Knowledge Management Overview
by Dr. Vincent Ribiere
Photographs > Mathawin Kinthong
Dr. Vincent Ribiere (ÇԹૹµ ÃÔàºÕÂÏ),
vince@vincentribiere.com
After teaching during the past 10 years in the US first at American University (Washington, D.C.) and
later on at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in New York City and in the Kingdom of
Bahrain, and now an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Bangkok University and
Managing Director of the South Asian branch of the Institute for Know- ledge and Innovation (IKI)
of Thailand hosted by Bangkok University (http://iki.bu.ac.th) and he is the Director for Asian activities
at the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at the George Washington University, in Washington,
D.C., USA.
Knowledge Management
Fundamentals (1)
Among the different activities and services we offer at iKi, we designed a series of
10 core seminars to raise awareness and to
train organizations about KM. Every month
I wil touch on one of these seminar topics so
you wil get a better understanding on what
KM is and how it could benefit your department, organization, customers and partners.
Among the topics covered I wil talk about,
aligning your KM strategy to your business
strategy, the human aspect of KM, KM technologies, KM processes, KM roadmap, KM
readiness assessment (KM Maturity), KM metrics
and measurements, Communities of Practice
(CoP), KM and Innovation and CKO vs. CIO.
I would also like to hear from you, so
please do not hesitate to email me so we
can engage in further discussions that I may
use as topics for future articles. I wil start
today by providing you with some background
and definitions about KM which wil help you
better apprehend future articles. Future articles wil be less theoretical and more practical.
Why Knowledge Management?
A significant transformation has occurred
in our economy. The industrial age is fading
away and we are rapidly entering a knowledge age/economy where innovation, service, quality, speed and knowledge sharing,
Every evening when
employees go back home
the company loses roughly
70% of its knowledge! What
will happen if employees
decided not to come back
the day after?
are the defining factors. This doesn’t mean
that we no longer need industrial and manufacturing plants or agricultural farms, ...it just
means that the way we produce goods and
services wil be driven by our ability to acquire, organize, combine, transfer, protect and
apply knowledge to solve problems (current
and future).
Tools of the knowledge economy wil
help and enhance tools and processes of
former economies (e.g., precision agriculture,
complex supply chains (outsourcing, off shoring, ...)). Ideas and knowledge become the
principle raw materials and intellectual capital becomes a critical metric for determining
the economic value of a company. It becomes mandatory for organizations to better
manage their knowledge if they want to remain competitive. Does your organization
know what it knows? Does it know what it
does not know? Does it know who knows
what? Does it know who knows who? Can
you easily identify and value your intellectual
assets? Does the knowledge walk out the
door when some employees leave or retire?
Are you often wasting time and efforts solving problems that have been previously solved
(reinventing the wheel)? Do you learn from
your mistakes and successes (best practices,
lessons learned)? Do people or department
hoard knowledge (silo mentality)? Are you
experiencing information overload (cannot find
documents easily, too many documents and
emails, ineffective decision making,...)? Are
you fully exploiting the knowledge, skil s and
creativity of your employees? Would you like
to become a learning organization? These
are some of the common problems that knowledge management can help to overcome.
Knowledge and Knowledge Management
The first publications about KM appeared
in the mid 90s, among them we could mention the book of Prof. Nonaka and Takeushi
“The Knowledge-Creating Company: How
August 2008 / 45
Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics
of Innovation.” So KM is a relatively young
multidisciplinary discipline even though people and organizations have managed their
knowledge for a long time but not in a very
structured and efficient manner.
There might be as many definitions of
knowledge as there are authors and philosophers who tried to define it. I wil use a simple definition that defines knowledge has
being actionable information. Actionable
means that the information is relevant and
that it is provided to the right person at the
able to start this machine, no decision or
analysis involved and no previous experience
is required.
An example of tacit knowledge is riding
a bike or swimming, you may explain to someone how to do it but they wil not be able to
acquire such knowledge before having experienced it on their own and learned from
their mistakes. A famous quote from Michel
Polanyi says that “We know more than we
can tell.” Most of the valuable knowledge of
an organization is tacit and remains in the
heads of the employees. It means that every
right time on the right context in the right
format so it can be used for decision making, forecasting, design, planning, diagnosis,
analysis, innovation,... Context is critical, what
is knowledge for someone might just remain
information for someone else. Knowledge is
usually categorized as explicit or tacit. Explicit knowledge can be easily documented
and shared, where tacit knowledge is acquired through experience and it is more
difficult to express it and to document it. An
example of explicit knowledge wil be the
steps associated with starting a particular
machine, every step can be clearly detailed
and anyone who read the procedure wil be
evening when employees go back home the
company loses roughly 70% of its knowledge!
What wil happen if employees decided not
to come back the day after? One of the
goals of KM is to motivate employees to
share some of their tacit knowledge so it can
be shared with others and eventually be
captured/codified in documents, procedures
and policies. Even though employees wil not
be able to share all their tacit knowledge, if
a company is able to decrease the previous
70% ratio to 50% it wil be a big improvement!
Knowledge exists at the individual level
but also at the group/team/community/de-
46 / August 2008
partment and organizational level. It is also
important to consider the knowledge of customers, partners, competitors, and of the industry.
Knowledge Management can be defined as the process used to effectively manage the flows of knowledge (creation, capture, storage, sharing and leverage) in order
to bring the biggest payoffs. So the main
goal is not to manage knowledge itself but
its flow and transfer. KM should not be seen
as something (tasks, procedures, tools...) which
should be done on top of the work people
do on a daily basis but as something which
is transparent and that no one notices. The
objective is to support, enhance and leverage the current business processes with knowledge. As the human body is composed of
different systems (blood, nervous, respiratory...)
working hand by hand in order to make
the overall human body work, KM can be
seen as one of such systems that works in
parallel with other systems to make the organization run efficiently and effectively and
to foster innovation. Since every organization can be broken down into business processes, any organization wil benefit from enhancing their processes with knowledge (KM).
It is usually accepted that there are 3
main pil ars of KM; People (Leadership), Processes (Organization) and Technology. Since
people possess the knowledge managing
them is an indirect way to manage their
knowledge. Technology is often labeled as
the “enabler” of KM. It is required to facilitate the various flows of knowledge (KM processes) but it should not be the main focus of
any KM initiative. At iKi we also believe that
learning should be added to these 3 main
pil ars. Many KM practices and tools can be
implemented in order to meet the specific
need of each organization since there is not
such a thing as a KM solution that wil work
for all. In the next issue we wil look at what
KM strategies can be used and how they
should align with your company’s strategy in
order to succeed. So stay tuned and once
again I wil really value your feedback and
questions by email.
’
Dr. Vincent Ribiere (วินเซนต ริเบียร),
vince@vincentribiere.com
Dr. Vincent is the Managing Director of the South Asian branch of the Institute for Knowledge
and Innovation (iKi-SEA) of Thailand hosted by Bangkok University (http://iki.bu.ac.th), he is the
Director for Asian activities at the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at the George Washington University, in Washington, DC, USA and he is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School
of Bangkok University.
Knowledge
Management Strategy (2)
One of the most common questions I am asked is “How can we implement Knowledge Management
(KM) and what will be the benefits of implementing it?”
      
       
        
       
     
      
     
       
      
        
       
      
  
      
       
   ⌧     
     
      
       
        
       
      
      
      
        
       
       
         
        
       
      
      

58 / September 2008
Defining what KM means to your organization
      
       
      
     
       
     
     
    ⌧ 
      
     
      
         
     ⌧
   ⌧  
      
      
 
     ⌧
         
       
       
      
        
       
       ⌧ 
      
       
       
      
   
     
      
    
       
    
       
       
      
      
       
        
      
        
     
     
    
       
      
     
       
      
       
       
       
⌧      
       
 
Strategic alignment
      
       
      
        
     
      
       
       
        
      
       
     
        
        
       
     
       
      
       
 ⌧      
 
    
       
        
      
   
      
       
     
       
     
      
     
        
 ⌧    
       
      
       
  
      
        
       
      
      
      
    
     
      
⌧    
     
       
       
       
       
       
     
        
      
    
     
       
        
      
      
      
      
        
        
    
        
       
       ⌧
       
      
      
      
         
         
        
     
      
     
       
       
       
         
     
     
      
   ⌧   
 
      
         
       
          
       
        
       
       
        
      ⌧   
       
      
 
