From Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and Beyond

As the internet has matured we have been introduced to terms such as Web 1.0, Web 2.0 Web 3.0 and Web 4.0. The question on my mind are these terms just buzz words, a result of cleaver marketing, or do these terms have true meaning? Let’s for the purpose of this blog post take the stance that these terms have true meaning. In doing so let’s examine the evolution of the web, and the concepts being covered by the above mentioned terms.
At the beginning of the Web we had Web 1.0. According to Jonathan Strickland of “HowStuff Works”and techopedia, Web 1.0 exact definition is up for debate. However, what we do know is that Web 1.0 provided static web pages with minimal linking and search capabilities.

Web 2.0 is where we firmly find ourselves in today. Web 2.0 is about socialization! People publishing to each other to inform, work and socialize with one another. This included social networks, group workspaces such as communities of practices. In Web 2.0, the websites are more responsive and search technologies improved to enable improved searching and sharing of information. This is detailed by Daniel Nations Web Trends article on About.Com and Tim O’Reilly.

In Web 3.0 the focus is on people and how they interact with each other through the web. Web 3.0 moves towards providing intelligence, which includes semantic/natural language search, location awareness and recommendation engines. According to Daniel Nations Web Trends article on About.Com we should be entering into Web 3.0 sometime in 2015.

What about, do I dare say… Web 4.0? According to Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd’s article “The Ultra-Intelligent Electronic Agent is Coming”, they mention that the device to leverage Web 4.0 does not yet exist, but the concept does. The concept includes an advance level of intelligence that will not only provide you with information but knowledge that will enable the device to make decisions for you and/or present you with viable options.

Web 3.0 semantic technology concepts are beginning to show up as search mechanisms in commercial products. According to Eric Savitz’s article in Forbs semantic search is being leverage in Database Management, Drug Discovery, Travel, and Human Capital Management. I believe that the underlining theme in the evolution of the web will heavy rely on the evolution of the advancement of search and leveraging it to provide knowledge to its users. Whatever, the future looks like for the Web, I am confident that there will be people exploring concepts and developing tools that will deliver the promise that Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 presents.

Knowledge Management for Research Institutions - Webinar

On Wednesday April 17th, there will be a 60 minute webinar detailing the use of Knowledge Management (KM) at and for research departments and/or institutions. The following is a brief description of the webinar:

Research Institutions are critical to innovation and new product creation. The speeds to market for new products are essential to stay ahead of your competitors. Knowledge Management (KM) plays a central role not only from the perspective of innovation by knowing what has been done and/or what is being done in other areas of research that can be utilized, but also from the collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers contributing to the speed of new products to market.

At its core the nature of research is to nurture open access to extensive amounts of tacit knowledge (knowledge within the minds of people) and explicit knowledge (knowledge that is written down) by applying a model that reflects the natural of flow of knowledge. The model of Connect – Collect ---Reuse and Learn depicts a knowledge flow model that supports KM within research institutions and R&D functions within organizations. For KM to work within a research environment (as with other environments) a culture and structure that supports, rewards and proves the value KM can bring will encourage the continued use and adoption of the KM practice.

In addition the choice of IT tools (which is of secondary importance) should be brought in to the organization to automate the knowledge flow and its associated process. The KM tool(s) must support KM goals/strategies, provide a means to connect, collect, catalog, access, and reuse tacit and explicit knowledge. In addition the KM tool(s) must capture new learning to share across the organization, and provide search and retrieval mechanisms to bring pertinent knowledge to the user.

This webinar will cover the KM strategy, techniques, best practices and application of KM necessary for research institutions to innovate more effectively and shorten the time to bring new products to market.

In a previous blog post I covered KM at Research Institutions and this topic will be presented in depth in my next book Knowledge Management in Practice. For more information click on KM for Research Institutions link. I look forward to your questions and comments.

