Knowledge Management
Diana Anderson
Chin ho Chung
Alisher Yuldashev
Nelly Zapata
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Overview
Chapter 5: Knowledge Transfer
Chapter 6: Knowledge Roles and Skills
Chapter 7: Technologies for Knowledge Management
Chapter 8: Knowledge Management Projects in Practice
Chapter 9: The Pragmatics of Knowledge Management
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Chapter 5:
Knowledge Transfer
Diana Anderson
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From Documents to Discussions
Who
What
Where
When
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Two Different Approaches

MCC
– Many Different Techniques
– Documentation
– Databases
– Intranet
– Workshops
– Training
– Little Support
– Little Success
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Successful Philosophy

Sematech
– Many of the Same
Techniques as MCC
– Strong Organizational and
HR Support
– Assignee Rotation was Key
to Success
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Water Coolers, Coffee and Talk
Rooms




“So how’s everything going?”
Talking IS Working
– “Start talking and get to work!”
Casual Conversation is an
Endangered Practice
– Virtual Offices
– Global Teams
Making the Method fit the
Organizational Culture
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Open Forums vs. Conferences


Open Forums and Knowledge Fairs
– More opportunities for exchange
– Bring people together
– Allow for spontaneity of
exchanges
Conferences
– Tightly scheduled
– Formal speakers and workshops
– Information overload
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Kinds of Knowledge
Explicit
Knowledge
Implied
Knowledge
Easy to Capture
Difficult to Capture
Documents
Complex
Databases
Intuitive
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Culture and Knowledge Transfer
Problem
Solution
Lack of Trust
Build relationships
Lack of time and
meeting places
Establish time and
places for knowledge
transfer
Intolerance for
mistakes
Accept and reward
creative errors and
collaboration
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Trust and Common Ground



Establish a Common Ground
Share information
Bring People Together
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Status isn’t Everything
Don’t judge information
simply by who delivers it
Choose your
messenger wisely
Knowing is not the
same as doing
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Velocity and Viscosity
of
Velocity • Speed
Transfer
Viscosity
• Amount of
knowledge
transferred
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Case in Point

3M (10)
–
–
–
–

Culture of sharing
60,000 different products
30% of revenues come from new products
Everyone is an inventor
Shift from Documents to Discussions
–
–
–
Regular meetings
Knowledge fairs
Retreats and showcases
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Discussion

Talking is working
–

Knowledge Fairs and Conventions
–

Is there value in both?
The culture of knowledge transfer
–

How do you encourage people to talk and discourage too
much talking?
Any ideas on incorporating knowledge transfer into the
company culture?
Trust and creativity
–
Any ideas on fostering trust and encouraging creativity?
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Chapter 6:
Knowledge Roles
And Skills
Chin ho Chung
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Knowledge-Oriented Personnel
KM must be part of everyone’s job

McKinsey and Company

Chaparral Steel
–
The lifeblood of McKinsey
–
–
Interview and screening
processes are designed to
identify knowledge-seeking
person
–
–
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Successful mini-mill steel
manufacturer
Visit customers to better
understand their requirements
,attend industry seminars, and
perform production
experiments
Flat organizational culture
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Knowledge Management Workers
people who will extract knowledge from those who have it, put it in structured form,
and maintain or refine it over time.

Technologists
–
–

Knowledge integrators
–

How to make knowledge content appealing
How to persuade those who have knowledge to put it into a rich knowledge base
Determine what knowledge is most valuable and synthesize it
Knowledge Administrators
–
Capturing, storing, and maintaining the knowledge that others produce
Good knowledge workers at any level should have a combination of hard skills with softer traits
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Managers of Knowledge Projects
Developing project objectives
Assembling and managing teams
Determining and managing customer expectations
Monitoring project budgets and schedules
Identifying and resolving project problems
unusual mix of technological, psychological, and business skills and certain humility
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The Chief Knowledge Officer
Appropriate in firms where knowledge is a critical business resource
• building a knowledge culture
Responsibilities
• creating a knowledge management infrastructure
• making it all pay off economically
Obstacles
• Decentralized organizational structure
• All important CKO functions are already being
performed by other managers
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Discussions

the reason knowledge hasn’t been well
managed in the past

The business where role of CKO is
appropriate

The requirements for the CKO position
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Chapter 7
Technologies for
Knowledge
Management
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A case in Point: Hewlett-Packard
ESP
(Electronic
Sales
Partner)
Knowledge
Technology
• help HP’s computer
systems sales force
in the sales process
Expertise
Connex
• allows an HP employ
ee to search for an
HP Labs expert
Documents
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Expert Systems and Artificial Intelligence
• Expert system
• Case-based reasoning
• Neural networks
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Implementing Knowledge Technologies

Knowledge technologies are more likely to be employed in an
interactive and iterative manner by user

Roles of people in knowledge technologies are integral to their
success

The different roles of people is also a key factor in distinguishing
the various types of knowledge technologies
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Broad Knowledge Repositories


