is safe to assume that there
will always be a need for the four drivers of business success that knowledge
management has been recognized to enable:
• Innovation, allowing for the creation of new value through innovative products or
services.
• Knowledge about customers, allowing for the enhancement of the value proposition
of existing products or services by custom tailoring the offerings to the customers’
needs.
• Knowledge about business processes, allowing for lean operations focused on
reducing input consumption, avoiding costs and promoting reuse of production
factors.
• Knowledge about the overall business environment, allowing for the reduction of
operational uncertainty and increased response speed to market and demand
fluctuations.

Ultimately, the evolution of knowledge management will be shaped by (1) the business
needs of the future, (2) the technology that would be available and (3) other influencing
factors such as the increased information literacy of younger professionals entering the
workforce. Given these premises, let us consider three specific challenges an organization

1
Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning as a social system, http://www.co-i-
l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml, December 6th 2008

2|Page
is likely to face in the future and how knowledge management could be used a solution to
these likely emerging business realities.

Open innovation
As Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and author of the international
bestselling book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
mentioned in a Newsweek special, ‘working smarter and smarter rather than working
cheaper and harder, is really the only strategy for a developed society…’2 Arguably,
‘working smarter and smarter’ implies moving beyond an efficient and effective use of
inputs to generate a product or a service, to include the creation of an environment that
fosters the emergence of innovative new products and services on a sustainable basis. In
today’s globalized business environment, where product and service development have
become decentralized in search of lower cost opportunities, the pace of innovation too
rapid, the product lifecycles ever shorter, and the consumer increasingly educated and
demanding of highly customized solutions, it has become difficult for even the largest
companies to hold all the pieces of their product or service offering within their own
organizational boundaries. As a quick literature review3, 4 reveals, one of the top
strategies used by large multinationals such as Procter & Gamble, Goldcorp Inc. and IBM
for accelerating the pace of innovation is to increase collaboration with external research
partners, and even competitors, in order to benefit from increased R&D synergies. The
results of reinventing the way an organization innovates can be dramatic. As IBM has
proven, the company managed to pool in excess of $1 billion in funding and gain access
to qualified brainpower that included more than 250 scientists and engineers5 by tapping
into a network of research partners. Open Innovation, the concept behind these emerging
innovation networks, holds that in a world of widely distributed knowledge, companies
cannot afford to rely solely on their own research, but should instead collaborate and buy
or license inventions (i.e. patents) from other organizations. In this context, knowledge
management becomes a major enabler of the Open Innovation process by critically
facilitating the diffusion of knowledge and encouraging collaboration through sharing
and learning across organizational boundaries.

Currently emerging technological trends such as open technologies (i.e. open APIs and
protocols, open data formats, open-source software platforms and open data) and
videoconferencing capabilities through telepresence, would provide the enablers of a
new evolutionary step in knowledge management. In tomorrow’s digital society, the first
generation knowledge management with its focus on information storage and access will
still be important as wireless networks, information processing capabilities embedded
into everyday environments, and the expanding possibilities for distributed information
storage and processing will guarantee that technological issues will continue being
relevant. Technology, as a critical enabler of knowledge management, would allow for a

2
Thomas Friedman, The Knowledge Revolution, Newsweek, December 2005, pg. 12
3
C.K. Prahalad, M.S. Krishnan, The New Age of Innovation, McGraw Hill, 2008
4
Don Tapscott, Anthony Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Portfolio,
2006
5
Steve Hamm, Radical Collaboration: Lessons from IBM’s innovation factory, Business Week, August
30th 2007, http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2007/id20070830_258824.htm

3|Page
tight, secure and transparent integration between the knowledge repositories of research
network partners, thus promoting sharing and learning and increasing the reach and depth
of resources available to any given member of the research network. The successful
implementation of a knowledge management framework to enable and support open
innovation is a critical step in the value creation process of an organization hoping to
compete in tomorrow’s innovation-based economy.

Information overload
The increased levels of knowledge sharing as well as the need to potentially integrate
new businesses acquired through mergers, acquisitions or organic growth into one
combined learning organization, could lead to knowledge overload. Empirical evidence
suggests that in cases where increasing amounts of redundant knowledge is accumulated,
the situation can lead to critical knowledge becoming engulfed by less relevant
information and preventing successful retrieval of actionable knowledge when necessary.