September 2008 / 59
’
Dr. Vincent Ribiere (ÇԹૹµ ÃÔàºÕÂÏ),
vince@vincentribiere.com
Dr. Vincent is the Managing Director of the South Asian branch of the Institute for Knowledge
and Innovation (iKi-SEA) of Thailand hosted by Bangkok University (http://iki.bu.ac.th), he is the
Director for Asian activities at the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at the George Washington University, in Washington, DC, USA and he is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School
of Bangkok University.
The Human Aspect of KM
Having a state of the art KM technology does not imply that employees will easily/freely share
knowledge. This was the main problem faced by the first wave of KM initiatives in the midnineties. Too much emphasis on technology without enough consideration of the human aspect
will often result in very limited KM success or even in failure. So let’s try to understand what can
motivate people to share knowledge.
sessed and understood before engaging into
a KM initiative.
Organizational Culture
All the studies looking at the main barriers of KM and at the sources of KM initiative
failures identify organizational culture as the
primary cause. Organizational culture can be
defined as the set of values, beliefs and assumptions that are shared by the members of
an organization. It is the way things are done
in an organization. Each organization has its
own culture, it could be compared to the
personality of a person. The work environment, the management and leadership styles,
the history, the stories and gossip are some of
the factors that shape the culture of an organization.
The culture is learned/experienced by
52 / October 2008
employees and it drives behaviors, decisions,
communications and relationships. As you
can see culture is a complex and intangible
concept. In some organizational cultures,
knowledge and information sharing are common practices but for others it is not natural
and change might be required to evolve
such type culture. Some traits of the organizational culture are also rooted in the national culture (Cf. work of Geert Hofstede).
Sub-organizational cultures might also co-exist in an organization. They are often based
on the values, traditions and activities of
various departments or units or groups (culture of the engineers, sales, R&D, ). All of
these levels or culture wil have to be as-
Why do people share knowledge?
Knowledge is often considered as
“power”, so why would people share knowledge? Personal and organizational factors
can drive knowledge sharing behaviors. Some
people wil share their knowledge because
they want to be known as the experts, looking for recognition and reputation. Others
wil do it just because it is a good thing to
do to help/benefit their company. Reciprocity is a common incentive for knowledge
sharing. You wil share knowledge with someone who shared it with you in the past or
who previously helped you. Based on my
experience, the most important cultural factor is trust.
People wil freely share knowledge with
people they trust. Trust can be defined as
the wil ingness to make yourself vulnerable to
others and based on the belief that they wil
meet your expectations. It is based on expertise and skil s and/or on relationships (family
and friends). You might trust someone you
don’t know just because of their competencies (e.g., doctor, pilot).
Trust exists at the individual level but also
at the organizational level. Trust is often described as the lubricant of an organization. It
takes time to build but it is very fragile and
can be destroyed in a couple of minutes. My
recommendation is to assess your organizational trust level before engaging into any KM
initiative. If it is low, you might want to first
concentrate on solving this cultural issue.
It is also interesting to understand why
people do not share knowledge. It is not
always because they don’t want to share it
but sometimes because they just don’t realize that it could be of some value to somebody else in the organization. It could also
be because they don’t have the time or the
resources to share such knowledge or because they think that their knowledge has
low value (not good enough to be shared).
You might be asked by your employees, why should we share knowledge? What
is in it for us? If we share our knowledge you
might no longer need us! These are some
common questions you should be ready to
answer. As previously explained most of the
knowledge employees have is of tacit nature. Even though they are wil ing to share
100% of it they wil not be able to do so,
since a large part was acquired through
experience and cannot be easily expressed
and codified.
Secondly, if people share some of their
knowledge with others they wil also learn/benefit from the knowledge shared by others. They
wil grow intellectually and they wil become
even more valuable to the company. Now, if
these arguments are not strong enough you
might consider putting in place some incentives to facilitate knowledge sharing, particularly at the beginning. You want to make sure
that these incentives/rewards exist at both the
individual and at the group levels.
The incentives don’t always have to be
of monetary type. IBM, a couple of years
ago, used the concepts of blue bucks. Every
time employees were sharing valuable knowledge they earned blue bucks. At the end of
the year these blue bucks could be converted into US Dollars or vacation days or
electronic devices Different people might
be motivated by various types of rewards
and such kind of approach is flexible enough
to satisfy various needs.
Using story telling techniques can also be
a good strategy to motivate people to share.
Find a good story that shows how knowledge
sharing helped employees in a difficult position
or how it became the source of a success
story in your company. Employees wil easily
remember such story, they wil use it as references or as inspirational model and it wil help
to influence their behavior and vision. Knowledge champions can also be a great source
of inspiration and leadership.
Knowledge sharing could also be added
as part of the annual performance evaluation criteria or create the award of the best
knowledge sharer of the year, in order to
fulfil the needs of the ones looking for recognition. As you can see a lot of these
solutions could be handled by the Human
is changing. Knowledge is becoming the key
resources of organizations. Knowledge workers are mainly characterized by their level of
education, by their high expertise and experience in a domain, by their ability to solve
problems and to perform non-procedural work,
and by their ability to innovate. As part of
their activities they create, distribute, leverage and apply knowledge. The need and
the number of knowledge workers wil continue to grow in the future.
Employees of generations X (1961-1981)
and Y (1982-1994) have different expectations and needs than the previous generations. Therefore the way they should be man-
Resources department. In fact, based on our
experience with iKi-SEA, we have seen many
companies in Thailand were the KM tasks
were assigned to the HR department. Since
people are key to the success of KM and
since they keep most of their tacit knowledge in their head, one way to indirectly
manage knowledge is to manage these
people. By making sure that they stay with
the company (low turnover) and that they
are provided with an environment which
motivate them and reward them, they might
be more wil ing to share knowledge.
aged and the type of work environment they
should be provided with to be fully productive has to evolve. For example, Knowledge
workers have a continuous need to learn
and they require a high level of freedom in
their work. Nowadays, we often refer to
Web 2.0 technologies but we might also need
to move to Managers 2.0 and Workers 2.0
types of mentality.
In the next issue I wil touch on KM
processes. What can be done to capture,
store, share and apply knowledge? So stay
tuned and once again, I wil really value
your feedback and questions by email (in
Thai or in English), Kop Kun Krap!
Knowledge Workers
In the new economy, the type of work
October 2008 / 53
Dr.Vincent is the Managing Director of the South Asian branch of the Institute for Knowledge
and Innovation (iKi-SEA) of Thailand hosted by Bangkok University (http://iki.bu.ac.th), he is the
Director for Asian activities at the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at the George
Washington University, in Washington, DC, USA and he is an Assistant Professor at the
Graduate School of Bangkok University.
Dr.Vincent Ribieère (วินเซนต์ ริเบียร์)
vince@vincentribiere.com
KM Processes
Many people believe that knowledge
cannot be managed since it mainly
resides in the head of the employees!
That is true, but what for sure can be
managed is its flow in the organization
between people and/or technologies. The
process of managing the knowledge flows
is one of the core activities of knowledge
management and I will describe in details
in this article its six sub-processes that I
named the “L.A. R.O.S.A.” cycle. “ROSA”
is the botanic name of the flowering
shrub rose, appearing at the center of the
graphic cycle’s representation (Cf. figure).
Locate Knowledge
A lot of organizations are still
currently unable to precisely identify their
intellectual asset. They don’t know what
they know and in a knowledge economy
not being able to identify your core asset
can become a serious problem! So step
number one should be to identify and
locate your knowledge. Since an
organization contains a lot of knowledge
and that not all knowledge can be
managed at once, I will advise to first
focus on you core and critical knowledge.
What I mean by core is that it must
support your KM strategy (Cf. CIO issue
91) and the level of knowledge criticality
can be defined by the degree of;
knowledge rareness, knowledge
usefulness, difficulty of knowledge
acquisition and of knowledge use in the
context. I will not describe these various
factors in more details but some tools
and methodologies have been designed
52 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS November-December 2008
techniques can be used to acquire and
capture knowledge. As previously
explained (issue 90), knowledge can be
more or less tacit or explicit. Explicit
knowledge can be easily codified or
articulated by its owner. For example, the
procedure to start a computer could be
defined by a set of consecutives actions
that could be easily described in a user
manual, no much reasoning, past
experience, skills or decision making are
required to perform this task. The
procedure to fix a computer problem
might be more difficult to codify. A
decision tree, an algorithm or even a case
based reasoning system could be used to
test the various potential problems but
the complexity or the uniqueness of the
problem might require the person trying
to fix the problem to refer to a more
senior technician who has more expertise
and more experience (tacit knowledge) to
solve the problem.
A high level of tacitness makes the
knowledge capture more difficult. Asking
employees to document their own
Acquire Knowledge
Once the knowledge has been knowledge often results in poor outcomes.
located, it must be acquired. Different A trained facilitator and/or a knowledge
by iKi members to assess identify and
assess critical knowledge. Once the
critical knowledge has been identified, it
can be mapped.
Knowledge maps are visual
representations of knowledge artifacts,
their relationships and their location. Such
kind of approach could work hand by
hand with competence management
programs often initiated by human
resources departments. If we take a
purely IT focused approach to knowledge
identification, knowledge discovery
approaches could be used to discover
knowledge by mining large data