KM in 2013

Now that we are firmly into 2013 lets take a look at what is trending in Knowledge Management (KM) this year. With the proliferation of mobile devices (IPhone, Chromebook, IPad, Android Devices) Personal KM is moving front and center. In the enterprise as more and more content and knowledge gets created and the need to access and use that knowledge and content to address day-to-day knowledge needs of workers and customers (see Big Data), providing knowledge quickly to address internal and external users as well as search and findability are getting much attention within organizations implementing KM. Let's take a look at what some others are indicating the trends will be for KM in 2013: Matthew Whalley - ClientKnowledge Manager (Legal Services), talks about "helping clients to realize efficiencies and knowledge gains, the growing realization that KM delivers more than "documents" providing  “operational” efficiency, transaction delivery, knowledge re-use and transformation, and technology – social and mobile channels"; SAP indicates that "defining a knowledge management strategy, structuring content and measuring business impact as well as reaching external leadership are becoming more and more important"; KMWorld indicates that the focus is on sharing collective knowledge and on KM strategy more so than the technology.

These are some thoughts on what to expect regarding KM for 2013. So, what do you think? I look forward to hearing more about what other organizations and individuals are doing with KM in 2013!

Anatomy of a KM Project - By Bruce Fransen (Guest Blogger)

Doin’ Time* somewhere south of Normal…

Time = KM Time

 

Similarities between Knowledge Management (KM) and “other kind of time”

      Confined to small space with other detainees…..

 

         Most others don’t know what you do (or why)…

 

         Time is not an enemy but a constant challenge…

 

         Unable to leave until requirements are fulfilled…

 

         Having done time, KMer will never be the same…

Are you doin’ time? We would like to hear from you….

Bruce Fransen

Knowledge Management Consultant

b_fransen@comcast.net

 

Power Directed

If knowledge is power, than Knowledge management is “Power Directed”!

The essence of Knowledge Management comes through when we share what we know. When applied in its various forms (tacit and explicit) as well as in the specific types of knowledge (procedural, and propositional/declarative) it can have a lasting effect. The power being directed when leveraging knowledge management not only comes from sharing what we know but also from being experts in our chosen field. Being an expert in your field will distinguish you as a thought leader and key knowledge holder. These experts are to be utilized whenever possible and will be the catalyst for keeping order, providing effective decision making, and enabling organizations and its people to be successful.

If the recent NFL Referee strike and subsequent settlement taught us anything is that expertise counts and knowledge is power. In order to settle the NFL Referee strike that power (the referees knowledge and expertise) became the catalyst to drive the NFL Owners to come to an agreement.

In this season of political change throughout the world as seen through the Occupy Movement, and now the pending US Presidential elections, sharing knowledge and acting on this knowledge will influence the world for generations to come.

Briefing soldiers through lessons learned when one group returns from a mission to be replaced by another; when a parent teaches their children those “life lessons” from their experience; in the preparedness, response, and recovery by emergency personnel when a crisis or natural disaster strikes; in understanding what knowledge is needed to drive organizational decision making and response to customers; and when researchers combine what they know in order to discover cures and/or treatment to disease and sickness (I can go on and on!) are all examples of Power Directed! These examples illustrate the power of knowing and directing knowledge has the power to shape the world in which we live.

I am interested in hearing how you have directed your knowledge to make a positive change, provided an impact to your organization, and/or enhancing the knowledge of someone else to provide direction and/or to assist that person in making decisions. Remember, knowledge itself cannot not exhibit power until it is put to use.

KM applied to Disaster Response

As the US begins to recover from the aftermath of hurricane Issac, I am reminded of how Knowledge Management (KM) can be used to respond to disasters such as these. The lack of response or the inadequate nature of the response has lead to a need to increase the effectiveness and efficiencies of first responders. Due to the nature of their work Disaster Response Teams (DRT), are usually first to arrive in a crisis situation.  KM applied to DRT's, in particular first responders will enable the DRT's to arrive at the scene in a more timely manner, be equipped with the right knowledge of the situation and have the right tools and technology to execute their job, putting them in a position to save lives.
When a disaster occurs first responders often do not arrive in a timely manner, are not fully aware of the situation and are not fully equipped to handle the situation. Applying KM to DRT first responders will not only save the lives of the people in the community, but in many cases the response teams themselves. When fully knowledgeable of the situation they are responding to, the team will increase the confidence of the community by delivering a faster more efficient response, assuring the community that they will receive the help they need. Applying KM must begin with a comprehensive KM strategy that promotes a proactive stance and preparation before disaster strikes! 
Knowledge management is not a "silver bullet", however I believe it will make a difference. As always I'm interested in receiving and responding to all comments on this post...  be safe!

