1. Introducing Knowledge Management
Topic 1
Introducing Knowledge Management

2. Introduction I have a box that's about 3' wide, 3' deep, and 6' high.
It's a very heavy box.
The box had a door on it.
There is a handle on the door.
When you open the door you find it's cold inside the box.
People usually keep food in this box.
There's a smaller compartment inside the box with ice and frozen food in it.
When you open the door of the box a light comes on.
The box is usually found in the kitchen in a house.
This box has a tendency to collect stuff on top of it.
People don't often move this box often but when they do there's usually lots of dust under it.

3. What is Knowledge? a clear and certain perception of something
understanding
learning
all that has been perceived or grasped by the mind
practical experience and skill
organized information applicable to problem solving
a collection of specialized facts, procedures and judgment rules.

4. Data, Information and Knowledge
refers to isolated facts such as individual measurements.
No meaning on their own
Do not signify anything
Useless unless placed in some sort of context.
Examples: 10,1.6,ahmad,kamil,green etc

5. Data, Information and Knowledge
Consist of symbols such as text or numbers, with some meaning associated with the symbols.
Thus, has some use or value
Examples: 10ºC, 1.6m, Ahmad Kamil, the apple is green

6. Data, Information and Knowledge
Consists of symbols, the relationships between them and rules or procedures for manipulating them
Adds context to the information, providing greater meaning and therefore much greater use and value
Dynamic and changes with time
Examples: If the temperature is 10ºC it feels cold

7. Data, Information & Knowledge

8. Knowledge Explicit knowledge Objective, rational, technical
Policies, goals, strategies, papers, reports
Codified
Leaky knowledge
Tacit knowledge
Subjective, cognitive, experiential learning
Highly personalized
Difficult to formalize
Sticky knowledge

9. Knowledge Management
KM is a process that helps organizations identify, select, organize, disseminate, and transfer important information and expertise that are part of the organization’s memory.
KM is the process of systematically and actively managing and leveraging stores of knowledge in an organization

10. Knowledge Management
Systematic and active management of ideas, information, and knowledge residing within organization’s employees
Knowledge management systems
Use of technologies to manage knowledge
Used with turnover, change, downsizing
Provide consistent levels of service

11. Organizational Learning
Learning organization
Ability to learn from past
To improve, organization must learn
Issues
Meaning, management, measurement
Activities
Problem-solving, experimentation, learning from past, learning from acknowledged best practices, transfer of knowledge within organization
Must have organizational memory, way to save and share it
Organizational learning
Develop new knowledge
Corporate memory critical
Organizational culture
Pattern of shared basic assumptions

12. Why Knowledge Management?
Organizations are realizing how important it is to "know what they know" and be able to make maximum use of the knowledge.
Preventing “reinvent the wheel” many times.

13. Why Knowledge Management?
Thus, organizations need to know:
what their knowledge assets are;
how to manage and make use of these assets to get maximum return.
KM can improve organization efficiency by providing framework, tools and techniques to reuse captured intellectual assets.

14. Why Knowledge Management?
“We have four people in Boston who know how to solve this problem. How can we get them to help our team in Korea?”
"People are leaving the company with a lifetime's experience. How can we capture and re-use that?"
"We had a team that did a successful proposal for aerospace five years ago. Why did they make the decisions they did? How did they deal with the customer? What made the team tick?"

15. Why Knowledge Management?
"How do we start learning from our experiences and help our people stop repeating others' mistakes?"
"We're involved in an exciting project with four other companies. How can we all learn how these virtual teams tick?"
"Needs change often these days and we're always bringing new people into projects. How can we get them up to speed and contributing quickly?"

16. “Successful companies of the 21st century will be those who do the best of capturing, storing, and leveraging what their employees know”
(CEO, Hewlett Packard)
Quote:

17. Discussion
How do you manage your personal knowledge so you can best reuse it?
How do you share your knowledge with others?