repositories (Data Warehouse, Data Marts)
in order to discover patterns, rules and
relationships. For example profiling your
customers based on the products they
purchase will provide you some
knowledge on what types of products
they are more likely to buy. So without
first identifying and locating your
knowledge it will be difficult to manage it.
engineer will facilitate the process of
capturing and codifying knowledge from
experts. This process is often based on
interviews, brainstorming sessions, and
observations techniques. Knowledge
harnessing techniques are also currently
very popular, like debriefings, exit
interviews, retrospects and after actions
reviews (AAR) where four simple
questions are asked at the end of each
project: 1 - What was supposed to
happen? 2 - What actually happened? 3 Why were there differences? 4 - What did
we learn?
Lessons learned and best and/or
worst practices can also be created to
capture knowledge associated with a
particular project or project’s phase.
Knowledge can also be automatically
captured from external sources, like from
the Web, where the use of tools like
intelligent agents or content syndication
systems can be very effective.
Refine Knowledge
In the IT field we often refer to the
Garbage In - Garbage Out (GIGO)
principle where poor data input will
CIO WORLD&BUSINESS November-December 2008 53
generate poor output. The same concept
applies to knowledge, if you enter poor
knowledge into your knowledge base/
system don’t expect good outputs/results!
Knowledge entered into a system will
benefit from being assessed and validated
by experts and/or by users. The level of
knowledge quality will impact the usage
level of the knowledge system. If
employees find unreliable knowledge or
obsolete knowledge they will stop
using the KM system as reference.
As for information quality
different criteria can be used
to define knowledge quality
(accuracy, relevance, completeness, conciseness,
clari ty, ...) but other factors
like author’s and validator’s
credibility could also be used.
What is knowledge today
might not be knowledge
tomorrow so knowledge will also
have to be maintained over time.
access level privileges and using
encryption technologies might be required
based on the security requirements in
your particular industry. Over protecting
you knowledge will decrease its
reusability and its ability to be leveraged
by different types of users, so be cautious
of not falling into this pitfall, try to find the
right balance.
Apply knowledge
Organize knowledge
Once codified and validated the
knowledge will have to be stored in a
repository. In order to easily and rapidly
find knowledge it needs to be properly
organized. Cataloging, indexing, filtering
and linking technologies can be used to
do so. Taxonomies are also very popular
to organize knowledge artifacts. The
taxonomy must be flexible enough so the
knowledge can be retrieved following
different entry paths. For example, if a
best practice document has been saved
in a branch of a taxonomy tree related to
a particular project and that this
document also contains some knowledge
related to debugging it will also have to
be findable coming from a debugging
taxonomy branch.
Since knowledge is becoming the
most important asset of your organization
you might want to protect it! Knowledge
security is not so different from
information security. Defining different
codified, in order to pass/transfer it from
senior to junior employees, tutoring and
mentoring initiatives can be very beneficial.
Implementing communities of practices
(CoP) could also be a good way to
transfer knowledge from one or many
employees to a community of employees
sharing similar interests so the knowledge
is shared and eventually codified during
the transfer.
Share Knowledge
Let’s start by a
riddle. What is the only
thing which increases
when divided/shared?
Based on the topic of this
article you must have already found the
answer (Knowledge)! Knowledge sharing
is how KM will bring value to your
organization. By sharing knowledge,
knowledge will be re-used and/or
leveraged. Employees can access the KM
system to find knowledge by browsing
taxonomies or by searching using
keywords/tags. That is a pull approach. A
push approach is also required to inform
employees that a new piece of knowledge
related to their previously defined needs
and interests has been added to the
system. Awareness of knowledge
availability is key.
Note: if the knowledge cannot be
54 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS November-December 2008
Finally the last stage involves using/
applying the previously transferred
knowledge. If we take the example of a
best practice (BP), if an employee has
retrieved in the system a BP relevant to
his/her current project, he/she will have
first to adapt it since the environment/
context and the requirements are
never 100% similar between
different projects or between similar
project performed over a different
time period. If the BP is judged
helpful and satisfying it will be adopted
and feedback should be attached to the
BP to indicate that it was re-used and
judged helpful. This will help to increase
the validity of the knowledge (define
in process 3 “R”).
I described the “L.A. R.O.S.A.”
process in a sequential way but it
should be seen as a dynamic
process where each sub-process
can interact directly with any other
sub-process. For instance, an
employee can discover (process 1 “
L”) that another employee possess
some particular competences/skills and
might call him/her and get the knowledge
over the phone (process 6 “A”).
All these processes can be
supported by various technologies. I will
describe them in details in the next issue.
So stay tuned and once again, I will really
value your feedback and questions by
email (in Thai or in English), Kop Kun
Krap!
Dr. Vincent is the Managing Director of the South Asian branch of the Institute for Knowledge and
Innovation (iKi-SEA) of Thailand hosted by Bangkok University (http://iki.bu.ac.th), he is the Director for
Asian activities at the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at the George Washington University, in
Washington, DC, USA and he is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Bangkok University.
Dr.Vincent Ribieère
(วินเซนต์ ริเบียร์)
vince@vincentribiere.com
KM Technologies (Part 1)
Can information technology be used
to manage knowledge? Before I answer this
question, let me go back to the definition
of types of knowledge. In the previous issues
I presented the commonly used description
of knowledge as being explicit (which can
be easily documented/codified and shared)
or being tacit (acquired through experience,
difficult to share). At this stage we need
to revise this oversimplified dichotomy.
Without getting into philosophical debates
knowledge cannot exist without a knower
56 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS January-February 2009
(a person). A knowledge repository
(computer, library, …) contains a lot of
information but cannot be considered as
“knowledgeable”. The use and interpretation
of this information repository might become
source of knowledge for a person.
Knowledge is part of the mind and
body of a person and what comes in and
out of it remains information. Knowledge is
not an object, it is related to action and
it primary based on experience. That is
one of the reasons why we often define
knowledge as actionable information. For
example knowing how to drive a car
requires some knowledge about rules on
the road and safety that can be acquired
by reading and understanding a driver’s
manual (information). It also requires some
experience on how to operate a car and
on how to handle different situations as
well as emergency cases. An experienced
driver will also develop over time some
reflex actions that will become instinctive
when there is no time to think (tacit). So
if knowledge can only be embodied in
people how can information technology
(IT) help? IT can be used to manage the
explicit representation of knowledge, often
referred as knowledge artifacts.
In an IT context, knowledge artifacts
are explicit and implicit knowledge that
have been articulated into documents,
notes, procedures, policies, …. So IT cannot
manage knowledge but it can manage
information and knowledge artifacts (passive
objects) that will trigger and facilitate
knowledge to be internally created by the
user (dynamic action). Being able to provide
the right information to the right person at
the right time in the right format and in
the right context can serve as catalyst for
knowledge creation.
Once KM became a “hot topic”, mid
90’s, a large number of software vendors
saw an easy opportunity to sell their
information management solutions under
the new label of KM tools, without making
fundamental changes to them. This situation
created some confusions and deceptions
among the first adopters and gave a bad/
false image to KM. KM was then considered
as a new technology-based system without
much consideration to the human side and
change management aspects associated
with it. Unfortunately a lot of companies
failed into their KM initiative because of
this purely IT centered approach. As with
any information system solution, if users
don’t adopt and don’t use the system,
nothing good will happen! Fortunately the
KM solution landscape has evolved and
matured since then. Different representations
could be used to categorize them. In this
issue I will re-use the “LA ROSA” model
(Locate, Acquire, Refine, Organize, Share
and Apply Knowledge) introduced in the
previous issue (November-December 2008)
to categorize the KM tools based on how
they can support the KM processes/flows.
In the next issue I will present them
based on the type of knowledge artifacts
and KM approach used. You will note that
not all the tools presented are new, some
of them have been available for quite
some time for information management
needs but they can also be used to support
KM solutions in order to create a context
and an environment to support knowledge
artifacts. An integration of various tools and
solutions are required to efficiently manage
knowledge artifacts since currently there are
no fully integrated KM solutions that cover
the various needs of different organization
types. Note that the tools listed below are
only technology tools, they will need to be
completed with other KM practices in order
to fully support each KM process. I tried to
list the main IT tools but other tools might
help to support each process.
Locate, Create, Discover and Map Knowledge
A lot of different tools can be used
to support this process. Expertise locators
allow to rapidly identify who has a
particular set of skills or connections. These
tools can use employees’ profiles which
have been manually created or which
have been created dynamically by using
semantic engines to learn from documents
created by employees, their emails, their
Web visits, … Knowledge Maps are visual
representations of knowledge artifacts, their
location and their relationships. Knowledge
discovery tools allow to mine large data
repositories in order to find pattern and
relationships among data that will later
CIO WORLD&BUSINESS January-February 2009 57
on be integrated into knowledge bases or
expert systems. Data mining tools fit in this
category. Text mining tools allow to extract
meaning from a document. They can be
based on statistical analyses but those
based on semantic engines provide better
results. E-learning solutions allow to train and
transfer knowledge to employees on how
to do things, why, when, where, … and by
applying these learned procedures and
through trial and errors (experience)
employees will gain the tacit
knowledge allowing them to
become experts.
Intelligent and knowledge
agents can be programmed