Lotus Notes and Intranet-based Webs
Positive Aspect
• The knowledge itself typically has
plenty of meaningful context
Negative Aspect
• The knowledge based on indexing
keywords and their proximity is shallow
Notes-based knowledge management implementations are
accompanied by other tools such as Hoover and GrapeVINE
Hoover
GrapeVINE
• searches through selected external databases,
“sucking up” knowledge
• somewhat more structured technology for bringing
external knowledge into an organization
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Focused Knowledge Environments
Concentrated knowledge domain
Knowledge domain needs to be fairly stable
Concentrated-based systems
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What Technologies Can’t Do
Technology alone won’t make a person with
expertise share it with others
Technology alone won’t get an employee who is unintere
sted in seeking knowledge to hop onto a keyboard and
start searching or browsing
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Discussions

The role of technology in knowledge
management

Key factors in distinguishing the various
types of knowledge technologies

What is important in a knowledge technology
strategy?
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Chapter 8:
Knowledge
Management Projects
Nelly Zapata
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Types of KM projects
Knowledge
Repositories
• External knowledge
• Structured internal knowledge
• Informal internal knowledge
Knowledge
Transfer
• IBM’s BluePages (7)
• Corporate-wide directory
• 84% employees registered
• 4M searches/week
Knowledge
Environment
• Knowledge capital
• Re-use of knowledge
• Educate employees
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Attributes of Success in KM Projects
• Increase in resources involved in the project
• Growth in the volume of knowledge content
• Project sustainability
• Organizational comfort with KM
• Financial return
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IBM’s KnowledgeView(7)



Knowledge sharing program
Business Consulting Services (BCS)
Repositories
–
–
–

Intellectual capital
Key resources
Discussion forums
$42m opportunity cost savings in 2004
(15% reads yield 1 hour of time savings)
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Factors to KM Project Success
• Positive attitude
Knowledge
oriented
culture
• Lack of knowledge
inhibitors
• Projects fit the culture
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Factors to KM Project Success (cont.)
Technical and
organizational
infrastructure
• User-friendly & reliable
technical infrastructure
• Roles dedicated to KM
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Factors to KM Project Success (cont.)

Link to economic or industry value
KM spend
• 2.5% of Revenues at Buckman Labs
• 6% at Ernst & Young
• 10% at McKensey
KM financial
Benefits (8)
• TI - revenue through patent and IP li
censing
• Dow Chemicals - patent
management
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Points of Discussion




Give examples of types of KM repositories
Do you agree with these factors of success?
Give personal examples of projects that have
failed
Examples of when economic value can’t be
evaluated
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Chapter 9:
The Pragmatics of
Knowledge
Management
Alisher Yuldashev
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Getting Started in KM
Start small
Accomplish
Start small
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Talk
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Recognized Business Problem




Customer defections
Poorly designed products
Losses of key personnel
Lower “win rate” for service engagements
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Factors of Defining Starting Point


Domain
Feasibility
Hard
Easy
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Leveraging Existing Approaches
Technology
Quality /
Reengineering / Best
Practices
KM
Organizational
Learning
Decision Making
Accounting
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Technology (11)

Risky

Knowledge Xchange (KX)
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Quality, Reengineering, Best
Practices (4)
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Organizational Learning (12)
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Decision Making
After Action Review (AAR )
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Accounting

Standards and Practices
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Selecting the Right Anchor

culture
multiple anchors
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If We Build It …
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Time

Effort

Money
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Let’s Put the Personnel Manual
On-line!

Putting paper docs online, is not KM

Knowledge needed:
Insight-laden
Real-value adding
Wisdom-including
–
–
–

Slow, but Grow
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None Dare Call It Knowledge

Corporate Culture:

Knowledge Manager
on resume
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Every Man a Knowledge Manager

Being Knowledge Manager
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Justification by Faith
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Restricted Access
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Bottoms Up!

Management Support
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A Last Word

Multiple fronts

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Balance
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Discussion

Have you ever dealt with knowledge
management implementation?

Could you think about any other knowledge
management pitfalls?
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Appendix
1.
McKinsey and Company Case
http://www.mckinsey.com/ideas/mck_quarterly/?cm_re=Dotco
m-_-McKQuarterly-_-Ideas/
2.
Anderson Consulting Group Case
http://www.andersonconsultinggroup.com/management%20se
rvices.htm
3.
McDonnell Douglas Corporation Case
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Aerospace/McDac/Aer
o32.htm
4.
TI
www.ti.com
5.
Hewlett-Packerd Technology
http://h20239.www2.hp.com/techcenter/
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Appendix
6.
IBM: The Knowledge Management Blog
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/km/elsua/archives/ibms-knowledgemanagement-strategy-10827
7.
IBM’s KM Strategy
http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/PrintArticle.aspx?ArticleID=16907
8.
Knowledge Management World (KM World)
http://www.kmworld.com/
http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=18502&
PageNum=2
9.
Sematech Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEMATECH
10.
3M worldwide
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Appendix
11.
Accenture
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1996_Feb_26/ai
_18025544
http://careers3.accenture.com/Careers/US/Award_2.htm
http://careers3.accenture.com/Careers/Global/WorkingHere/M
eetOurPeople/0706_Rahul_Chakravarti.htm
12.
Coca – Cola
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5243/is_200112/ai_n203
90589
13.
After Action Review
http://www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/leader/leadaar.html
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