 

Knowledge Management in the Military

Knowledge Management (KM) in the United States (US) Military has been implemented using a top down approach that is resonated through each branch, command, directorate, division, group, battalion, etc. The US Military has established a culture of KM that leverages its personnel, processes and systems to facilitate a consistent flow of knowledge and the mechanisms to execute and make decisions from this knowledge.

It is widely acknowledged that knowledge management (KM) strategy is a desired precursor to developing specific KM initiatives. The US Military has established KM Strategies from the top down in every branch. As this strategy is propagated and aligned through the organization it is often a difficult process due a variety of influences and constraints. These KM influences and constraints include understanding, conflicts with IT organizations, funding, technology usage and configuration, and outsourcing.

Each US Military branch works to overcome barriers to KM adoption. To this effort an establishment of processes and tools, which involves providing approaches and solutions for knowledge sharing has influenced a change in people’s habits. This change will drive values to move US Military organization culture father to overall KM adoption. In support of the US Military in its knowledge sharing efforts, Communities of Practice (CoP) have become an integral method of sharing and distributing knowledge across all branches of the military. In addition enterprise web search capabilities have been implemented to increase “findability” of key content, which is leverage for decision making at all levels of command.

Continuing KM Challenge of BRAC

The US Military has a KM challenge involving Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC). The BRAC specifically represents the challenge of capturing knowledge both tacit and explicit before it leaves a command from personnel shifts and loss due to a BRAC move. The US Military has already experienced this knowledge loss and unless steps are taken at least a year in advance of a BRAC move, this loss will continue to happen. The loss of knowledge has the potential to compromise mission activities and the soldier in theater. Leveraging the US Military’s ability to share knowledge through its established process and tools will help lessen the adverse impact of this knowledge loss. However, without process and tools to capture, catalog, and reuse knowledge, the US Military will be challenged to keep the various commands fully operational and effective long term for the solider in theater.

I am interested to hear from our men and women across the military, this includes active, inactive, reservist as well as civilian personnel who have worked or are currently working with KM. I would like you to share your thoughts about how you are utilizing KM and/or if you feel KM is/will be a benefit for you!

Aligning KM and ITIL Process

Knowledge Management (KM) is taken hold in many organizations. The implementation of KM will depend on how the organization views and leverages its knowledge assets (people, process and technology). Processes such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) are recognizing the value of KM and incorporating its concepts within the ITIL framework. The alignment of ITIL and KM occurs specifically through its Problem Management and Service Management processes.  This alignment emerges through ITIL’s latest version, ITIL v3.

Knowledge Management in ITIL v3 was added as a new central process. This one central process is responsible for providing knowledge to all other IT Service Management processes. In ITIL v3, KM becomes a requirement within the processes of Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operations and Continual Service Improvement.  As indicated in ITIL Wiki, “ITIL Knowledge Management aims to gather, analyze, store and share knowledge and information within an organization. The primary purpose of Knowledge Management in ITIL is to improve efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge” (ITIL Wiki, 2012).

The Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) serves as the mechanism to facilitate KM within ITIL. The SKMS as stated by ITIL “is the central repository of the data, information, and knowledge that the IT organization needs to manage the lifecycle of its services” (ITIL Wiki, 2012). However there are shortcomings of how KM has been integrated within the ITIL. These shortcomings have contributed to knowledge being defined inconsistently, which includes a lack of defined and measurable metrics. This identifies the fact that ITIL lacks a sufficient Knowledge Management Strategy. For Knowledge Management to work with ITIL v3 it must be integrated with industry recognized Knowledge Management Best Practices.