Beside current knowledge management practices that could be used to identify, assess
and safeguard valuable organizational knowledge, upcoming technologies such as the
semantic web and natural language processing would open the door to new and
exciting possibilities in capturing tacit knowledge, storing it as explicit knowledge and
then allowing knowledge seekers to find the relevant explicit knowledge quickly and
easily. Artificial intelligence-inspired automated processing systems, such as social
filtering, recommendation, and data mining systems will also become increasingly
sophisticated. Multimodal interfaces that handle speech, images, gestures, and text, will
become widely used as it is expected that knowledge-related content will move beyond
the domain of text format. Along with the increased level of information literacy of the
born-on-the-net generation, the combination of the semantic web and natural language
processing will provide an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the
semantics of information and services on the web are defined. This will make it possible
for the web to better understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use
specific web content6. The intent of this added level of definition granularity will be to
make it easier to cut through the information clutter and achieve the critical connection of
people-to-content.

Workforce demographics
The next decade will see major transformations in the makeup of the workforce through
the retirement of babyboomers and the born-on-the-net generation joining the business
world. These demographic challenges and the increased workforce mobility will require
significant work to be done in the way of managing knowledge through an eventual move
towards what Alan Godbout coined as wisdom management.

With much of the babyboomers’ knowledge being tacit, their knowledge is not easily
articulated in a form that is quickly and conveniently retrievable by other knowledge
seekers. It is also likely that the most valuable of that expertise fits the definition of deep
smarts, whereby it represents the potent form of expertise based on firsthand life

6
Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web, Scientific American Magazine, May
17th 2001, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web&print=true

4|Page
experiences that provides insight drawn from tacit knowledge, and is shaped by beliefs
and social forces7. To a large extent, deep smarts are as close as we get to wisdom. They
are based on know-how more than know-what, including the ability to comprehend
complex, interactive relationships and make swift, expert decisions based on system-level
comprehension and also the ability, when necessary, to dive into component parts of that
system and understand the details. Deep smarts may be technical or managerial in nature,
as intelligent people can develop competence within a couple years with deep smarts
being gained only through ten or more years of diverse, active learning experiences.
While learning processes can be replicated, precise outcomes can be identified from tacit
knowledge and codified as explicit knowledge, packaging wisdom is a much more
difficult proposition. The best an organization can do is to create mentorship programs
to try to internalize within more junior employees the bits and pieces gleaned from
observing and collaborating with the experts over a certain period of time.

Retention of critical managerial and technical knowledge is essential for any organization
and with the pending retirement of babyboomers and the coming of age of the born-on-
the-net generation, wisdom management will become increasingly important. Even the
most sophisticated technological tools for documenting best practices or other knowledge
management functions cannot capture and communicate the rich know-how accumulated
over the years through experiential practice. To ensure their future success, organizations
will need to identify experience-based expertise and then design the human development
programs necessary to re-create and thus preserve the organization’s deep smarts.
However, without a solid organizational culture based on sharing, learning and
communicating common values, managing or tapping into wisdom management (or
knowledge management, for that matter) would be a rather impossible and ultimately
futile exercise.

As these previous examples were meant to illustrate, while the future of knowledge
management will depend on (1) the business needs of the future, (2) the technology that
would be available and (3) other influencing factors, valuable lessons learned from
previous knowledge management eras remain highly relevant and need to be followed.
Whatever the approach to knowledge management may be in the future, it is important to
keep in mind the need for a holistic approach to any implementation strategy. As such,
the following variables need to always be carefully considered in on themselves as well
as in relation to each other as more often than not one will influence the other:
• People form the basis of any knowledge management initiative. If the employees do
not actively participate then tacit knowledge does not get captured, the constant
transformation of knowledge and the subsequent improvement in knowledge quality
does not take place and any knowledge management strategy is doomed to failure. It
is thus critically important to build the employees’ trust and to identify the three (3)
types of employees taking part in knowledge management initiatives: the early
adopters (who will likely become the champions), the active opponents (who can be
engaged and valuable feedback be derived from their opposition) and the passive

