Knowledge Technologies - Knowlogies

Knowledge Management is an emerging discipline that promises to capitalize on organizations’ intellectual capital. The concept of knowledge is far from new and phrases containing the word knowledge such as “knowledge bases” and “knowledge engineering” have been around for a while. The artificial intelligence (AI) community has, for example, long dealt with representation, storage, and application of knowledge. The concept of Knowledge Management (KM) emerged in the mid-1980’s from the need to derive knowledge from the “deluge of information”. In the 1990’s KM was translated into commercial computer technology, facilitated by new technologies such as Internet, group support systems, search engines, portals, and data and knowledge warehouses as well as the application of statistical analysis and AI techniques. According to various research “80 percent of the largest global corporations now have KM projects”. “Over 40 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies now have a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO), a senior-level executive responsible for creating an infrastructure and cultural environment for knowledge sharing”.

Like any other buzzword, the term “Knowledge Management” is sometimes over-used and misused. A senior analyst at the marketing research firm Ovum says: “I think vendors did KM a great disservice by labeling every tool that came out as KM. People got disillusioned with it”.

So, is knowledge management one of those hyped concepts that rise quickly, ambitiously claims to cure organizational headaches and then fails and falls quietly? Or is it an instrument that will really help organizations address some of the problems they face while trying to achieve their business objectives? In particular, is knowledge management valuable to knowledge intensive organizations? What kind of problems can KM help address and solve? What kind of solutions does KM propose to these problems? How can a KM system for a knowledge intensive organization be implemented? What are the challenges? What are the success factors?

KNOWLOGIES will focus on all these issues. Keep a tab on this blog. I also welcome participation from all the readers out there. In the real language of Knowledge Management, I am asking all the readers to explicitize their tacit knowledge.