To mitigate these shortcomings the primary activity will be to provide a Knowledge Management Strategy. The focus of this strategy must be to identify and support the service management needs of the business and associated IT environments currently and one to three years out. Next step will be to create a historical repository of incidents to support the service desk and incident and problem management processes. This knowledge repository will be difficult to develop unless the organization has kept historical records of incidents. However if no historical information is available, it’s no time like the present to start this process and be sure to include incident/problem resolutions and associated fixes. In addition integrating KM into Incident, Event, Request, and Access Management as well as Problem, and Release and Deployment Management processes will be essential to establishing a consistent and structured problem solving framework, as well as environment of accountability and responsibility.

In addition to mitigating the shortcomings of ITIL as mention earlier, the following activities will contribute greatly to successfully integrate Knowledge Management into your ITIL process:

-          Establish a culture of sharing and collaboration within your organization

-          Establish a vision of what Knowledge Management means to your organization

-          Establish how your organization will view and leverages its knowledge assets (people, process and technology)

-          Develop and execute a change management process to support your organization through this alignment and to ensure adoption occurs across the enterprise.

For those who are utilizing ITIL and KM I would like to hear from you! Feel free to provide your comments.

Knowledge Management in the Legal Profession

Knowledge Management (KM) in law firms has taken off in recent years. Where it’s not only a requirement to have KM experience, a KM Certification (or formal Degree), most law firms are requiring that the candidate also have a JD. The requirement for a JD may not be as stringent at corporations that are looking for KM resources within their legal departments; they usually look for candidates with KM and/or a Library Sciences background. All of this is fueled by the fact that KM enables Legal Organizations to respond quickly, efficiently and effectively when it comes to servicing its customers.

As discussed in a previous blog post Knowledge Management in Law Firms, “Law firms focus centers around client relationships and understanding the clients' legal needs. These needs can range from but not limited to litigation, intellectual property, criminal, divorce, and bankruptcy. In understanding what a client needs the law firm partner has to determine who would be the best (lawyer/lawyers) to address specific needs of the client and how can they effectively and efficiently handle these needs. Therefore knowledge around servicing the client would be a good start for the KM Strategy to focus. The KM Strategy should address the knowledge needs, processes, initiatives and tools that will increase the performance of the staff and provide outstanding services and increase revenue of the firm”.

Some of the benefits KM has for legal professionals and firms are:

-   The ability through expertise locators to quickly build teams to address cases and client situations

-    The ability through Search Engine Optimization techniques (taxonomies, ontology’s and associated Information Architectures for legal information and knowledge objects) to improve retrieval of case history, enable associations of related cases and rulings, as well as locate knowledge resources (SME’s) based on knowledge objects that are retrieved

-   Share, Collaborate, and Store communication around intellectual capital

-   Mentor and cross train new, associate, and experienced lawyers

-   Manage and expand the talent and experiences of lawyers at the firm  

A couple of good resource to look at about KM in Law are, Legal Research and Writing and Knowledge Management in Legal Departments. I am interested to hear from lawyers, law firms, and other legal entities about how you are utilizing KM and/or if you feel KM is/will be a benefit for you!

Knowledge Management (KM) in Research Institutions

In a previous post I wrote about KM for Collaboration and Innovation, and in this post I pointed out that research areas are critical to new product creation and the speed to market for new products are essential to stay ahead of your competitors. KM plays a central role not only from the perspective of innovation by knowing what has been done and/or what is being done in other areas of research that can be utilized, but also from the collaboration and knowledge sharing among researchers contributing to the speed of new products to market.

At its core the nature of research is to nurture open access to extensive amounts of tacit knowledge (knowledge within the minds of people) and explicit knowledge (knowledge that is written down) by applying a model that reflects the natural of flow of knowledge. The model of Connect – Collect ---Reuse and Learn depicts a knowledge flow model that supports KM within research institutions and R&D functions within organizations. For KM to work within a research environment (as with other environments) a culture and structure that supports, rewards and proves the value KM can bring will encourage the continued use and adoption of the KM practice.

In addition the choice of IT tools (which is of secondary importance) should be brought in to the organization to automate the knowledge flow and its associated process. The KM tool(s) must support KM goals/strategies, provide a means to connect, collect, catalog, access, and reuse tacit and explicit knowledge. In addition the KM tool(s) must capture new learning to share across the organization, and provide search and retrieval mechanisms to bring pertinent knowledge to the user.

