According to a summary in a presentation I saw, researcher, author and thought leader Thomas Davenport maintains that knowledge management (KM):
- Is expensive if done well, although I believe there are low-cost initiatives like search software that can make a difference in a legal department
- Requires hybrid solutions of people and technology, which in fact may tilt more toward people than software (See my post of April 30, 2010: four ideas from Mintzberg.).
- Is highly political, which means that knowledge creates and maintains power
- Requires knowledge managers (See my post of Sept. 10, 2005: mentions them at International Paper and MetLife; Aug. 4, 2008: head of knowledge management; and June 4, 2007: five knowledge managers in legal departments.).
- Requires a knowledge contract, which is a notion I have not heard about.
- Calls for unnatural acts when it comes to sharing and using knowledge, which goes to my belief that unselfish information sharing is hard to sustain (See my post of March 5, 2005: altruistic information sharing.).
- Means improving knowledge work processes, which hasn’t been explored on this blog
- Only starts with access, which presumably means some relevance tools are also necessary
- Benefits more from maps than models, more from markets than from hierarchies (See my post of May 13, 2009: management maps with 19 references and 1 metapost.).
- Never ends. Amen