Knowledge management refers to identifying and leveraging the collective knowledge in an
organization to help the organization compete.
Topics with a (*) have been discussed during the lectures
Lecture 1 - Knowledge management in theory and practice & Knowledge management
process (Chapter 1 + 2)
Chapter 1: Introduction
A good definition of knowledge management incorporates both the capturing and storing of
the knowledge perspective, together with the valuing of intellectual assets. For example:
Knowledge management is the systematic coordination of an organization’s people,
technology, processes, and organizational structure in order to add value through reuse and
innovation. This coordination is achieved through creating, sharing, and applying knowledge
as well as through feeding the valuable lessons learned and best practices into corporate
memory in order to foster continued organizational learning.
Some typical KM objectives:
• Facilitate a smooth transition from those retiring to their successors who are recruited
to fill their positions.
• Minimize loss of corporate memory due to attrition and retirement.
• Identify critical resources and critical areas of knowledge so that the corporation
“knows what it knows and does it well—and why.”
• Build up a toolkit of methods that can be used with individuals, with groups, and with
the organization to stem the potential loss of intellectual capital.
Wiig (1993) considers knowledge management in organizations from three perspectives,
each from a different perspective:
1. Business Perspective: focusing on why, where, and to what extent the organization
must invest in or exploit knowledge. Strategies, products and services, alliances,
acquisitions, or divestments should be considered from knowledge-related points of
view.
2. Management Perspective: focusing on determining, organizing, directing,
facilitating, and monitoring knowledge-related practices and activities required to
achieve the desired business strategies and objectives.
3. Hands-on Perspective: focusing on applying the expertise to conduct explicit
knowledge-related work and tasks.
Three major components of KM:
Knowledge management provides benefits to individual employees, to communities of
practice, and to the organization itself. This three-tiered view of KM (see image below)
emphasizes why KM is important today.
Individuals own knowledge in containers → they become part of a community → the
community then produces content.
,*From Data to Knowledge:
• Data measurable, objective records, facts (e.g. it is -9 C outside today)
• Information meaningful, analyzed data but only within context (e.g. it can get cold in
winter in Montreal)
• Knowledge subjective, prescriptive, contradictory (I feel cold today; I remember...)
*Comparison of Tacit (Implicit) VS Explicit knowledge:
• Tacit: Unspoken rules difficult to put in words (e.g. emotions, experience).
“Tacitness” is a property of the knower: what is easily articulated by one person may
be very difficult to externalize by another. Is active knowledge (80-85%)
• Explicit: Generalized facts: content that has been captured in some tangible form
(e.g. words, images, recordings, videos). Is passive knowledge (15-20%)
Tacit (Implicit) Knowledge Explicit Knowledge
Ability to adapt, to deal with new and Ability to disseminate, to reproduce, to access,
exceptional situations and to re-apply throughout the organization, to
teach, to train
Expertise, know-how, know-why, and care- Ability to organize, to systematize, to translate a
why. Ability to collaborate, share a vision vision into a mission statement, into operational
guidelines
Coaching and mentoring to transfer Transfer of knowledge via products, services, and
experiential knowledge on a one-to-one, documented processes
face-to-face basis
Knowledge management includes leveraging the value of the organizational knowledge and
know-how that accumulates over time.
,This holistic approach is user-centered and begins not with an audit of existing documents
but with a needs analysis to better understand how improved knowledge sharing may
benefit specific individuals, groups, and the organization as a whole. Successful knowledge-
sharing examples are gathered and documented in the form of lessons learned and best
practices, and these then form the kernel of organizational stories. A number of other
attributes combine to make up a set of what KM should be all about. Using the concept
analysis technique is a good way to identify these attributes.
The concept analysis approach rests on obtaining consensus on three major dimensions of
a given concept:
1. A list of key attributes that must be present in the vision or mission statement.
2. A list of illustrative examples.
3. A list of illustrative nonexamples.
*Link between knowledge management and IT:
• Knowledge creation
• Knowledge storage/retrieval
• Knowledge transfer
• Knowledge application
*Knowledge Management Disciplines:
*It is absolutely essential to record as much context (metadata) as possible when managing
knowledge, such as historical context, technological context, and legal context.