For those who are working in or interacting with research institutions and/or R&D departments I want to hear from you. I look forward to hearing your perspective on what KM is bringing to your world of research!

KM in Specific Industries

Over the next few weeks I will examine several industries in which knowledge management (KM) is making an impact. I will take a brief look at Customer Service Centers, Research Institutions, Talent Management, Legal Institutions and the Military. In this blog post I will take a look at what’s happening with KM as it pertains to Customer Service Centers.

Customer Service Centers are looking to leverage their knowledge assets, KM processes and tools in order to get knowledge to the customer service rep to convey to the customer or directly to the customer in a timely manner. The KM concepts of collaboration through live chat, content management and search as well as KM workflows and expertise locators to enable the “right” resources to solve customer problems are being deployed.

Used properly, knowledge assets with the proper KM tools will enable the customer service centers to not only answer customer questions and solve problems but also increase sales and customer satisfaction through an improved customer experience. KM being leveraged at Customer Service Centers achieve the following:

Lower service cost by reducing repeat calls, call handling/resolution times, and brings down the cost of agent training

Better Quality of Service, Customers are more likely to receive the right answers faster

Consistency in service, with the right KM processes, procedures and tools in place KM ensures that customers with the same question receive the same response, regardless of agent as well as interaction channel or mode

Speaking of tools, some of the tools being utilized for KM in Customer Service Centers include salesforce.com, Kana, and SharePoint. In considering the use of these tools organizations must understand first their knowledge management strategy, how such tools fit within the KM strategy as well as their specific requirements for using one or more of these tools. Keep in mind that if multiple tools are being used to deliver on the KM Strategy your organization should look at ways to integrate the tools in order to deliver consistency in response and service to the customer.

For those organizations leveraging KM or want to utilize KM as part of your Customer Service Center solution I want to hear from you. I look forward to knowing more about what is happening at your Customer Service Centers.

KM Blog in Review 2011

It has been an interesting year for me as a knowledge management consultant and educator, I had the pleasure of working with a leading on-line financial brokerage company, teaching knowledge management at the Knowledge Systems Institute, in particularly knowledge management within healthcare, developing KM processes and tools for my latest venture Tacitware as well as presenting at the KM World Taxonomy Boot Camp.

Along the way I presented several topics in this blog for discussion and comment. I would like to thank all those who have made comments and have taken the time to stop by and read the postings. I sincerely hope that each posting stimulated some thought and that by reading it you were able to take something away in which you can apply to grow your own KM practice and/or enhance your understanding of KM.

The topics I presented ranged from knowledge management at your organization to details about taxonomies and search engine optimization and content management to the challenge of capturing tacit knowledge and wondering “where have my experts gone”. I also presented the seven steps of the Knowledge Acquisition Unified Framework (KAUF), which is a comprehensive and repeatable KM process for capturing knowledge. I rounded out my postings with talking about social media and its role in collaboration, KM for collaboration and innovation, KM trends for 2012 and my personal favorite “Drinking the KM Kool-Aid”.

Although I do not post as many blog entries as others, I will continue to post information that I believe will add value and stimulate conversation. I wish everyone the best year ever in 2012 and I look forward to hearing from everyone throughout the year!

What’s Hot in KM for 2012!

As we close out the year and start to look forward to the new challenges of 2012 I want to take a look at what will be Hot in Knowledge Management (KM). In other words what will be the trends in KM as we enter into and progress through the year 2012? Here are a few trends in what I believe will be relevant in KM through the next year:

-          KM in the Cloud: Leveraging and continuing to evolve cloud environments and mobile devices to capture, collaborate, and share knowledge

-         KM in HR: As the baby boomers retire and the workforce becomes more transitional human resource departments and organizations will leverage knowledge management to capture relevant worker knowledge before it leaves; understand who are the key knowledge holders and where new knowledge for innovation will come from

-          KM in Customer Relationship Management and Service: Customer facing organizations across all industries (Financial, Retail, Insurance, Healthcare, etc.) will look to knowledge management in order to get knowledge to the customer service rep or directly to the consumer in a timely (close to real-time) manner in order to make better decisions, improve the customer experience and increase revenue

If you know of other KM trends for 2012 and/or want to comment on the ones I have posted, feel free.

