I have been hearing and reading about Knowledge Management for several months now and it appears to me that there is no clear cut definition on what Knowledge Management is.

How would you define Knowledge Management and where would Document Management and Records Management lie with respect to Knowledgement Management?

SpannMan

-- John Spann (spann.john@hq.navy.mil), August 12, 1998

Answers

Brian,

Thanks for the input. Do you think that an enterprise such as the Department of the Navy, being a "global" organization, can successfully implement an enterprise wide knowledge management solution, knowing the way the Navy and the Marine Corps are geographically located and partitioned?

SpannMan

-- John Spann (spann.john@hq.navy.mil), August 14, 1998.

in an Information Economy, knowledge is the most valuable resource; Knowledge Management (KM) is the practice of systematically acquiring, maintaining, analyzing, using, and sharing data, information, and knowledge by tearing down walls between corporate departments and between individuals, inside and outside the company; examples of KM include performing "knowledge audits" to pinpoint corporate intellectual assets, then spreading the knowledge throughout the corporation; creating an online directory detailing the expertise of individual workers and making it available to all employees; setting up Internet-based discussion groups and work teams to collaborate on problem-solving; and rewarding knowledge sharing by incorporating KM into employee performance elements

-- Brian Baker-Brent (baker.brian@hq.navy.mil), August 13, 1998.

The following definition comes from a carrier improvement initiative on knowledge sharing to reduce the cost of carrier maintenance.

Knowledge management is a set of emerging strategies and approaches to create, safeguard, and put to use a wide range of knowledge assets and to let these assetsflow to the right people at the right time so they can apply themto create more value for the enterprise.

(This is probably a composite of definitions from Tom Davenport, APQC, the carrier knowledge sharing team and any number of other sources.)

-- Dave McCarthy (dm_c1250@ports.navy.mil), November 10, 1998.

You might check the Knowledge Management Consortium Int'l, an association of professional KMers, at KM.org. KMCI is also the standards body for KMers--you will find its KM definition instructive. While not invalidating the above offered definitions, it will add a new insight. I chair the KMMethods Committee Most major cities have chapters, Washington DC (GWA) being the first. Meetings are second Tuesday each month, Sep - June. I'm President of GWA Chapter. Call with questions or email after checking KM.org (Chapters). 703/883-8815

-- Douglas Weidner (weidner_douglas@prc.com), June 04, 1999.