to perform knowledge searches
in large data repository and
on networks (Internet). Social
Networking Analysis (SNA) is used
to map informal relationships that
exist between people within and
outside a company. Such networks
can be used to reveal employees who
can be considered as experts, or knowledge
brokers, or hubs between communities, …
Alert systems allow to get informed as soon
as a new knowledge artifact related to your
interest has been made available in your
corporate repository or on the Internet. They
belong to the category of push technologies
and awareness systems. Business intelligence
tools allow to improve decision making and
to easily access and manipulate enterprise
information. They also allow to stay updated
on your competitors, market, benchmarks,
… Search engines help not only to retrieve
text based documents but also images,
movies, people, bookmarks, … Meta search
engines can be used to aggregate the
results of queries performed by various
search engines.
Visualization tools are becoming more
and more popular since they use interactive
visual representations (maps, graphs, …) to
display results of search and/or relationships
between various knowledge artifacts.
Innovation and Creativity supporting tools
help to foster innovation in organizations
by providing a set of tools, like for instance
mind maps, that can facilitate and support
the process of thinking outside the box.
58 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS January-February 2009
Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS)
help to take advantage of group brain
power to develop new ideas (Brainstorming)
or to facilitate decision making. Finally,
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools
use a cube representation to answer multidimensional analytical queries and to allow
to slide and dice data in order to find the
data or the response
to a question or
problem.
customized format, to all those interested.
Speech recognition tools are used to
capture and convert voice messages into
text documents. They are very effective
for people who are not comfortable with
technology or who don’t have time to type
(E.g., doctors in hospitals). Semantic analysis
technology is often coupled with text mining
tools in order, not only to extract meaning
from text documents but, to abstract and
summarize them. Translation tools can also
become very useful to capture knowledge
published in a different language or for
international companies having to deal
with different languages (e.g., multinational
corporations). Finally, forums and discussion
groups are wonderful tools to capture
discussions and problem solving solutions
shared between individuals (internal or
external of the organization).
Refine, Validate and Maintain
Knowledge
Acquire
and Capture
Knowledge
Knowledge
acquisition usually
requires the help of a
knowledge engineer to
articulate implicit and tacit
knowledge artifacts. Despite
the involvement of a human being some
IT tools can help to capture knowledge
artifacts. Audio and video recordings are
an effective way to record interviews,
debriefings and after action reviews. People
do not like to write reports and they are
always careful regarding what they write.
People share more freely and convey
more meaning in their interviews than they
will do in writing reports. Short video clips
are then cut out from the full interview
and can be meta tagged, indexed and
made available through database of video
clips or Podcasts. Recombination tools are
usually composed of aggregation, mashups,
remixing and embedding technologies. They
allow to collect, like content syndication
tools, information from various sources,
to filter them and to deliver them, in a
Once the knowledge has been
captured it needs to be validated and
maintained over time. Online expert
communities can be used to review and
decide what should be considered
as knowledge and what not. The
validation can also be done directly
by the members of the community
or by people who used the
knowledge artifacts. They will
then use some assessment, rating,
ranking and scoring mechanisms
in order to validate and eventually
refine the knowledge artifact.
Contribution validation technologies
can also be used to pre-validate or
automate some of the validation process.
Finally, workflow systems can help to
accelerate the validation and maintenance
processes flows and to improve workgroup
productivity.
In the next issue I will continue to
describe KM Technologies associated with
the three remaining KM processes and I will
provide another classification of KM tools.
So stay tuned and once again, I will really
value your feedback and questions by email
(in Thai or in English), Kop Kun Krap!
Dr. Vincent is the Managing Director of the South Asian branch of the Institute for Knowledge and
Innovation (iKi-SEA) of Thailand hosted by Bangkok University (http://iki.bu.ac.th), he is the Director for
Asian activities at the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at the George Washington University, in
Washington, DC, USA and he is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Bangkok University.
Dr.Vincent Ribieère
(วินเซนต์ ริเบียร์)
vince@vincentribiere.com
KM Technologies (Part 2)
This is the second article, on a series of
three, related to KM technologies. In the
last issue I started to present the various
technologies that can support knowledge
flows and processes based on the “LA
ROSA” model. After having covered the
Localization, Acquisition and Refinement
KM processes, I will present in this issue the
three remaining one: Organization, Sharing
and Application of knowledge.
58 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS May 2009
Organize, Store and Protect Knowledge
The following technologies can be used
to archive Knowledge Artifacts (KAs).
Most of these technologies are not new
per second. Document and content
management systems (DMS and CMS)
are useful to manage the different
phases of the document life cycle
from drafting, to review, approval, and
distribution. They also facilitate collaboration,
storage, versioning, security, etc. DMS
usually focus on structured information
(e.g., Word processing, Spreadsheet,
Presentation, PDF, files) while CMS have
the additional capability to manage and
organize unstructured information (e.g.,
images, movies, multimedia). Database
Management Systems (DBMS) are used to
store operational and transactional data
while Data Warehouses and Data Marts
are used to store selected and cleaned
historical data that may have been, to
different extents, summarized. All three are
used as data repositories for knowledge
discovery tools (e.g., data mining) but also
to structure and to easily retrieve records.
Taxonomies are used to classify KAs into
categories often following a hierarchical/
tree structure.
At a higher conceptual level, Ontologies
help to define a domain, its components,
and their relationships. Multiple taxonomies
might be required to define a domain
(i.e., ontology). Taxonomies are important
since they facilitate the retrieval of
a KA assisting search engines and
users who might take different paths
to get to them. For instance a
lessons’ learned document could be
archived in a directory related to the
project it emerged from, or in a directory
associated with the type of practice (e.g.,
marketing, engineering, management) or in
a directory related to a particular process
or in other places. Taxonomies should allow
users to easily retrieve the searched for KA
following the logic (path) that makes sense
to them without having to guess where the
author may have stored it. Folksonomies
and tagging techniques became popular
with Web 2.0 technologies.
These techniques allow authors, users, and
anyone to describe and categorize content
with their own keywords (i.e., tags) without
using a rigid predefined structure (i.e.,
formal taxonomy). Tags are often visually
represented on the Internet by tag clouds.
Finally, information security techniques
should be deployed to protect the
intellectual digital asset of the organization.
For instance, authentication techniques can
be used to secure access to KA that might
benefit, in specific cases, to be encrypted
to decrease their likelihood to be stolen or
viewed in case of security breaches. Disaster
recovery systems, like backup solutions and
policies, should also be present to protect
the KA in case of emergency.
Share and Transfer Knowledge
Knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing
are key KM processes. That is from the transfer
and the application of knowledge that
value is created. Knowledge portals provide
a single point access to unified enterprise
information and explicit knowledge. They
integrate various technologies previously
described and they provide a customized
interface displaying only relevant information
to the user. Online Communities of Practice
(CoP) provide an environment where
people, who share the same interest, can
virtually meet to exchange tips, share best
practices and documents, discuss issues,
vote, collaborate, etc.
Most portals provide a community building
feature but some tools are particularly
designed to support the various needs
of CoPs that can involve, not only
employees of a company, but also partners,
suppliers, customers, etc, Groupware is
an umbrella term used to describe the
technologies facilitating the collaboration
of groups and teams. They are designed
to support and increase the productivity
CIO WORLD&BUSINESS May 2009 59
and communication of the various team
members. Wiki technologies allow anyone
to contribute to a Web page by adding or
changing content. It facilitates collaboration
with various team members contributing
online to the latest version of a shared
Web document. Blogs are Web pages
where authors share their experiences,
passions, interests, etc. in a chronological
manner. Originally used for personal use
(i.e., online diary) they now have
became a popular medium for
employees to report on their
daily activities, events, and
to communicate.
Instant Messaging
(IM) applicat ions
are synchronous
communication tools
that allow two or more
people to communicate
in real time through a
text window. IM tools
often offer voice over IP
(VoIP) technologies that
allow users to have a phone
and/or video conversation
using the Internet for free. Not all
companies allow the use of IM, since some
of them are worried about security issues
or the distraction they can generate. IM
are a good tool to get quick answers to
questions when your colleagues are online.
Collaborative tools, like groupware, is an
umbrella term. They can support all kind of
collaborations; synchronous, asynchronous
(linked or separate), content development,
project management, and group polling to
name a few.
Publishing tools allow users to directly share
their KAs on the Internet or on an Intranet
or Extranet in the form of documents, Web
pages, blogs, and other communication
devices. They can be part of DMS or
CMS previously described. Peer to peer
(P2P) technologies differ from Client Server
technologies by the fact that a node
(computer) can serve both as a client
and as a server. They provide an easy
decentralized way to share content (e.g.,
files, streaming media, telephony, discussion
groups). e-mail technology might not require
any explanation, but it is important to keep
60 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS May 2009
in mind that it is one of the most used
collaboration and knowledge sharing tools
even though its capabilities are very limited.
It reinforces the fact that people like to
use simple tools to do their routine work.
Online forums and discussion groups are
asynchronous linked type of technologies
that work well for question-answers type
of communications and collaborations.
They can be
easily searched and