18. Siemens Knows What It Knows Through Knowledge Management Vignette
Community of interest
Repositories
Communities of practice
Informal knowledge-sharing techniques
Employee initiated
Created ShareNet
Easy to share knowledge
Incentives for posting
Internal evangelists responsible for training, monitoring, and assisting users
Top management support

19. Knowledge-based Economy
Rapid changes in the business environment cannot be handled in traditional ways.
Firms are much larger, with higher turnover and require better tools for collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing.
Firms must develop strategies to sustain competitive advantage by leveraging their intellectual assets for optimum performance.
Managing knowledge is now critical for firms spread out over wide geographical areas, and for virtual organizations.

20. Components of Knowledge Management Systems
Technologies
Communication
Access knowledge
Communicates with others
Collaboration
Perform groupwork
Synchronous or asynchronous
Same place/different place
Storage and retrieval
Capture, storing, retrieval, and management of both explicit and tacit knowledge through collaborative systems

21. Components of Knowledge Management Systems
Supporting technologies
Artificial intelligence
Expert systems, neural networks, fuzzy logic, intelligent agents
Intelligent agents
Systems that learn how users work and provide assistance
Knowledge discovery in databases
Process used to search for and extract information
Internal = data and document mining
External = model marts and model warehouses
XML
Extensible Markup Language
Enables standardized representations of data
Better collaboration and communication through portals

22. Sharing Knowledge
Some people are reluctant to share knowledge due to the following reasons:;
No skill in knowledge management techniques.
Willing to share, but not enough time to do so.
Don’t understand knowledge management and benefits.
Lack of appropriate technology.
No commitment from senior managers.
No funding for knowledge management.
Culture does not encourage knowledge sharing.

23. Knowledge Management Initiatives
Aims
Make knowledge visible
Develop knowledge intensive culture
Build knowledge infrastructure
Surrounding processes
Creation of knowledge
Sharing of knowledge
Seeking out knowledge
Using knowledge

24. Knowledge Management Initiatives
Knowledge creation
Generating new ideas, routines, insights
Modes
Socialization, externalization, internalization, combination
Knowledge sharing
Willing explanation to another directly or through an intermediary
Knowledge seeking
Knowledge sourcing

25. Approaches to Knowledge Management
Process Approach
Codifies knowledge
Formalized controls, approaches, technologies
Fails to capture most tacit knowledge
Practice Approach
Assumes that most knowledge is tacit
Informal systems
Social events, communities of practice, person-to-person contacts
Challenge to make tacit knowledge explicit, capture it, add to it, transfer it

26. Approaches to Knowledge Management
Hybrid Approach
Practice approach initially used to store explicit knowledge
Tacit knowledge primarily stored as contact information
Best practices captured and managed
Best practices
Methods that effective organizations use to operate and manage functions
Knowledge repository
Place for capture and storage of knowledge
Different storage mechanisms depending upon data captured

27. Objectives of Knowledge Management
Davenport et al. (1998) describe four broad objectives of knowledge management systems in practice:
To create knowledge repositories.
To improve knowledge access.
To enhance the knowledge environment.
To manage knowledge as an asset.

28. Essence of KM
Knowledge is first created in the people’s minds. KM practices must first identify ways to encourage and stimulate the ability of employees to develop new knowledge.
KM methodologies and technologies must enable effective ways to elicit, represent, organize, re-use, and renew this knowledge.
KM should not distance itself from the knowledge owners, but instead celebrate and recognize their position as experts in the organization.