7
James Heskett, Can an organization’s deep smarts be preserved?, Harvard Business School Working
Knowledge, April 4th 2005, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4742.html

5|Page
resisters (who often times constitute roadblocks to implementation and put
themselves at risk of being let go).
• Process has to be carefully considered in such a way that any knowledge
management initiative is integrated in the daily business processes. Failure to do so
will lead to the perception that knowledge management is yet another task to be
carried out during an already busy workday. This is not the optimal way to launch a
knowledge management project as it leads to resistance to change and an overall
reluctance to share and learn in a collaborative manner.
• Technology is an enabler of knowledge management and can be used as a change
agent to initiate and facilitate the transformation process of an organization. Focusing
too much on the technology aspect at the expense of other critical areas such as
people or corporate culture could easily derail a knowledge management
implementation as technology needs to be supported and given an operating context
in its facilitating role for knowledge management.
• Governance is a critical aspect to establishing a set of procedures and rules that
promote corporate transparency and accountability. As the learning organizations of
the future are rapidly becoming places for learning work-related competencies, the
governance structure will need to provide a new framework that defines the mutual
responsibilities and rights in the work environment. As such it is a critical element to
establishing employee trust and buy-in to any knowledge management initiative.
• Culture is, along with the people factor, the most important element to knowledge
management. The corporate culture defines the organization and permeates all aspects
of its operations and all actions of its employees. The organizational culture becomes
the main enabling factor in taping the various aspects of intellectual capital regardless
of type of knowledge or specific aspect of knowledge management strategy.

In conclusion, while it is quite feasible to predict some of the technological and cultural
developments that will influence the evolution of knowledge management in the future,
such as the emergence of web 3.0, the semantic web and the move towards wisdom
management, to name just a few, the overall evolution of knowledge management is a
much more difficult proposition to forecast. To prepare for the future, one needs to learn
the lessons of the past, to understand the forces that will influence knowledge
management in the future and most importantly to be able to seize on the drivers, the
results and the enablers of knowledge management’s next evolutionary step.

The new way of thinking with regards to the future of knowledge management is that of
peer-to-peer networks in what the organization of labor is concerned; value creation is
generated through value networks of complex, interdependent and dynamic
relationships; information is infinite and unbounded; knowledge is collectively,
collaboratively and organizationally focused; cooperation is the law of success and
change is all there is.8 In the face of all these shifts, change will be the predominant
factor. As such, the next era of knowledge management will require:
1. The capability to manage change and social conflict.

8
Yeona Jang, Ethics, Skills, Governance and Policies, INSY-633, McGill University, November 10th 2008

6|Page
2. Organizational structures that make change possible without excessively
destroying previously accumulated knowledge assets.
3. New institutional frameworks that make productive conflict resolution possible.
It will therefore also require that we better understand the ways in which organizational
learning leads to new practices and business approaches.

Finally, from a practitioner’s perspective, although the rules of the game are changing on
almost every dimension, the bottom line will stay the same. The goal is still to understand
what makes knowledge most valuable to an organization. Then the priority will be to find
a place where using specific knowledge management enablers and strategies will help
employees do their jobs easier and better.

7|Page
Bibliography

Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning as a social system, http://www.co-i-


l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml, December 6th 2008

Thomas Friedman, The Knowledge Revolution, Newsweek, December 2005, pg. 12

C.K. Prahalad, M.S. Krishnan, The New Age of Innovation, McGraw Hill, 2008

Don Tapscott, Anthony Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes


Everything, Portfolio, 2006

Steve Hamm, Radical Collaboration: Lessons from IBM’s innovation factory, Business
Week,
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2007/id20070830_258824.htm,
August 30th 2007

Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web, Scientific American
Magazine, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web&print=true, May 17th
2001

James Heskett, Can an organization’s deep smarts be preserved?, Harvard Business


School Working Knowledge, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4742.html, April 4th 2005

Yeona Jang, Ethics, Skills, Governance and Policies, INSY-633, McGill University,
November 10th 2008

8|Page

You might also like