archived supporting codification
mechanisms. Finally, video and
audio conferencing allow real
time communication between
users. Through such kind of verbal
and visual exchanges, richer content and
explanations can be shared allowing implicit
and tacit knowledge to be shared through
conversations, discussions, etc
Apply, Use, Adopt and Adapt Knowledge
This last KM process is the one which is the
least supported by technology but which
provides the most benefits and value to
individuals and to organizations. During
the transfer process knowledge sharing is
supposed to take place. We used “supposed
to” since a certain number of stickiness
factors (i.e., knowledge characteristics,
disseminative capacity, absorptive capacity,
and organizational context) may interfere
with the efficiency and effectiveness of the
knowledge transfer process. If the transfer
does take place, users can internalize and
learn from the KAs passed to them. Then
they can act on this newly internalized
knowledge by solving problems, making
decisions, performing activities, etc. This
human learning process does not involve
technology but the knowledge shared
can also feed knowledge bases of expert
systems (ES), decision support systems (DSS),
help desks, or even workflow collaborative
tools. These all help and support knowledge
workers in diagnosing, planning, forecasting,
supporting, designing, and decision making
processes.
All these tools are only technology enablers,
they will need to be completed with other
KM practices in order to fully support each
KM process. As you can see, a large panel
of ICT technologies can be used to support
KM initiatives. Fortunately
not all of them are
required to implement
KM, but their choice
should be driven by
the main reasons which
motivated your organization to
implement KM (KM Strategy)
and by the culture of
your organization. For
instance, online
communities will not
succeed if people
do not trust each
others. At IKISEA we believe
that a set of
organizational
assessments
should be
carefully
performed
before the
selection and
deployment
of any KM
technology.
Providing tools to
share knowledge to people who do not
want to share is doomed to failure!
In the next issue I will present another
categorization of KM technologies based
on the type of knowledge artifacts they
manage (Tacit, Explicit (structured and
unstructured). So stay tuned and once
again, I will really value your feedback and
questions by e-mail (in Thai or in English),
Kop Kun Krap!
Dr.Vincent Ribiere
COLUMNIST
Dr.Vincent is the Managing Director of the South Asian branch of the Institute for Knowledge and
Innovation (IKI-SEA) of Thailand hosted by Bangkok University (http://iki.bu.ac.th), he is the Director for
Asian activities at the Institute for Knowledge and Innovation at the George Washington University, in
Washington, DC, USA and he is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Bangkok University.
KM Technologies (Part 3)
This is the last article, on a series of three, related to KM
technologies. In the past two issues I presented the various
technologies that can support knowledge flows and processes.
In this article, KM technologies will be presented and organized
based on the type of information and knowledge artifacts
they manage.
Representation of KM technologies based on artifacts
The bottom part of the graph (factory building) represents
the corporate data, information and knowledge artifacts and
the top part is linked to the Internet (cloud) and to various
stakeholders and environmental factors.
The left part (in red) represents tacit knowledge artifacts
and the right part (in blue) explicit knowledge artifacts that can
be broken down into structured and unstructured information.
The different parts overlap since most knowledge is neither fully
tacit nor explicit and not always fully structured or unstructured.
The tools used to manage explicit knowledge are often labeled
as “codification” tools and they provide value by allowing the
re-use of knowledge that has been previously codified. The
tools used to manage tacit knowledge are often described
as “personalization” tools since they allow people to connect
with each other and to share knowledge. The main benefit
here is based on leveraging knowledge. From the interaction
between individuals new or improved knowledge will emerge.
Section  represents tools used to manage structured
information (records). All these tools are supported by some
sort of database management systems.
Section  represents tools that can be used to support
both, structured and unstructured information. These tools can
be applied to search and manipulate information in database
repositories but also in documents. For instance a semantic
engine might be used to extract the key concepts out of a
document and to display them on a map or on a tag cloud
(visualization tool).
CIO WORLD&BUSINESS June 2009 53
COLUMNIST
Dr.Vincent Ribiere
Section  represents tools that can be
used to support unstructured information (documents, e-mails, presentation, Web content,
…). A survey conducted in 2000 (Corporate
Executive Board) showed that 85-95% of the
information that an organization possessed is
unstructured (5-15% is structured) and that only
10-20% of the Information Technology spending were allocated to manage unstructured
information (80-90% spent on structured information). We think that this unbalance is not
as important these days but we are confident
that a focus on structured information remains
a priority for most organizations. A large amount
of knowledge artifacts are contained in reports,
procedures, debriefings, that are often hidden
or that cannot be easily located or that are
not searchable. Deploying some tools that can
help to better take advantage of unstructured
information can provide great benefits to an
organization by better identifying and easily
retrieving knowledge artifacts.
As previously mentioned, since knowledge
artifacts represent a large proportion of the
intellectual asset of an organization they need
to be properly protected
Section  Information Security tools and practices need to be implemented to secure and to
54 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS June 2009
protect information. Over protecting information
might impact the ability of employees to fully
take advantage of the corporate knowledge
asset, but letting everyone access to everything
might also result in knowledge leaks that might
affect the company’s competitiveness! So it is
important to find the right balance between not
over protecting and not under protecting your
knowledge assets.
Section  describes the tools that
can support unstructured information (explicit knowledge artifacts) and tacit knowledge
artifacts. If we refer to Nonaka’s and Takeushi’s
SECI model (1995), these tools could support
both the Codification (conversion from tacit to
explicit) and the Internalization (conversion from
explicit to tacit) phases. Creativity and Innovation support tools as well as collaborative tools
can facilitate the emergence of new ideas by
supporting and stimulating interactions between
groups. Audio and video recordings of expert
interviews and any type of debriefing sessions
can be valuable if they are, later on, properly
converted into short video clips associated with
meaningful keywords/tags that will make them
easily retrievable. E-learning tools support the
learning process and the creation of tacit knowledge through practice and errors.
Section  describes the tools that can
support explicit knowledge artifacts (based on
both structured and instructed information) as
well as tacit knowledge artifacts. Groupware
application and online forums facilitate the
capture and exchange of various types of information and documents. Database Management systems are used to link/connect these
various types of information that makes them
easier to manage and which also provide a
context for their understanding.
Section  describes the tools that can
support structured information (explicit knowledge
artifacts) and tacit knowledge artifacts. Expertise
locators (also called corporate yellow pages, or
who is who?) can be used to identify who in the
organization has some particular expertise, skills
or knowledge about a specific topic. They help
people to connect with each others. Usually a
simple database managing employee’s profiles
can be used to meet this need. In the same
way, knowledge maps can be used to identify
where knowledge can be found and its flows.
Social Network Analysis (SNA) allows to identify
the informal connection in between people inside
and outside an organization. It can be used to
identify who are the key holders of knowledge,
who act as knowledge brokers, gatekeepers, … ?
Dr.Vincent Ribiere
Section  describes the tools that can
support the transfer/flow or tacit knowledge
between individuals, since tacit knowledge
cannot be captured/articulated! Online
Communities of Practice (CoP) often provide the capabilities for members to have
interactions through instant messaging, videoaudio-web conferencing or through phone
conversations (Voice over IP).
Section  is not supported by technology but we represented it in order to
reinforce the fact that tacit knowledge is
best transferred by face to face interactions
and socialization activities (e.g., mentoring,
tutoring, water cooler discussions, after action reviews (AAR), retrospects, peer assists,
and storytelling).
Section  described the tools that can
be used to search, visualize and automatically retrieve (push technologies) information located on the Internet. These tools are
critical to increase awareness about any new
available information regarding your stake
holders or your environment represented on
the Internet cloud 12 . Finally, section 11
represents the new generation of Web 2.0
tools which facilitate people to share and
connect with each other’s inside and outside
the organization.
In these three issues related to KM technologies, I tried to present, through different
lenses, the most commonly used technologies to support KM. It is always difficult to
classify/organize each KM technology into
a particular section/box. Many of the technology presented could be used for various
purposes but I tried to consider their main
function to classify them on this graph. I did
not address the adoptions factors that will
make users use such systems but numerous
researches have addressed this issue based
on various popular information systems adoption models. I also decided not to present
any Knowledge Management Systems (KMS)
architecture but I recommend to directly look
for white papers from different KMS vendors,
since all of them use different architectures.
I purposely did not mention any brand
COLUMNIST
or any particular software to illustrate each
technology since listing all vendors will be
impossible and since the IT market is constantly changing. Moreover different platforms offer different tools and KM solutions.
One reference that could be used is the
KM World Buyers guide (www.kmworld.com).
Various open source applications should also
be considered while looking for KM tools
and platforms.
Even though KM technologies have
matured and take more and more in consideration the human side and formal and
informal relationships between people, I
would like to end this column by a quote
from the Gartner Group to always keep in
mind once implementing KM:
“KM is something you do,not something
you buy!”
In the next issue I will present the steps
required to implement a KM initiative (KM
Roadmap). So stay tuned and once again, I
will really value your feedback and questions
by e-mail (in Thai or in English), Kop Kun Krap!
CIO WORLD&BUSINESS June 2009 55
COLUMNIST
Dr.Vincent Ribiere
Dr.Vincent is the Managing Director and co-founder of the SouthEast Asian branch of the George Washington University Institute for