I look forward to hearing from you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Drinking the KM "Kool-Aid"

Many organizations have begun to understand the value and promise Knowledge Management (KM) can bring to their workforce. Delivering innovation through collaboration and sharing remain the cornerstones of KM. However, once your organization has established its KM Strategy, and/or rolled out it's initial KM offering (i.e., KM System, KM Process, Tools, etc.) what happens next? What happens next is the adoption process. Whether its a new process, procedure, or system; getting your workforce to leverage and use it in the course of executing activities and delivering on their task will be essential to your KM program's success. In order to achieve this there must be processes and vehicles in place to allow, encourage and reward staff members as they work within this new paradigm. It will not be easy. As with anything new it will take some time for adoption to occur. To move this along there must be KM supporters, mentors, and/or evangelist at all levels of the corporate infrastructure to encourage the workforce to "drink the KM Kool-Aid". In other words buy in and practice KM in all aspects of performing tasks and activities.
Developing an organizational culture of knowledge sharing, collaboration and lifelong learning should be the goals of any KM program. Organizations such as Fluor Corporation have been successful in infusing KM within it's culture. From human resource activities, to leveraging knowledge for strategic purposes to engaging with clients, Fluor remains an example of how KM can be leveraged effectively at an organization. Drinking the "KM Kool-Aid" is a slow and deliberate activity grounded in a basic KM process of Connect-->Collect-->Catalog-->Reuse-->Learn and Innovate. When practiced effectively this process will be a cornerstone to enabling the adoption of Knowledge Management throughout your organization. I am very interested in hearing comments on this subject as well as examples of how your organization has or suggestions or will adopt KM.

Tools for Implementing Taxonomy and Search Capabilities

Continuing our conversation about building a better search using taxonomies, ontologies, content types, and metadata; the following represents a few tools to consider if we every hope to not only find information on our knowledge repositories but to provide solutions to our inquiries.

Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint 2010 from Layre2 is focused on improved content tagging and discovery. Although this product has not been rated with any reviews it promises to deliver many features that a taxonomy structure will be able to take advantage of. These features include:
- Tag Suggester: While tagging an item or document, display a suggestion list based on given Term Store taxonomies, tagging rules, item properties, context and document content.
- Auto Tagger: Tag items and documents in background without any user interaction, based on given Term Store taxonomies, tagging rules, item properties, context and document content. Auto Tagger could be helpful for initial tagging, e.g. after content migration from any system to SharePoint 2010, as well as for daily background operation.
- Taxonomy Manager: Manage the Term Store with additional managed metadata properties (e.g. tagging rules, related tags), export and import, change management, workflows.
- Tag Navigation Web Part: Provides collaborative tagging by using the SharePoint 2010 managed metadata taxonomy tree directly for content discovery and navigation.
- Tag Directory Web Part: Render the SharePoint 2010 managed metadata taxonomy tree as flat A-Z directory category index directly for content discovery and navigation.
- Tag Cloud Web Part: Navigate the content by its importance using a familiar taxonomy-based tag cloud.
- Related Content Web Part: Automatically display related content in a given context using managed metadata.
B y the way Layre2 provides shareware (free) version of there Knowledge Management Suite.

Word Map Taxonomy Management Software
Wordmap's software enables organizations to develop classification schemes or taxonomies, upload and store documents by reference to them, then publish rich information resources for their users to search and navigate. Using taxonomies and classification schemes enables the Taxonomy Management Software to provide structured to content enabling precise and relevant answers to searches quickly. Some World Map Taxonomy Software clients include AstraZeneca and the Harvard Business School. The complete product set can be deployed standalone - or easily integrated to improve the performance and consistency of existing systems. Learn more about the Word Map Search Integration Framework and how it connects enterprise applications such as SharePoint & Endeca to centralized taxonomy management.

