Managing
knowledge with technology
Let's face it - you can't capture human intelligence, and store
it in digital databases and servers. Information is tangible, but
knowledge is not. Then, what does technology have to do with
knowledge management?
Mahesh Shantaram
10/25/99
The quarterly sales figures of the last ten years of an organization is data. When that data goes into a bar chart, it can be digested more easily, which makes it easier to analyze. It conveys information. Whatever is deduced from the available information is knowledge. Suppose the graphs show a steady decline in sales, the company would try to work out the possible reason (perhaps using more information) and act appropriately.
Knowledge management, or KM, is a process by which an enterprise judiciously applies knowledge gained from its own experience, and from the experiences of others, and reacts to market trends more effectively. KM is creating quite a flurry in corporate circles. People are delivering seminars, attending seminars, writing articles, reading articles, talking about it, hearing about it, and so on. Thus, KM has been elevated to the status of the hottest buzzword in enterprise computing.
It's not without reason, though. The enterprise of the information age sees the collective knowledge of its employees - the intellectual capital - as its most important asset. To tap the value of this asset, it is not enough to simply store random information in isolated pockets across the organization. It has to be made available to the right person at the right place at the right time.
Today, when trends change in days and weeks rather than months and years, the challenge to KM is in identifying who that right person is, and when is the right time. Moreover, information varies with context. The same set of data can convey different things to different people at different times. Is there a way of consolidating every possible meaning and drawing a big picture?
If this sounds so much like a management issue, where does technology come into the picture? Let's face it - there's no way to capture human intelligence and experience and store it as bits and bytes in databases and servers. Information is tangible, but the knowledge that comes off it is intangible and formless. Thus, knowledge management is not a technology by itself, but a technique that largely depends on integrating several forms of technology.
Networking has resulted in cost-effective and efficient communication. E-mail and instant messaging are indeed the killer applications of networking technology. Distributed computing has made it possible to store resources at one place and yet make it available everywhere at all times. Even the humble e-mail client now comes with some information management tools. For example, I did a quick query on the number of messages I've been sending per month over the last six months, and realized why I barely have enough time for my work.
The key point to note is that the software is not the solution, but how much you can use it to translate available information in knowledge without information overload. After all, Francis Bacon wasn't kidding when he said, "Knowledge is power."
ŠAnkur Jain 1999