Knowledge and Innovation (IKI-SEA) of Thailand hosted by Bangkok
University (http://iki.bu.ac.th).
KM RoadMap (Part 1)
It has been a year already since I started this KM column! After having covered the core concepts of KM and the
main KM pillars (People, Processes and Technology), I will now share with you my answer to a question that everyone asks
me “How to get started in KM?”. Different consultants, academics or practitioners might answer slightly differently to this
question. I will share with you my vision and the approach that we use at the Institute (IKI-SEA).
Are you ready for KM?
Like a Physician, before even making any
diagnosis, will run a couple of basic tests (blood
pressure, body temperature, internal sounds),
an organization interested in implementing KM
should perform a set of assessments to check
its readiness to successfully adopt KM. Such assessments are often called KM Maturity Models
(KMMM). They habitually consist of assessing
the culture of the organization, its information
technology, people, infrastructure, collaboration, communication, leadership, communities,
environment, … The results of such assessment
highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the
organization in term of KM readiness/maturity.
Based on the results, different actions might
be required to prepare/evolve the company
to better accept KM (change management).
Such results will also drive the type of KM approach and the KM tools that will be later on
used to reach, in a disciplined way, a higher
level of maturity. The American Productivity
56 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS July 2009
Quality Consortium (APQC) developed a five
level KMMM that can be used as reference
and we also developed one assessment tool
at the Institute (IKI-SEA) that we will be happy
to share with you.
KM for What?
Once your organization is ready for KM,
the first thing you need to know before getting
started is to understand the real motivation
behind launching a KM initiative. Is your primary
goal to improve productivity? Increase customer
satisfaction? Capture and retain the knowledge
of employees retiring? Improving creativity and
innovation? Identifying and valuing your intellectual capital? Or it can be driven by many
other strategic priorities, but the top reason(s)
should be clear. This will help aligning the KM
strategy with the business strategy, as previously explained in issue 091 (September 2008).
Identifying Core Processes
The next step consists of identifying the
key/core processes which support your strate-
gic goal/priority. I will suggest, through a rapid
screening of business opportunities, to select a
business process or a portion of it that will be
used as a pilot. The process choice should be
made in trying to find a project with a high
likelihood of success, which is not too complex,
which can show some rapid benefits, and
that could be used later on as a reference/
success story to promote the benefits of KM
in the organization. This grassroot approach
has the advantage to incrementally investing
in KM while rapidly justifying its benefits/value
for those who remain skeptical!
Once the pilot process selected, deve
loping processes maps can be very helpful to
fully understand and dissect the processes. You
can then look at what knowledge is required
to perform the various tasks making up the
process and you can identify where and how
this knowledge is available? What is it that the
people who will have to perform such tasks will
have to know, to be careful of, or to avoid?
What documents are available to them? Are
there any templates, manuals, procedures,
policies, best practices, and/or lessons learned
that they should be aware of? Who is responsible for every task of the process? Who are
the people who previously completed these
tasks? Who are the “experts”? How can they
be contacted? Are their any communities of
practice (CoP) or online discussion groups associated with this process? Is there any video,
interview recordings, or pictures that could be
used to better understand how to do the tasks
and on how to mitigate risks? What are some
external resources available (i.e., on the Internet) that could help or be used as reference?
As you can see, a lot of valuable information
or actionable information (knowledge) can be
identified and mapped on what we will call
a knowledge-enabled process map. Awareness is key here, making employees aware
of available knowledge that can help them
solve their problems or doing their job faster,
better or smarter will grab their interests. The
map can also contain some metrics that can
be used to measure performance in term of
time, productivity, quality level, security, etc.
The purpose of this exercise is not to write
tons of documents and graphs that will become
rapidly obsolete and forbidden in a drawer
or in a database, but to use these maps as
a learning and improvement mechanism (as
explained in more details in the implementation phase).
Awareness raising
Succeeding in a KM initiative cannot
be done without the full involvement and
acceptance of the employees. It is important
to simply and clearly explain what KM is and
how it can help them. Growing KM awareness
can be done through organizing seminars,
forums, internal marketing and communication
campaigns. KM should not be perceived as
something new that needs to be done on top
of the busy schedule of employees. It should
be seen as a way to simplify the daily tasks of
knowledge workers by allowing them to work
smarter not harder and to continuously learn
through the process. KM should be “invisible”
to workers, that is what our Director of KM
initiatives at IKI-SEA, Niall Sinclair, named in his
best seller’s book “Stealth KM”.
Pilot implementation
Once the knowledge-enabled process
maps (KEPM) have been created, knowledge
harnessing techniques should be deployed
around them in order to find opportunities
for continuous improvement and to innovate.
Implementing, peer assists, after action reviews
(AAR) and retrospect will help to validate and
improve the KEPM. These three techniques are
used to learn before, during and after the
completion of a project/task or process. Based
on the new knowledge gained/learned, the
KEPM should be modified and improved so that
the next time the process will be performed,
it will benefit from the latest lessons learned
and best practices. Technology will be a great
tool to manage the KEPM. Providing the KEPM
through a web interface on an intranet, will
allow all the actors of the process to visualize
the steps, the people involved as well as to
have access to all the resources and know
ledge artifacts attached with the process. As
an example, I mapped the first processes associated with exploiting a new customer’s lead.
By clicking on each sub-process a window will
open displaying the various knowledge artifacts
associated with the selected process. In a few
clicks the user will be able to access all the
resources and advice relevant to performing
this particular process.
CIO WORLD&BUSINESS July 2009 57
COLUMNIST
Dr.Vincent Ribiere
Another KM enabling factor will be to develop some
communities of practice around this process. I will not
describe them in details in this article since it will be the
topic of a future article but basically it involves creating a
group of people having a common interest (in our case
the pilot process) to share their knowledge and experience so everyone can learn and can get help or ideas.
Sharing your success
The metrics attached to the KEPM should be used
to monitor the progress/improvement on the process (pilot). Once the pilot has showed enough benefits to be
considered a success, this story should be advertised and
shared with other groups, departments, and projects. The
goal is to present and to communicate this success story
in a way that employees can easily relate to it and so
that they can see themselves gaining a lot from replicating
a similar approach. Story telling techniques can be of a
great help at this stage, and the work of Steve Denning
at the World Bank is a good illustration of such approach
(http://www.stevedenning.com).
The success of a pilot is a great achievement but
this is just the first step of a long KM journey. In the next
issue I will present the next steps associated with growing
and institutionalizing KM. So stay tuned and once again, I
will really value your feedback and questions by e-mail (in
Thai or in English), Khop Khun Krap!
58 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS July 2009
COLUMNISTS
Dr.Vincent
ดร.ครรชิต มาลั
Ribiere
ยวงศ์ (vince@vincentribiere.com)
Dr.Vincent is the Managing Director and co-founder of the South-East Asian branch of the
George Washington University Institute for Knowledge and Innovation (IKI-SEA) of Thailand
hosted by Bangkok University (http://iki.bu.ac.th).
KM RoadMap (Part 2)
In the last issue (096), I started to describe what could be considered as the initial steps of launching a KM initiative.
Let me briefly summarize them before I present the following ones. The first step consists of determining, through a variety of
assessments, the readiness of your company to adopt KM. Step two consists of clarifying the reasons why the organization wants
to implement KM. Step three consists of identifying a core business process that can easily and rapidly benefit from KM and
that can serve as a pilot project. Knowledge enabled business maps will then be used to describe and identify knowledge flows
associated with the process selected. It will then become easier to identify sources of improvement and learning. KM awareness
and communication actions will need to surround the implementation and the success of the pilot project. The next steps will
consist of expanding and institutionalizing KM.
54 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS August 2009
Expanding KM
The success of a KM pilot project is a great
achievement and, if properly marketed, it will raise the
interest and the expectations of other teams, projects
and departments looking to benefit from KM too. At
this stage the support of Senior Executives becomes
necessary as well as the allocation of resources and
the development of a structure for the governance of
KM. A new KM position will have to be created. Some
companies appoint a CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer)
or a CLO (Chief Learning Officer). The title does not
really matter, and since the word “KM” is sometime intimidating, misinterpreted or misunderstood any other
title should work. The person appointed at this position
should have some strong communication skills, should have a
good understanding of the business and should be
well accepted among the employees. We have seen
here in Thailand KM teams been staffed with people
from HR, IT, QA or organizational development. Since
KM is mainly about people, skills, competencies,
and learning, HR people, with a good IT background
could be good candidates. Assigning KM responsibilities solely to the IT team has demonstrated not to
be so successful in the past. Cross-departmental
KM teams are probably the best mix. The KM team
does not have to be big. What is important is to early
on identify what we will call knowledge champions.
Knowledge champions are individuals, from various
departments, who strongly believe in KM and who will
help and facilitate the implementation of KM in
their units (also called KM evangelists). They will
serve in the KM working group lead by the CKO.
Such group will strengthen the KM initiative and will
prevent, in the eventual departure of the CKO, the
destabilization or the death of the KM initiative.
Once this structure and sponsorship are in
place, the selection of a new set of KM pilot projects will begin. Once again, a careful selection
