Knowledge Management Systems
• Week 2 Schedule
• Syllabus Updates (almost)
• Class Web site
- http://courses.ischool.utexas.edu/Turnbull_Don/20
08/fall/INF_385Q/index.html
• Readings Discussion
• Blog accounts setup
- http://courses.ischool.utexas.edu/Turnbull_Don/20
08/fall/INF_385Q/blog/
• Topic Review & Selection Discussion
Blog Setup
- http://courses.ischool.utexas.edu/Turnbull_Don/2008/fall/INF_
385Q/blog/
- Let’s walk through a blog post
• Blog content
• Commentary with your own thoughts
• Analysis of someone else’s ideas
- Fellow class members
- About our class readings
- From another web page or blog post
• Recommendations (with explanation & commentary
- Links to other web pages or blog posts
- Referring to other information sources
• People, meetings, news, software…
• Queries for help or discussion
- Ask others for their insights into an issue or problem
Questions to Consider
• What is KM?
• What Does KM Provide?
- Personal
- Organizational
• Best Approaches for KM?
• Is KM a process?
• Who Does KM?
• Contexts:
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Culture
Environment
Change
Cooperation
Working Knowledge
• What Do We Talk About When We Talk About
Knowledge?
• The Promise and Challenge of Knowledge
Markets
• Knowledge Generation
• Knowledge Coordination and Codification
• “the only unlimited resource” – Paul Romer
• Book context
- 1998 (1997-1996)
- Based on consulting experiences
- Consulting tool (optimism)
Personal & Organizational KM
• The organization is no longer a “black box”
• Study & improvement of the processes &
outcomes (but more subtle than Taylorism)
• An increased focus on knowledge is the result
of a more abstract, services, information
economy
- In G8+ countries only? (by definition?)
- The cause of outsourcing?
• Mobility of the workforce & lack of
organizational stability places more focus on
“the value of something once it is gone”
• Technology is often thought to replace people
(p. x)
KM is asking questions
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What do you need to know?
What would you do better next time?
Who knows what?
How can you work together?
How can you add value to information (with
knowledge)?
• How can you measure or manage this
knowledge?
• KM is a framework for asking & analyzing
thought as external work.
Tools and KMS
• Information Technology has enabled a
promise that knowledge can be managed,
captured, measured and transferred.
- Speed of Transfer
• SIGs and User Groups
• Too Fast?
- Measurement of Knowledge?
• Quantitative and Qualitative
• Decision Making
- Economics of Knowledge
• Nobel Prize(s)
• Business Process Modeling
Knowledge Boom?
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Who are the Knowledge Wildcatters?
What are the Knowledge Syndicates?
Knowledge De-Regulation?
What was going on before the boom?
Knowledge Vacuum
- Noticing lost knowledge because it is gone.
- Working to improve organizational performance.
• Driven by Technology?
- IT as a means?
- IT as a workplace paradigm shifter?
Path to Knowledge
• Data
• Information – Added Value
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Contextualized: purpose data is gathered
Categorized: key components recognized
Calculated: analyzed
Corrected: error free
Condensed: summarized
“the difference that makes a difference” – Bateson
• Knowledge
- Action (decisions)
- Experience (wisdom)
• What isn’t knowledge?
Types of Knowledge (in Action)
• Defining knowledge by how it is used
- What other ways to identify knowledge?
• Experience
- Individuals
- Groups
- Cultures
• Ground Truth
- Situational
- Active (evolving)
• Complexity
- Plastic
- Subtle
- Sensemaking - Interpretation
Types of Knowledge 2
• Rules of Thumb and Intuition
- Heuristics
- Procedures
- “Scripts”
• Goals (shared)
• Intuitions (“compressed expertise”)
• How are these different from person to
person, from org to org?