• 1 Generation:
st
o “if we only knew what we know” IT
• 2 Generation:
nd
o “if we only knew who knows about….” PEOPLE
• 3 Generation:
rd
o “if we could only organize our knowledge….” CONTENT
*Three types of analytics:
• Descriptive Analytics, which use data aggregation and data mining to provide
insight into the past and answer: “What has happened?” – explicit
• Predictive Analytics, which use statistical models and forecasts techniques to
understand the future and answer: “What could happen?” - explicit and implicit
• Prescriptive Analytics, which use optimization and simulation algorithms to advice
on possible outcomes and answer: “What should we do?” - explicit and implicit
, *A paradigm shift of knowledge:
Human use knowledge to extract relevant information from data
vs.
Human use data to extract knowledge
*Business Data citizen: Person who creates, generates and supports business decision-
making, using business domain knowledge and data science tools and models. His/her
primary job function is outside the field of statistics and analytics. The business data citizen
works in any of the business domain exposed to the information/data domains within
organizations, companies or firms.
*A concluding model:
*Definitions of KM: don’t study them literally, just understand and recognize
*The words in blue are important and are the main point of the definition*
• KM is the systematic, explicit and deliberate building, renewal and application of
knowledge to maximize an enterprise’s knowledge-related effectiveness and returns
from knowledge assets (K. Wiig).
• KM is the process of capturing a company’s collective expertise wherever it
resides: in databases, on paper, in people’s heads – and distributing it to wherever
it can help produce the biggest payoff (Hibbard).
• KM is a systematic approach to manage the use of information in order to provide a
continuous flow of knowledge to the right people at the right time enabling efficient
and effective decision making in their everyday business (Payne & Britton, 2010).
• It is the attempt to recognize what is essentially a human asset buried in the minds of
individuals and leverage it into an organizational asset that can be accessed and
used by a broader set of individuals on whose decisions the firm depends. KM
applies systematic approaches to find, understand and use knowledge to
create value (O’Dell).
organization to help the organization compete.
Topics with a (*) have been discussed during the lectures
Lecture 1 - Knowledge management in theory and practice & Knowledge management
process (Chapter 1 + 2)
Chapter 1: Introduction
A good definition of knowledge management incorporates both the capturing and storing of
the knowledge perspective, together with the valuing of intellectual assets. For example:
Knowledge management is the systematic coordination of an organization’s people,
technology, processes, and organizational structure in order to add value through reuse and
innovation. This coordination is achieved through creating, sharing, and applying knowledge
as well as through feeding the valuable lessons learned and best practices into corporate
memory in order to foster continued organizational learning.
Some typical KM objectives:
• Facilitate a smooth transition from those retiring to their successors who are recruited
to fill their positions.
• Minimize loss of corporate memory due to attrition and retirement.
• Identify critical resources and critical areas of knowledge so that the corporation
“knows what it knows and does it well—and why.”
• Build up a toolkit of methods that can be used with individuals, with groups, and with
the organization to stem the potential loss of intellectual capital.
Wiig (1993) considers knowledge management in organizations from three perspectives,
each from a different perspective:
1. Business Perspective: focusing on why, where, and to what extent the organization
must invest in or exploit knowledge. Strategies, products and services, alliances,
acquisitions, or divestments should be considered from knowledge-related points of
view.
2. Management Perspective: focusing on determining, organizing, directing,
facilitating, and monitoring knowledge-related practices and activities required to
achieve the desired business strategies and objectives.
3. Hands-on Perspective: focusing on applying the expertise to conduct explicit
knowledge-related work and tasks.
Three major components of KM:
Knowledge management provides benefits to individual employees, to communities of
practice, and to the organization itself. This three-tiered view of KM (see image below)
emphasizes why KM is important today.
Individuals own knowledge in containers → they become part of a community → the
community then produces content.
,*From Data to Knowledge:
• Data measurable, objective records, facts (e.g. it is -9 C outside today)
• Information meaningful, analyzed data but only within context (e.g. it can get cold in
winter in Montreal)
• Knowledge subjective, prescriptive, contradictory (I feel cold today; I remember...)
