Definition of Knowledge Management

There are several different, and sometimes quite confusing statements that claim to be a definition of Knowledge Management' and there are different perspectives on what Knowledge Management is. For example:

▪ KM is about systems and technologies

▪ KM is about people and learning organisations

▪ KM is about processes, methods and techniques

▪ KM is about managing knowledge assets

▪ KM is a holistic initiative across the entire organisation

▪ KM is not a discipline, as such, and should be an integral part of every knowledge workers daily responsibilities

What is most important, is for you to have your own definition of Knowledge Management; what KM is to you and your organisation. What is even more important is that you and your colleagues have a 'common shared understanding' of what KM means for you all.

To help you get started, we have included immediately below a few definitions of what KM means to some organisations. We suggest you consider them, together with any other definitions you may have, and see if there are any words or phrases that particularly 'resonate' with what you are trying to do. This will help you formulate your own definition of knowledge management.

At the end of this page, we invite you to share with us all, any definitions you have discovered and/or formulated. We can then all comment and rate the usefulness of each definition as we wish. This then provides us, at the bottom of this page, with a list of KM Definitions, listed in highest rated/ranked order, to help us even further. So please share your definitions and/or any comments or rating to definitions.

Some well known KM Definitions

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"If only HP knew what it knows it would make three times more profit tomorrow"

Lew Platt, ex CEO Hewlett Packard

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Knowledge Management is the discipline of enabling individuals, teams and entire organisations to collectively and systematically create, share and apply knowledge, to better achieve their objectives"

Ron Young, CEO/CKO Knowledge Associates International

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Most activities or tasks are not one-time events. Whether its drilling a well or conducting a transaction at a service station, we do the same things repeatedly. Our philosophy is fairly simple: every time we do something again, we should do it better than the last time".

Sir John Steely Browne, BP, Harvard Business Review, 1997.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"The capabilities by which communities within an organisation capture the knowledge that is critical to them, constantly improve it and make it available in the most effective manner to those who need it, so that they can exploit it creatively to add value as a normal part of their work"

GlaxoSmithKline

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Knowledge management will deliver outstanding collaboration and partnership working. It will ensure the region maximizes the value of its information and knowledge assets and it will help its citizens to use their creativity and skills better, leading to improved effectiveness and greater innovation".

West Midlands Regional Observatory, UK

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"We recognise that our most important asset is people and their knowledge. We understand Knowledge Management (KM) as the cultivation of an environment within which people are willing to share, learn and collaborate together leading to improvement".

Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"Knowledge Management ('KM') comprises a range of practices used by organisations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge. It has been an established discipline

since 1995 with a body of university courses and both professional and academic journals dedicated to it. Many large companies have resources dedicated to Knowledge Management, often as a part of 'Information Technology' or 'Human Resource Management' departments. Knowledge Management is a multi-billion dollar world wide market.

Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organisational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage innovation, lessons learnt transfer (for example between projects) and the general development of collaborative practices. Knowledge Management is frequently linked to the idea of the learning organisation although neither practice encompasses the other. Knowledge Management may be distinguished from Organisational Learning by a greater focus on specific knowledge assets and the development and cultivation of the channels through which knowledge flows"

Wikipedia

What is Knowledge Management?

Although, throughout history, we have always managed our knowledge as best we could, it was the introduction of some new tools, new methods, new processes and new strategies that enabled us to think, for the first time, very differently about knowledge, and how to make some substantial improvements in the way we manage knowledge, as individuals, teams, organizations, and between organizations. We started to realise that there are now some radical and fundamentally new ways to accelerate learning and knowledge processes.

During the early 1990's we started to think more about the knowledge processes of identifying, creating, storing, sharing and applying knowledge.

KM Definitions

A good way to start to understand what we mean by the term knowledge management is to consider a popular definition.

"Knowledge Management is the discipline to enable individuals, teams, organizations and communities, more collectively and systematically capture, store, share and apply their knowledge, to achieve their objectives."

What is new here?

What is new is that there are now much better ways that we can do this 'more collectively' and 'more systematically'.

But there are several different approaches to knowledge management, so we recommend that you :

Click here for a list of popular KM definitions

KM Fundamentals eBook

Read the transcript (slides and text) of a one day KM seminar presented by Ron Young CEO of Knowledge Associates, together with delegate questions and answer session.

KM Fundamentals ebook

4 Dimensions of Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management is a holistic discipline that asks everybody to take personal responsibility and accountability for their knowledge. In other words,

'Knowledge Management is for everyone'

To successfully implement knowledge management initiatives, it is necessary to consider, at least, 4 key dimensions of KM:

1. Personal Knowledge Management

2. Team Knowledge Management

3. Organizational Knowledge Management

4. Inter-Organizational Knowledge Management

You may also be interested in a 5th dimension of knowledge management

Global Knowledge Management

Have you ever sat back for a few moments and thought about what is happening with knowledge management, collectively, around the world?

Imagine that you wake up one day to discover that you have been appointed as the 'Chief Knowledge Officer' of Planet Earth!

What would you see?

You would see a rapidly growing internet and World Wide Web. In January 2010 we were told by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet, that there are, at least 1 trillion public web pages (1,000,000,000,000 pages). The World Wide Web is radically and fundamentally changing the way we create, share and apply knowledge and knowledge economics.

You would see a blogsphere of hundreds of millions of bloggers writing and sharing their ideas, insights, learnings, knowledge, jokes and information.

You would see millions of people engaged in 'massive collaboration' in creating and improving knowledge on wiki's for millions of other people to access and apply.

You would see hundreds of millions of people sharing pictures and videos in services like Facebook and Linkedin.

You would see hundreds of millions of people sharing their details and building relationships in social networks like Facebook.

Millions would be tweeting from mobile phones all over the world about everything.

Hundreds of millions of people would be searching for information they need.

And most, if not all of this, would be freely provided by service providers storing and organizing your data and information 'in the cloud', that is, hosted and managed on their own servers 'somwhere'.

This is simply a staggering example of some of the things that are happening across the planet to accelerate and improve our planetary knowledge.This is global knowledge management at its greatest.

So, in this section of the website, we will gradually build and share our knowledge about global knowledge management.

This is a continual work in progress but please come back and visit these pages from time to time. One thing is for sure. Global knowledge management will develop and grow exponentially.

We start off by looking at:

Hi,friends this is final inivitation from students knowledge management classes will start tomorow 9.30 am at AER please utilise opertunity