29. Knowledge Repositories
Specially Structured Databases. Some systems have been developed in Lotus Notes/Domino Server and hence utilize the Notes database structure.
These specialized databases are ideal for storing tacit knowledge because of its nature.
Electronic Documents. Others have been developed around electronic document management systems.
e.g., DocuShare by Xerox

30. Knowledge Management System Cycle
Creates knowledge through new ways of doing things
Identifies and captures new knowledge
Places knowledge into context so it is usable (Refine)
Stores knowledge in repository
Reviews for accuracy and relevance (Manage)
Makes knowledge available at all times to anyone (Disseminate)
Disseminate

31. KM & Information Technologies
The KMS challenge is to identify and integrate the following three technologies:
Communication technologies allow users to access needed knowledge, and to communicate with each other--especially with experts.
Collaboration technologies provide the means to perform group work.
Storage technologies use a database management system to capture, store and manage knowledge.

32. KM & Information Technologies
Information technology facilitates sharing as well as accelerated growth of knowledge.
Information technology allows the movement of information at increasing speeds and efficiencies.
“Today, knowledge is accumulating at an ever increasing rate. It is estimated that knowledge is currently doubling every 18 months and, of course, the pace is increasing... Technology facilitates the speed at which knowledge and ideas proliferate” Bradley [1996]

33. KM & Information Technologies
Knowware are technology tools that support KM.
Collaboration tools, or groupware, were the first used to enhance collaboration for tacit knowledge transfer within an organization.
KM suites are complete KM solutions out-of-the-box.
Knowledge Servers contain the main KM software, including the knowledge repository.

34. Effective Knowledge Management
80% - Organizational culture and human factors
20% - Technology

35. KM Benefits
Reduction in loss of intellectual capital when people leave the company
Reduction in costs by decreasing the number of times the company must repeatedly solve the same problem
Economies of scale in obtaining information from external providers
Reduction in redundancy of knowledge-based activities
Increase in productivity by making knowledge available more quickly & easily
Increase in employee satisfaction by enabling greater personal development and empowerment
Strategic competitive advantage in the marketplace

36. Human Resources Chief knowledge officer (CKO) Senior level
Sets strategic priorities
Defines area of knowledge based on organization mission and goals
Creates infrastructure
Identifies knowledge champions
Manages content produced by groups
Adds to knowledge base
CEO
Champion knowledge management
Upper management
Ensures availability of resources to CKO
Communities of practice
Knowledge management system developers
Team members that develop system
Knowledge management system staff
Catalog and manage knowledge

37. KM Integration
Since a KM system is an enterprise system, it must be integrated with other enterprise and information systems in an organization.
The most important systems to integrate with are;
Decision Support Systems
Artificial Intelligence
Databases and Information Systems
Customer Relationship Management Systems
Supply Chain Management Systems
Corporate Intranets and Extranets

38. Factors Leading to Success and Failure of Systems
Companies must assess need
System needs technical and organizational infrastructure to build on
System must have economic value to organization
Senior management support
Organization needs multiple channels for knowledge transfer
Appropriate organizational culture
Failure
System does not meet organization’s needs
Lack of commitment
No incentive to use system
Lack of integration

39. Knowledge Management Issues
Encouraging System Use
Employees must be motivated properly to contribute knowledge.
The mechanism for doing so should be part of their job, and their salaries should reflect this.
Buying & Selling Knowledge
Most firms are reluctant to sell knowledge, unless they are expressly in the business of doing so.
A firm’s knowledge is an asset that has competitive value.

40. Knowledge Management Issues
One of the primary differences between traditional information systems and KM systems is the active role that users of KM systems play on building the content of such systems.

41. Text Book Knowledge Management (2004)
Challenges, Solutions and Technologies
Authors:
Irma Becerra, Avelino Gonzalez, Rajiv Sabherwal
Publisher
Prentice Hall
Price
RM72

42. Text Overview 17 chapters divided into 4 parts
Part I - Principles of Knowledge Management
Part II: Technologies for Knowledge Management
Part III: Knowledge Management Systems
IV: The Future of KM

43. Knowledge Management Systems
KM systems classification based on observations on the KM systems implementations:
Knowledge Discovery Systems (Chapter 13)
Knowledge Capture Systems (Chapter 14)
Knowledge Sharing Systems (Chapter 15)
Knowledge Application Systems (Chapter 16)