Subtle Knowledge
• Cultural values
• Beliefs
- Technology fixes
- Individual orientation
- Group building & consensus
• “Beliefs and Commitment” – Nonaka &
Takeuchi
- Define the organization
BP Virtual Teamwork
- Understanding work over efficiency gains
- Distributed culture & understanding
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K originates & resides in people’s minds
K sharing requires trust
Technology enables new K behaviors
K sharing must be encouraged & rewarded
Management support is essential
Use pilot programs for KM introduction to the org
Measure the pilot programs (show success)
Encourage creativity
Knowledge Interpreted
• Is Knowledge a Product or a Service?
• What isn’t Knowledge once interpreted?
• That Difference that makes you more
Competitive?
• Knowledge is the main difference, the
principle advantage.
- Technologies eventually evens out
- The changes to culture and individuals don’t.
• Information Technology can enable changes
that last beyond their influence.
- Networked Knowledge
- Networked Organization
Knowledge & Teams
• Can a large organization be as effective as a
smaller one?
• Do larger organizations have a higher
percentage of available knowledge?
• Is knowledge more important than speed?
• What difference does technology make?
- Speed of decision making?
- Cultural context for communication?
• Space and Time are less of a constraint
- Less focus on mechanics of work, more focus on
knowledge use & creation?
Knowledge Markets
• Economists moving into KM?
• Markets Mean Measurement
- KM Mutual Fund?
- KM Index Fund?
• Political Economy of Knowledge Markets
- Organizations
- Individual Roles
• Buyers
• Sellers
• Brokers (Gatekeepers)
- Types of costs, perceived value
• Competition
Knowledge Economy
• Value & Pricing
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(p 31)
Current Value
Future Value
Current Investment
Future Investment
Reciprocity
Repute
Altruism
Trust
Signals
Knowledge Market (In)Efficiencies
• Is there ever a perfect market?
• What is the KM equivalent of “Irrational Exuberance”?
(Greenspan, Shiller)
• Incompleteness
- Where is the Knowledge?
- Who sets the price?
• Asymmetry
- One Department, One Person
• Localness
- Neighbors
- Peers
- “Satisficing” (Simon and March)
Knowledge Market Pathologies
• Do these naturally occur?
• Monopolies
- Technological
- Organizational
• (Artificial) Scarcity
- Recency
- Frequency
• Trade Barriers
- IT
- Personnel
- Culture
• Building Marketplaces
- Shopping Time to mingle, browse and famliarize
- Cultural Shift to a knowledge market
- Technological Shift to doing this with IT
Information as Product
• “The Age of Also”
- Options are Golden Handcuffs
- End in Itself
• Prosumption
- The Age of User Groups (Teach & Learn at Once)
- Society and Consumers (Precision & Repetition)
• Information Presentation
- Medium is the Message
- Varieties of Literacy
• The Internet Changes Everything?
- Empowerment? (Value)
- Speed? Expectations
Knowledge Generation
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“Innovation Department”?
Acquisition
Rental
Processes
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R&D
Fusion
Adaptation
Innovation
• Resource Allocation
Knowledge Codification
• Identifying knowledge means knowing what
you should be doing
• Goals for Codified Knowledge:
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Decide business goals needing knowledge
Identify Knowledge in various forms to reach goals
Evaluate Knowledge for Utility and Codification
Resolve Medium for Codification and Access
Types of Knowledge
• Tacit Knowledge
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Internalized
“Not Known”
Serendipitous
Difficult to Capture
• Explicit Knowledge
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Externalized
Easily Found
Permanent
Difficult to Process for Utility
Capturing Knowledge
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Maps
Narratives
Surveys
Measurement as Capture
Anthropology
Technology
Coordinating Knowledge
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Communities (of Practice)
Networks
Knowledge Marketplace Evaluation
IT R&D
Knowledge Packet Tracing
Next week
• Experiment with collaborative
technologies
- Use blog to discuss the Working
Knowledge chapters 5 & 6
- Use the listserv to discuss Working
Knowledge chapter 7 & 8
- Counts toward class participation
• Quick review of readings, including the
Tiwana article the week after