*Comparison of Tacit (Implicit) VS Explicit knowledge:
• Tacit: Unspoken rules difficult to put in words (e.g. emotions, experience).
“Tacitness” is a property of the knower: what is easily articulated by one person may
be very difficult to externalize by another. Is active knowledge (80-85%)
• Explicit: Generalized facts: content that has been captured in some tangible form
(e.g. words, images, recordings, videos). Is passive knowledge (15-20%)
Tacit (Implicit) Knowledge Explicit Knowledge
Ability to adapt, to deal with new and Ability to disseminate, to reproduce, to access,
exceptional situations and to re-apply throughout the organization, to
teach, to train
Expertise, know-how, know-why, and care- Ability to organize, to systematize, to translate a
why. Ability to collaborate, share a vision vision into a mission statement, into operational
guidelines
Coaching and mentoring to transfer Transfer of knowledge via products, services, and
experiential knowledge on a one-to-one, documented processes
face-to-face basis
Knowledge management includes leveraging the value of the organizational knowledge and
know-how that accumulates over time.
,This holistic approach is user-centered and begins not with an audit of existing documents
but with a needs analysis to better understand how improved knowledge sharing may
benefit specific individuals, groups, and the organization as a whole. Successful knowledge-
sharing examples are gathered and documented in the form of lessons learned and best
practices, and these then form the kernel of organizational stories. A number of other
attributes combine to make up a set of what KM should be all about. Using the concept
analysis technique is a good way to identify these attributes.
The concept analysis approach rests on obtaining consensus on three major dimensions of
a given concept:
1. A list of key attributes that must be present in the vision or mission statement.
2. A list of illustrative examples.
3. A list of illustrative nonexamples.
*Link between knowledge management and IT:
• Knowledge creation
• Knowledge storage/retrieval
• Knowledge transfer
• Knowledge application
*Knowledge Management Disciplines:
*It is absolutely essential to record as much context (metadata) as possible when managing
knowledge, such as historical context, technological context, and legal context.
• 1 Generation:
st
o “if we only knew what we know” IT
• 2 Generation:
nd
o “if we only knew who knows about….” PEOPLE
• 3 Generation:
rd
o “if we could only organize our knowledge….” CONTENT
*Three types of analytics:
• Descriptive Analytics, which use data aggregation and data mining to provide
insight into the past and answer: “What has happened?” – explicit
• Predictive Analytics, which use statistical models and forecasts techniques to
understand the future and answer: “What could happen?” - explicit and implicit
• Prescriptive Analytics, which use optimization and simulation algorithms to advice
on possible outcomes and answer: “What should we do?” - explicit and implicit
, *A paradigm shift of knowledge:
Human use knowledge to extract relevant information from data
vs.
Human use data to extract knowledge
*Business Data citizen: Person who creates, generates and supports business decision-
making, using business domain knowledge and data science tools and models. His/her
primary job function is outside the field of statistics and analytics. The business data citizen
works in any of the business domain exposed to the information/data domains within
organizations, companies or firms.
*A concluding model:
*Definitions of KM: don’t study them literally, just understand and recognize
*The words in blue are important and are the main point of the definition*
• KM is the systematic, explicit and deliberate building, renewal and application of
knowledge to maximize an enterprise’s knowledge-related effectiveness and returns
from knowledge assets (K. Wiig).
• KM is the process of capturing a company’s collective expertise wherever it
resides: in databases, on paper, in people’s heads – and distributing it to wherever
it can help produce the biggest payoff (Hibbard).
• KM is a systematic approach to manage the use of information in order to provide a
continuous flow of knowledge to the right people at the right time enabling efficient
and effective decision making in their everyday business (Payne & Britton, 2010).
• It is the attempt to recognize what is essentially a human asset buried in the minds of
individuals and leverage it into an organizational asset that can be accessed and
used by a broader set of individuals on whose decisions the firm depends. KM
applies systematic approaches to find, understand and use knowledge to
create value (O’Dell).