Data Harmony: Expert Knowledge Management with Powerful Semantic Tools and Intelligent Design
Data Harmony software indicates that it provides knowledge management solutions to organize your information resources by applying a taxonomy/thesaurus structure. Data Harmony's software tools enable you to construct a logical framework of topics, reflecting the vocabulary of your business or subject area - and then apply these topic terms to your resources precisely and consistently.

Data Harmony tools include:
• Thesaurus Master - Taxonomy and thesaurus construction and management
• M.A.I. (Machine Aided Indexer) - Automatic indexing or editorial aid in indexing
• MAIstro™ - Combine Thesaurus Master and M.A.I. for maximum efficiency in both automatic indexing and taxonomy construction
• Additional Knowledge Management Tools - supplement the abilities of these primary products for even greater power in knowledge management.
• Integrates with numerous content management systems, including Microsoft SharePoint
• Exports taxonomy files in XML, OWL, SKOS, and 11 other formats
• Handles taxonomies in virtually all languages
• Uses concept categorization for precise tagging and smarter search

Smart Logic provides an ontology software tool to build and manage complex ontologies. This software package is their Ontology Manager: The tool is designed for anyone with a basic knowledge of taxonomies and information science to develop 'models'. A business analyst can use the tool to assist in the process of building a model. For Information Scientists and Information Architects, the tool conforms to industry standards and has the flexibility and functionality they need to develop complex models.

Some of the Features Include:
- Creates the model of links and structure between language elements that can drive a new user experience
- Holds any term 'metadata' to drive or enhance connected applications.
- Ontology Manager is designed to allow multiple users to create, enhance and browse several types of semantic model which include Lists, Controlled vocabularies, Taxonomies, Thesauri and Ontologies.

If anyone has experience with any of these or other tools I would like to hear more from you!

Knowledge Management at Your Organization

Have you ever wondered what all the fuss is about concerning knowledge management (KM)? What is knowledge management anyway? At its core KM is about sharing and collaborating about what you know, capturing what you know, and reusing that knowledge as to not reinvent the wheel and/or to combine with other ideas to foster innovation. Recently I had the privilege to attend a KM meeting conducted by the APQC (APQC's January 2011 KM Community Call), which had representatives from Conoco Phillips, Fluor, IBM, GE and Schlumberger. What I came away from this meeting with is the need to have KM become part of an organization's culture. I believe that this is important because we do not want KM to be "another task to complete on the checklist", but the way we conduct business. This includes the business between the various individuals and entities within our corporations as well as with our customers. Talking, listening, capturing and applying what we learn from each other is a constant never ending and always evolving process.
I challenge all of us to take this attitude into our workplace and remember that when you share what you know you don't loose that knowledge, but rather you enhance that knowledge with the other individuals you share it with. Take a minute to review the slides from the APQC Jan 2011 KM Community Call as well as this video from YouTube Discover What You Know. Feel free to comment and share your knowledge!

Why do Knowledge Management (KM) Initiatives Fail?

The following blog post is by my guest blogger - David Schneider - I look forward to your comments:

Why do Knowledge Management (KM) Initiatives Fail?


The fact is that few knowledge management initiatives are successful. But, why is this result? What is the cause and effect? Is it because under qualified professional? Or is their more to it than that? What about a magic “silver bullet”? Is a cultural issue?

I believe the reason why knowledge management initiatives fail are varied as there are stars in the sky. I believe one of the main reasons knowledge management initiatives fail is based on how the organization views knowledge management. Knowledge Management is viewed just as a function of the call center. KM is more than a function of a call center and its benefits are far reaching as any Lean process or any other initiatives a corporation take put into practice. KM is mainly viewed by most corporations that have a KM effort as a cost of doing business. This is an error in philosophy, KM is a method of reducing expenses, improve productivity, and enhancing value.

KM will improve efficiencies that will increase a corporations’ profitability, enhances the quality of work, performance, and overall value of the corporation. KM allows tacit knowledge to be leveraged, transferred to increase the quality of work performed across the corporation. This tacit knowledge allows KM to eliminate the “reinvent the wheel” syndrome. This transfer of knowledge is the essence of knowledge management.

Outside of a corporations’ philosophy error there are several reasons for KM initiatives fail. Some of those reasons are as follows:

• Expecting KM technologies to replace KM processes or create processes where none exists.