of the KM pilot projects is important since
KM is still at an early and fragile stage and it
might require additional success stories to be
fully recognized and accepted across the
organization. The steps followed during
the first KM pilot project will have to
be repeated considering best practices and lessons learned gained.
When possible, some degrees
of “standardization” should be
applied in order to facilitate future
replications to other processes or
projects and to support the following institutionalization phase. Once
again, the success of these pilots
will have to be communicated and
marketed so KM can be recognized
as being useful practical, and applicable to all employees.
expansion strategy should remain aligned with the
business strategy of the organization. Growth should
be managed carefully so lessons learned and best
practices are captured and transferred to new initiatives. Some degrees of “standardization” should be
applied, the benefits (value added) of KM should be
continuously monitored through pre-defined metrics/
indicators, and such results should be communicated
across the organization.
If not already in place, an IT system supporting
the various KM projects (Knowledge Management
System (KMS)) should be deployed to enable/support
KM processes and collaboration. Leadership will also
be key in order to get a full buy-in from the employees.
Managers should “walk the talk” otherwise credibility
and trust will be rapidly lost. Such changes will make
the culture of the organization evolve towards a
knowledge sharing culture. Depending of the culture
of your company, some reward mechanisms might be
required to facilitate knowledge sharing behaviors.
Rewards do not have to be monetary but can simply
be based on recognition (electing KM champion of
the month), additional vacation days, flexible working
hours or whatever might meet the needs and expectations of each individual. Making participation in KM
activities part of the yearly performance evaluation
can also motivate people to start sharing knowledge.
KM is a continuous journey. Constant monitoring, re-alignment and encouragements will be
required all along the way to succeed. Ultimately,
KM should become part of the way people naturally
perform they daily routine work.
What I tried to share through these two KM
roadmap articles are some very general guidelines on
how KM can be implemented in an organization following a grass-root approach (bottom-up). Depending
on the organization (size, industry, strategy, culture)
some adjustments/customization might be required
but what will always remain key to success are; strong
executive support, clear explanations and demonstration of the value of KM, continuous measurement of its
benefits and a main and continuous focus on people.
In the next issue I will present Social Network
Analysis (SNA) which is a powerful tool to reveal
Institutionalizing KM
Once a set of KM pilot projects the hidden ties and relationships that exist between
have demonstrated to be successful, people in a company. So stay tuned and once again,
the next challenge becomes to expand I will really value your feedback and questions by
KM across the organization. Such e-mail (in Thai or in English), Khop Khun Krap!
CIO WORLD&BUSINESS August 2009 55
Columnists
Dr.Vincent Ribiere (vince@vincentribiere.com)
Dr. Vincent is the Managing Director and co-founder of the South-East Asian branch of the
George Washington University Institute for Knowledge and Innovation (IKI-SEA) of Thailand
hosted by Bangkok University (http://iki.bu.ac.th).
Social Network Analysis
Organizations often use an organizational chart to describe how
they are structured and the different levels of responsibilities,
but does it really reflect how work gets done?
The answer is often, No! Figure 1 illustrates how
a company is formally structured (organizational
chart) and figure 2 represents how employees relate
to each other in order to do their work. As we can
see, the structure of both representations is quite
different. Informal networks of colleagues are often
the way work gets done in an organization. I will
come back to this example in more details later on
in this article. Figure 2 is the visual representation
of what we call a social network analysis (SNA).
SNA is a technique that was originally created
by Jacob Levy Moreno (1889-1974) – Inventor of
Sociogram (1930) during a research looking to
uncover the structure of friendship choices. He
mapped “liking” an “disliking” relationships among
500 girls in New York schools. This technique
52
CIO WORLD&BUSINESS January 2010
evolved and matured over the years to become
a powerful tool used to identify, understand and
visualize the social relationships (connections)
that exist between individuals which are part of a
group, community, company, department, village,
country, etc.
SNA should not be confused with Social Networking tools that currently support the Web 2.0
phenomenon. In fact, SNA could be used to understand how people connect/relate to each others in
a social networking environment (e.g., Facebook,
hi5, etc.). In 1967, Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted
a famous study in the US in which his main findings
was that everyone is connected to everyone by
an average of six intermediaries/connections (six
degrees of separation).
This finding could be extended to the population on the planet where everyone is connected to
anyone else in average by only 6 connections! If
we take a more concrete example, I am sure that
you and I are connected with just 2 or 3 degrees
of separation. If you leave in Thailand, you might
know someone who works or studies at Bangkok
University or at the IKI-SEA and this person is very
likely to know me or to know someone who knows
me, so we are just 2 or 3 degrees of separation
away! What a small world! Mapping and being
aware of social connections between people is a
powerful tool. Image in the business context, if you
are looking to approach a new client and you can
easily find someone you know who already knows
about the company or knows someone who works
for it then the first approach with the client will be
facilitated.
Professional social networking tools like Linkedin.com are based on this concept. Up to now, I
just focused on relationships of type “who knows
who” but other types of relationships/ties can be
analyzed. In an organization it might be interesting
to map and understand to whom people go to when
they need information to do their work, to whom do
they go to when they have a question or a problem
(knowledge seeking). Such type of analysis will
allow identifying who are the people who act as
connectors/hubs in your company.
These people are critical for your company
since they hold the network together. If we look at
figure 2, we can see that employee 3 is very central
to the network and that he serves as a connector
between members of department C and the other
departments (A and B). If employee 3 was going
to leave the company, the connection between
the departments will be lost and it might take time
to find someone that could serve as connector
Social Network Analysis
and who has the recognition and trust of all three
departments. Employee 3 did not seem to be a
very important person based on his position on the
organizational chart, but the social network analysis
(SNA) revealed how important he is to facilitate the
flow of information between various departments.
How did employee 3 happen to be in that strategic
position? Many hypotheses can be formulated,
maybe he previously worked in all departments, or
he has some close friends in other departments, in
fact it doesn’t really matter why? but what matters
is that we were able to identify him. If the question
asked to build the SNA was, “to who do you go to
when you need technical help or knowledge?”, then
we could conclude that employee 3 must possess
some strong technical expertise, or he might be
able to direct to people who have the requested
expertise.
So SNA can also be used to identify experts
in your company as well as informal communities
of practice. In some cases, employee 3 can be a
bottleneck to the smooth flow of information and
knowledge in your organization. What I mean by
that is that if everyone solicits employee 3 for help
and questions he might become overloaded with
requests and he might have to delay his answers. In
that particular case, a solution will be to find a way
for employee 3 to share some of his knowledge with
others in the organization so his load of requests
can be redirected to other employees. Mentoring
and tutoring can be a solution for the transfer of
tacit knowledge.
On the other end, it is equally important to identify employees who are peripheral to the network, for
example employee 8 and 0 in figure 2. These people
can be considered as “underutilized” resources
since they have very few connections with other
employees. They might feel isolated and might be
more likely to leave the company. So the goal is
to find a way to increase their level of connectivity by for instance involving them in projects with
people who are central to the network or very well
connected so they can more easily develop some
new connections.
A lot of different analyzes and indicators can be
performed on a relationship network. For example,
the density of a network indicates the degree to
which all employees are connected to each others.
The connections can be directional or none-directional (as figure 2). If you ask your employees who
do they trust in the company, employee A might trust
January 2010 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS
53
Social Network Analysis
Some software can be used to facilitate the data analysis as well
as the interpretation and visualization. Generally, data are collected
through a questionnaire distributed to all the employees of a department or of a company
employee B but employee B might not necessarily
trust employee A! Imagine how powerful such trust
analysis could be. Let’s say that you are in a period
of change/transition and you are trying to convince
your employees to support such change.
If you were able to easily identify who are the
most trusted person in your company and if you
could convince them to support your idea of change
then you could use them as role models (change
54
CIO WORLD&BUSINESS January 2010
agents) and they should be able to help convincing others. It is also possible to ask to what extent/
degree does a person trust another? Such information could be visually represented on the SNA
graph by making the connections (lines) between
employees thinner or thicker based on the degree
of trustworthiness.
Some software can be used to facilitate the
data analysis as well as the interpretation and vi-
sualization. Generally, data are collected through
a questionnaire distributed to all the employees of
a department or of a company. Employees will be
asked to list all the people that (they know or get
information from, or trust, etc.). This data will be
entered into a spreadsheet to form a matrix that
will be used as data source for the SNA tools. Tools
like UCINET and NetDraw (Free) are very popular
to conduct SNA.
An automated technique can also be used to
collect data about who interacts/communicates with
who in a company by mapping the internal flows
of emails in a company. Such data can easily be
collected from the organization email server by only
looking at the information located in the header of
emails (sender/recipient, no need to access the
content). Such analysis can be done at the individual level but also at the department or team level.
As you are starting to realize, SNA can be a
very powerful tool to better understand and manage
all kinds of social relationships that exist between
