Developing a High- Performance Workforce
Practical Strategies for Exploiting
Knowledge in the Intelligent Enterprise
Management Briefings Executive Series
By Karin Breu & Geoff Smith
Financial Times / Prentice Hall
June 2002
ISBN: 0-273-66156-6
168 Pages, Illustrated
$197.50 paper original
OUT OF PRINT
Knowledge Management was heralded as the tool that would enable companies to pool the information contained in individual employees' heads. What it became was an expensive database that no one ever used. It failed because it didn't address the needs of managers or take account of the human element in passing information from one point to another.
This report, based on two major research projects, bridges the gap between knowledge management theory and practice, between the apparent potential and deliverable reality, between communication and conviction. As the report identifies, the key is for the developers of knowledge solutions to directly identify with the needs of their business users, rather than attempting to 'convert' them.
Contents include: A historical perspective on knowledge management. Presenting knowledge management in terms of the issues facing business today. The Need for Knowledge: A View across the Organization. Putting knowledge to the test: satisfying front line requirements. Putting People in the Picture: The Importance of Knowledge Communities. The Virtual Workplace: Structuring a Knowledge Portal. Sustaining Knowledge Management: Building for the Long Haul. Linking Knowledge Management to the Rest of the Business. Knowledge Management Technology: Choosing the Future
1. A historical perspective on knowledge management. Examining the origins of knowledge management. Total quality management. The learning organization. The adaptive enterprise. The people-centered organization. The concept of intellectual capital. Knowledge as a flow. The personal perspective on knowledge. Linking tacit and explicit knowledge. Giving knowledge management a new script. Summary.
2. Presenting knowledge management in terms of the issues facing business today: The Internet imperative: get connected. Winning business. Giving customers what they want. Keeping your employees. Profitability of the business. Staying ahead of the competition.
3. The Need for Knowledge: A View across the Organization. Preaching to the converted? Where knowledge should deliver benefit. Good News, Bad News?
4. Putting knowledge to the test: satisfying front line requirement. Understanding what sales need to know. Helping sales get to know their customers. Helping sales to win . A starting point for knowledge management. Driving knowledge to maximize value extraction. Getting a return from knowledge exploitation.
5. Putting People in the Picture: The Importance of Knowledge Communities. Creating a Knowledge-Sharing Culture The Knowledge Environment: Nature versus Nurture? The Key Components of Community. Managing Communities: Not too Little, Not too Much. The Management of Content Value. The Value of Content Management. Making the Organization Learn. Managing the Knowledge Community. The Relevance of Taxonomy.
6. The Virtual Workplace: Structuring a Knowledge Portal .Integrating People, Systems and Knowledge. Information: Feast or Famine? Personalized Portals, Impersonal Intranets? My Portal is My Environment.
7. Sustaining Knowledge Management: Building for the Long Haul. Getting the Message Across. Proactive Knowledge Management: Driving Knowledge Exploitation from the Centre. The Knowledge Management Team. Creating and Sustaining the Business Case. Aligning Knowledge Management Services with business demands. Picking up the Bill for Knowledge Management.
8. Linking Knowledge Management to the Rest of the Business. The Big Picture: Talking the Same Language. Strategy and Planning: Managing Change. The Relevance to Marketing and Communication. Human Resources Training, Development and Quality Functions. Research, Development and Innovation. Sales and Customer Service. Information Technology.
9. Knowledge Management Technology: Choosing the Future. The Technology Debate: Chicken or Egg? What has been Learnt? What Characterizes Successful Knowledge Management Technologies? Emerging Technologies. Emergence of the Enterprise Knowledge System. Postscript: Knowledge in the Virtual Enterprise
Appendices:
The Cranfield 2000 Knowledge Exploitation Survey
The Cranfield 1998 Knowledge Management Survey
Questionnaire for Knowledge Exploitation Survey 2000
Questionnaire for Knowledge Management Survey 1998