• Lack of participation from all levels of a corporation.

• Forcing inadequate processes into new technology.

• Lack of maintenance and resources after initial standup.

• Lack of education and understanding of what KM means to the individual.

• KM does not become ingrained into the corporations work culture.

• Lack of involvement in creating and evolving KM content.

• Lack of metrics to measure the impact of KM on the corporation or insufficient/incorrect metrics being captured.

• Lack of monitoring and controls in place to ensure the knowledge is relevant and is current and accurate.

KM initiatives are essential to a corporations’ growth and is more than just the cost of doing business. Successful KM initiatives once completed and funded correctly it increase a corporations’ profitability, enhance the quality of work, and overall value of the corporation.

David Schneider
dschneider1023@yahoo.com

The Need for Diversity

The power that Knowledge Management (KM) brings to an organization is it's ability to leverage the power of diversity. I am not speaking of just diversity of race, gender and/or religion, but diversity of thought. Through collaboration, knowledge sharing and knowledge reuse it is important to leverage different points of view, different experiences and different cultural backgrounds to stimulate diversity of thought. This diversity of thought leads to innovation. This innovation will enable organizations to deliver unique and or improved products and services to its customers as well as improve the way the organization does business.

Diversity of thought is encouraged and utilized today in the push by corporations to support Board Diversity in expanding the makeup of their corporate boards, through Affirmative Action programs to promote a diverse workforce and through a myriad of organizations that understand that diversity of thought will improve everything from our educational system, healthcare system, create new jobs, and improve how our politicians work together!

Communities of Practice (CoP) is a tool utilized within KM which provide environments where people can collaborate, catalog, and reuse knowledge centered around a certain topic, practice area, or profession, to name a few. This community will bring "like minded" people together regardless of their race, gender and/or religion to stimulate thought, exchange ideas and learn for each other. All focused on innovation, and improving performance. The need for diversity of thought will continue to be a catalyst for our culture to improve the way we live, work and play. I welcome everyone to share their stories where this diversity is happening, where it should be happening and where it has been successful or not! 

Knowledge Management for Law Firms

Over the last several weeks I've been discussing knowledge management specifically in the areas of healthcare, telecommunications, government (military) and mergers/acquisition. During these conversations a colleague of mine mentioned law firms and if KM can provide viable assistance for lawyers and other legal personnel. The conversation went quickly to KM tools such as those provided by Lexis Nexis (www.lexisnexis.com). I cautioned however that KM is not about IT. Technology is an enabler for KM initiatives. You must first understand the business of the law firm and the lawyers who operate in it (every firm and lawyer has different knowledge needs). So, I suggested you start with crafting a KM Strategy to understand how KM will be leveraged by the firm.
Law firms focus centers around client relationships and understanding the clients' legal needs. These needs can range from but not limited to  litigation, intellectual property, criminal, divorce, and bankruptcy. In understanding what a client needs the law firm partner has to determine who would be the best (lawyer/lawyers) to address specific needs of the client and how can they effectively and efficiently handle these needs. Therefore knowledge around servicing the client would be a good start for the KM Strategy to focus. The KM Strategy should address the knowledge needs, processes, initiatives and tools that will increase the performance of the staff, provide outstanding services and increase revenue of the firm.
Some resources to review are: Effective Knowledge Management for Law Firms, Knowledge management and the smarter lawyer, and Lawyer KM. I look forward to your comments.

KM for Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC)

To continue the dialog about capturing tacit knowledge and managing human capital, Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC) represents a significant challenge for the United States military to continue operations without compromising mission activities and the soldier in theater. Due to a BRAC move many Commands will be transferring to other locations, while some bases will be closing. Many military personnel will not transition as these bases close and commands move to the new locations. This will undoubtedly cause a loss of personnel resulting in a loss of tacit and explicit knowledge. Leveraging knowledge management (KM) to address this challenge is essential to keep the various commands  fully operational and effective for the solider in theater. The following table represents some contributing factors of a BRAC and it's effect on the Command:

This challenge has to be addressed and I welcome your comments on this important subject.