people in an organization. Through this article I
just tried to give you a sense of what SNA can do
for you but much more can be done. If you want
to know more about SNA, please do not hesitate
to contact us.
In the next issue I will talk about Communities of
Practice (CoP). So stay tuned and once again, I will
really value your feedback and questions by email
(in Thai or in English), Khop Khun Krap!
Columnists
Dr.Vincent Ribiere (vince@vincentribiere.com)
Dr.Vincent is the Managing Director and co-founder of the South-East Asian branch of the
George Washington University Institute for Knowledge and Innovation (IKI-SEA) of Thailand
hosted by Bangkok University (http://ikisea.bu.ac.th)
Communities of Practice
It is time to have cops in your organization! Not the policemen who will ensure that corporate rules and policies are
respected, but Communities of Practice (CoP)!
A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group of
people who share an interest, or a concern or a
passion related to an activity and who wants to
increase their knowledge or find solutions to problems by learning through interactions with people
having similar interests. Interactions can take place
in various forms. It can be done through discussions
and by sharing information, resources, knowledge,
ideas, best practices, tools, experience, tips, contact information, …
The concept of CoP is based on the theory of
social learning which considers learning as a life
continuous action which is activated every time
when one interacts/engages with others. It complements the common learning process which is mainly
individualistic, disconnected from other activities
and which takes place during well defined and
limited periods.
Enough of definitions, let’s see how CoP could
benefit your organization. Through my former
columns I emphasized the facts that KM should
be people centric and that the most important
knowledge of a company is tacit and mainly resides
in the head of its employees. Having said that, it
makes sense to develop organizational structures
so people can share and leverage their tacit
knowledge so that critical knowledge is not only
own by one particular individual (high risk). Some
organizations have adopted team based structures,
product oriented structures or matrix structures
in order to break silos between departments and
facilitate communication and collaboration among
employees. Such structures are usually very effective at achieving goals but concerns in term
of knowledge capture and knowledge sharing
are often limited or inexistent. Once the project/
endeavor is completed, members of the structure
might disband as well as the knowledge related to
the project! Furthermore, similar teams might face
similar issues but they have no ways to learn from
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CIO WORLD&BUSINESS May 2010
each others. As you can see, there is still a need
to improve such structures, not by adding another
layer or transversal formal structure but by creating
informal social structures centered around practices
where different people interested or involved with
a particular process, product, tool, technique, etc.
can learn from each other’s experiences and can
help each others.
Numerous organizations have already implemented CoP across all industries and have gained
some great benefits out of them, particularly in term
of performance, problem solving capability, learning
curve, innovation and knowledge capture (best
practices). For example, a manufacturing company
like Caterpillar (CAT) has more than 4,000 active
CoP, involving more than 40,000 people located in
various parts of the world. The “topic” associated
with each of them is very specific so people who
join them get to learn only what they are particularly interested in. For instance you could have a
community created around a particular part of a
bulldozer, let’s say a wheel. People who designed
that wheel, who manufactured it, who tested it,
who sold it, who bought it, who maintained it, could
join such community to share their experience,
problems, ideas, ask questions, etc. As another
example, you could have a CoP around a particular
aspect of quality assurance, let’s say six sigma.
Anyone having to implement six sigma in their unit,
project, ... can join to discuss issues and help and
learn from each others. Government organizations,
oil companies, banking and insurance companies,
consulting companies, manufacturing companies,
NGOs, etc. Have realized the value of CoP and it
will become one of your most effective tool if your
goal is to become a learning organization. Anyone
having a question, a problem or seeking for advice
or validation can ask the CoP members and receive
in a very rapid manner multiple answers, suggestions or links to resource that could help him/her
without wasting time having to re-invent the wheel
or making the wrong decision.
How to get started with CoP
CoP is not a new concept. Each of us is involved
to different extent in various types of informal CoP,
not only at work, but also in our daily life (e.g., parenting, hobbies, etc.). The goal becomes to identify
and to leverage the value attached to these social
relationships and to provide them with the tools
and environment necessary to operate effectively.
In my last month column I presented the concept
of Social Network Analysis (SNA). SNA are a very
useful tool to identify the current informal CoP present in a company.
Most of the CoP are based on voluntary participation. Employees should not be forced to join
any CoP, they can join if they see the value for them
(and they will rapidly do!). Some companies might
provide reward for CoP achievements but rarely at
the individual level.
Members of CoP are often internal to the organization but some CoP can be open to participation
from partners, clients, suppliers, retirees and even
sometime competitors (coopetition).
It is recommended to let the community members decide on the most appropriate way to manage
it. Too much formalization might reduce member’s
involvement and participation. Some CoP might
decide to meet face to face, some might be online,
some might use both approaches. Some CoP might
be very small, some very big and will sometime
even end up naturally splitting into smaller and more
focused CoP (or sub groups).
So to get started we will suggest to train and
raise awareness among your employees regarding
CoP. You don’t have to call them CoP, some companies call them “Tech clubs” or “learning community”.
Then you need to provide them the resources to be
able to operate as a CoP. Technology will be a great
Communities of Practice
CoP is currently one of the most popular KM
practice. It is easy to implement, it doesn’t require
a large budget and the tangible and intangible
benefits will emerge rapidly and significantly.
enabler of CoP particularly when the organization
has different locations and/or when employees
cannot easily physically meet (e.g., different shifts).
Various types of collaborative technologies can be
used to support CoP. Nowadays, Web 2.0 technologies will appear to be the best fit to support such
type of collaboration, communication and learning.
Two Web sites are dedicated to CoP technologies
(http://technologyforcommunities.com and http://
www.ewenger.com/tech/)
Once the CoP platform is in place, you could
start by creating some general key business related
CoP (e.g., purchasing), but letting people freely
creating their own CoP (personal domain of interest
/ practice) will be a better approach. People with
pre-existing relationships and/or friendships will
help to get a CoP started. There is usually no formal
structure in a CoP, they are loosely coordinated. But
there is often a leader (usually the creator) and some
recognized experts that help motivate, orient and
legitimize the community. IT is important but even
more importantly you need the support of managers
to let their employee dedicate some of their working
time to participate in the CoP. This is more a cultural
issue that will have to be addressed early on.
To fully and systematically take advantage of
the learning taking place in CoP and to leverage
the knowledge generated in them, their use should
be embedded in the business processes. Before,
during or after completing a project, participants
should consult the related CoP to find idea, solutions, advice, best practices, etc.
What do people do in CoP?
Members of CoP do not need to work together
they just need to be able to meet physically or virtually from time to time in order to share, interact
and learn from each others. They can then engaged
in problem solving, in information and knowledge
sharing, in discussions, in developing best practices, manuals, reference books, lessons learned,
in assessing new technologies and processes, in
brainstorming, in sharing contact info, in developing
most frequently asked questions, training and orientation manuals, defining standards, etc. All these
contributions will generate a valuable knowledge
repository for the company. New comers will be
able to rapidly learn from joining the CoP and will
gain some tacit and explicit knowledge from their
peers. I will conclude by one of the most important
benefits from CoP is that it helps members to socialize and to build trust. Trust is one of the most
important organizational lubricant that facilitates
communication, collaboration, creativity, initiative,
risk taking and sharing.
CoP is currently one of the most popular KM
practice. It is easy to implement, it doesn’t require
a large budget and the tangible and intangible
benefits will emerge rapidly and significantly. So
don’t wait any longer, start implementing CoP in your
company and if you need any help or recommendation the IKI-SEA team will be happy to advise you.
This article is based on various concepts, ideas
and experience developed by Etienne Wenger. If
you want to learn more about this topic I will recommend you to read one of his books on the topic.
Please do not hesitate to contact me, I will really
value your feedback and questions by email (in Thai
or in English), Khop Khun Krap!
โดยสังเขป...
CoP หรือ ชุมชนนักปฏิบัติ คือกลุ่มของผู้ที่มี
ความสนใจใคร่รู้ หลงใหลในกิจกรรมใดกิจกรรม
หนึ่ง และต้องการจะเพิ่มระดับความรู้ของตนเอง
ในเรือ่ งนัน้ ๆ หรือเพือ่ หาแนวทางในการแก้ไขปัญหา
ผ่านการเรียนรู้ด้วยการปฏิสัมพันธ์กับกลุ่มคนที่มี
ความสนใจร่วมกัน
สมาชิกอาสาสมัครของ CoP จะเข้ามามีส่วน
ร่วมในการแก้ปญ
ั หา การแบ่งปันความรูแ้ ละข้อมูล
การอภิปราย การพัฒนาแนวทางสู่การปฏิบัติที่
ดีที่สุด พัฒนาคู่มือ หนังสืออ้างอิง การสะท้อน
บทเรียน (Lesson Learned) การประเมินเทคโนโลยี
หรือกระบวนการใหม่ๆ การระดมสมอง การแบ่งปัน
ข้อมูลผู้ติดต่อ การพัฒนาหาค�ำตอบของปัญหาที่
มักจะได้รับการถามถึงบ่อยๆ การอบรมหรือการ
ปฐมนิเทศ การก�ำหนดมาตรฐาน และอื่นๆ
การร่วมแรงร่วมใจกัน เหล่านี้จะท�ำให้ความรู้
ที่มีคุณค่าได้ก่อเกิดและเก็บไว้กับบริษัท เมื่อมี
พนักงานใหม่มาร่วมงาน บุคคลผู้นั้นก็สามารถ
เรี ย นรู ้ แ ละพั ฒ นาความรู ้ ไ ด้ อ ย่ า งรวดเร็ ว ผ่ า น
ทางการเข้าเป็นสมาชิกของ CoP ด้วยการเก็บเกีย่ ว
ความรู้ชัดแจ้งและความรู้ซ่อนเร้นจากเพื่อนร่วม
งานใน CoP นั้นๆ
ประโยชน์ที่ส�ำคัญที่สุดประการหนึ่งของ CoP
ไม่ใช่เพียงแค่การทลายก�ำแพงข้อจ�ำกัดของการ
แบ่งปันความรู้ที่มักจะเกิดขึ้นเฉพาะในหน่วยงาน
หรือในแผนกเดียวกันเท่านั้น CoP ยังช่วยสร้าง
ความสัมพันธ์ระหว่างพนักงานในองค์กร และช่วย
สร้างความไว้เนื้อเชื่อใจซึ่งกันและกัน ซึ่งความ
เชื่อใจนี้จะเป็นเหมือนกาวประสานและผลักดันให้
คนในองค์การเกิดความร่วมมือ ร่วมแรงร่วมใจ ช่วย
เหลือซึง่ กันและกัน ส่งเสริมความคิดสร้างสรรค์และ
ความคิดริเริ่มใหม่ๆ ตลอดจนการร่วมกันตัดสินใจ
และร่วมรับผิดชอบในความเสี่ยง
CoP มีจดุ เด่นทีส่ ามารถน�ำไปปฏิบตั จิ ริงได้งา่ ย
และมีประโยชน์เป็นอย่างมากต่อองค์กร โดยเฉพาะ
อย่างยิง่ ส�ำหรับบริษทั ทีต่ อ้ งการจะพัฒนาตนเองให้
เป็นองค์กรแห่งการเรียนรู้
May 2010 CIO WORLD&BUSINESS
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