Can knowledge management be used for strategic advantage?

Yes. Knowledge management focuses more on the effectiveness more than efficiency. Knowledge management is multidisciplinary and draws on aspects of science, interpersonal communication, organizational learning, cognitive science, motivation, training, and publishing and business process analysis.

Knowledge management is a systematic process of harnessing and leveraging individual and collective knowledge available in the organization by connecting people to people and people to the knowledge and information they need to act effectively and efficiently to create new knowledge. The ability to share knowledge, ideas, perspectives, and solutions among collaborators, represents possibly the greatest strategic advantage any organization can achieve. Organization can move into the future with confidence, and will be mostly ahead of the market as decisions taken are based on a knowledge base.

How to motivate individuals to do knowledge sharing?

To motivate individuals to share their knowledge, we need to influence them positively and this is truly an “art”. We need to master this and apply it in our daily life. The reward effect is a vital and critical element in pure knowledge management. The average organizational reward system causes people not to acknowledge knowledge management initiatives, which, is one of the reasons that a significant proportion of such initiatives fail.
Any thoughts on how to motivate for knowledge sharing?

Knowledge organisations

If knowledge is a resource, then companies must be able to manage it, just as they manage more traditional resource, like capital, supplies, real estate and personnel. The shift in today’s business environment, where the market place is increasingly competitive and the rising rate of innovation, have made enterprises realize that knowledge is their key asset. Innovation occurs at the cross-point of knowledge and people.
Companies are being called ‘knowledge organizations’ as we move from managing information to managing knowledge.

Knowledge management and innovation

Knowledge Management (KM) is the new management concept to view old business realities through a new angle. Its ambiguity causes KM to be dismissed by some and embraced by others as a transforming agent. Despite its vagueness of definition and the healthy skepticism by some, KM is first and foremost a new way of looking at and understanding innovation, stimulated by the significant changes in the organizational environment.

Recognizing pattern for infant mortality of Knowledge Management Systems (KMS)

I have had the privilege of designing and deploying KMS and the opportunity to speak to many KMS Heads in companies (mostly information technology companies in India) on the early phases of KMS in their respective companies. In my experience I see a pattern emerging for infant mortality of KMS in many of these companies. I propose to describe this in 2-phases: 1. The enthusiastic phase and 2. The justification phase. Both these phases happen roughly in about 24 months from the initiation of KMS.
1. The enthusiastic phase- In one of the strategy meeting the CEO and the Management team agree that Knowledge Management (KM) is very important for the success of the company. This idea is checked with the Product Heads and R&D Head for their inputs. As usual the Product Heads and R&D Head tag the lines of the CEO and Management team. After this an expert in KM is identified from inside the company or hired laterally as Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) to setup and drive the KM initiative. The CKO is asked to form the KM team, which he does with lots of enthusiasm. The team comprises of people mostly from within the company who were earlier working in projects and have little idea of KM. The team is enthusiastic and energetic as they get to present to the senior management on the development of KMS like- design of the KM system (mostly it is KM portal), reward mechanism for contributing to knowledge repository, internal branding, etc. The first six months is full of activities for the CKO and the KM team. KM-portal gets developed, posters on KM are put-up, and the CEO and CKO talk on the KM initiative at various forums.
2. The justification phase- Approximately 18 months later. I meet the CKO (that is if he is still there). His enthusiasm of the KMS seems to have evaporated. The KM team is now about one-third. CKO tells me how the projects people did not show interest in using the KM portal as they did not have the time as they had more than enough problems to fix or they had to deliver on immediate business requirements. The CKO is also angry that some of his key team members were moved back to projects. This has de-motivated rest of the KM team and they are contemplating to move back into projects. The CKO feels that the Product Heads could have mandated use of KM portal, by asking their team members to put the artifacts and re-use solutions/artifacts available in the KM repository instead of recreating the solutions/artifacts. Try to speak to the CEO about KM, the personal assistant tells me that he is very busy or is traveling. The impression I get is that the CEO is not very keen to talk on the subject. Speak to a few members of the Management team about the KM initiative they tell me that KM initiative had got their full support, but they did not see anything tangible coming out… Some of them say it may be early to expect tangible results.
In my experience when these kind of pattern emerge it means that KM will not succeed and will see an eventual death. Do you recognize this pattern and do you agree of the consequence?