What can KM accomplish for the organization?

The overriding purpose of KM in a group enterprise is to make knowledge accessible and reusable to the organization to improve its competitiveness. Its principal goals are pursued in two broad areas of activity (ROCKET, 2001):

1) KM initiatives foster innovation -- The growth of an enterprise depends on innovation, and innovation depends on the knowledge generation and appreciation capabilities of organizations. KM facilitates innovation in two ways: a) it acts as catalyst for processes that facilitate innovation, and b) it provides the conditions under which innovative ideas can be captured, shared, and leveraged.

2) KM initiatives facilitate better decision-making—By capturing an organization’s collective expertise wherever it resides and distributing it to wherever it is needed, KM helps decision makers at all levels arrive at knowledgeable, better-quality decisions that add or create value for the organization.

Meanwhile, Carayannis (1999) summarizes the objectives of KM initiatives into four:

To develop and foster new and promising areas of collaborative, interdisciplinary, and cross-functional knowledge work;
To catalyze the creation of cross-disciplinary and cross-functional knowledge clusters across teams and across organizations;
To enable the organization to make better use of its resources by reducing or eliminating redundancies, identifying weaknesses, and anticipating opportunities for change;
To provide a more responsive information technology infrastructure to support knowledge workers in the design of products and services that are attuned to current and emerging market needs

In the context of human development, knowledge management contributes to empowerment by (SDC 2006):Pointing at the need to continue building capacities to learn and to change based on what people know;

Strengthening the people’s capacities to learn and change;
Enhancing development workers’ awareness in dealing with knowledge in their organization, by knowin
- what’s already in place
- what is still missing
- what should be done
- who is responsible for what

What does it take to implement KM?

KM’s basic requirements

It has been contended that KM as a management practice has but a few basic requirements. These are:

A business goal — KM cannot be an end unto itself. It has to be implemented in order to attain a purpose—a business goal that is a means to or a component of the main organizational goal. Building market value, improving organizational performance, or building competitive strength are among the KM goals pursued by organizations through KM
A human orientation — Knowledge has more to do with brains than with bits. Tacit knowledge, the knowledge that you can’t find in books or any other medium, resides in people. Even explicit knowledge requires human interpretation to be useful. KM is about value for human beings for their own sake, and for the knowledge in their heads. KM as a philosophy stands for non-hierarchical organizational structures, valuing the experience of others, listening to them, and using them as input for decision-making.
Implementation strategy — KM has to have a strategy for implementation. It may be initiated as an organization-wide activity by the leadership or as “skunk work” by an organizational unit to demonstrate success and gain legitimacy. Whatever its strategy of implementation, KM should have the commitment of a number of people who recognize its merits, and it should not be considered the job or responsibility of one single individual. Neither the chief knowledge officer nor the HR manager, nor even the CEO can implement KM alone. And leaving KM to one individual is like making the PR person solely responsible for a company’s reputation.
Systematic, doable processes — KM involves improving and making more efficient the methods and procedures involved in capturing, codifying, storing, distributing, and utilizing knowledge to produce products and services or new knowledge. These knowledge processes have to be systematic and orderly, and appropriate to the capacities of the people involved.
Communication and information support — Communication moves knowledge about and facilitates its utilization. Human-to-human transactions are needed in order to capture, store, share, and add value to knowledge, and such transactions are done through the communication process. Knowledge embedded in the organization and that which are inside people’s heads need to be communicated before they can be leveraged. Explicit knowledge codified in different forms require information systems to be utilized. Thus, communication and information systems are a vital support to KM.

Technology supports KM by facilitating the storage and distribution of knowledge throughout the organization. But technology can only help the people manage knowledge; alone, technology cannot improve KM or leverage an organization’s knowledge assets.

What does it take for KM to work?

The 8 C’s of KM success

InfoTech (IT) companies feature very prominently in the list of winners of awards like the annual Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) awards -- such as Intel, HP, IBM and Microsoft. The more successful IT companies of the world owe their success in part to highly effective and efficient knowledge management (KM) practices and cultures.

Madanmohan Rao has drawn up a list of key ingredients for successful KM, which he calls the “8 C’s of KM success.” The so-called ‘8 C’s framework’ is a useful framework for describing the key ingredients of KM success (parameters that begin with the letter C): connectivity, content, community, culture, capacity, cooperation, commerce, and capital. In other words, successful KM practices can be facilitated by adequate employee access to KM tools, user-friendly work-oriented content, communities of practice, a culture of knowledge, learning capacity, a spirit of cooperation, commercial and other incentives, and carefully measured capital investments and returns.

Let us see how this framework can be used to analyze the successful KM practices of the following IT companies: EDS, EMC, Fujitsu Consulting, Hughes Software Systems, i2, IBM, I-Flex, Infosys, Inktomi, J. D. Edwards, MITRE, Novell, Open Text, Oracle, SAS, Sun Philippines and Xerox. (Full-length case studies are featured in Leading with Knowledge: KM Practices in Global InfoTech Companies.

1. Connectivity

All these IT companies have robust connectivity for employees to the Intranet and thereby to standardised KM tools, knowledge repositories, and communities of practice. KM at Fujitsu Consulting got off to a bumpy start partly because of lack of standardisation of connectivity and KM platform. Many companies have also identified wireless connectivity as the next level of knowledge mobilisation to workers like sales staff. Open Text has launched Livelink Wireless which is already being used by its sales staff on the road. Information mobilisation and real-time expert contact via PDAs and SMS are high priorities at SunPhil (Filipino subscribers are the heaviest users of SMS worldwide).

2. Content

The featured IT companies have all evolved sophisticated strategies to manage content. These include EDS's Techlore technical knowledge repository, EMC's Knowledgebase for tech support, Fujitsu Consulting's ProjectFinder, i2's Knowledge Base and Project Workbench, knowledge asset editors at Infosys, and i-flex's Project Closure Documents (PCD). SAS has formally-designated knowledge support officers who assist busy employees in creating, editing and translating knowledge assets. Improper planning at an earlier stage led to rampant database proliferation and knowledge clutter at Fujitsu Consulting, which was subsequently rectified. Digital content-management platforms have completely transformed the merged entity SunPhil, which had an archaic paper-based environment prior to merger.

3. Community

All profiled IT companies have sophisticated top-down and bottom-up strategies for large numbers of communities of practice, such as EDS's 114 communities of practice, Fujitsu Consulting's "The Knowledge Underground," MITRE's Technical Exchange Meetings (TEMs) and XpertNet, Oracle's 'Professional Communities,' and Open Text's Competitive Intelligence Forum and Customer Dashboard. IBM uses an approach called the "HealthCheck" to determine the maturity of its CoPs.

4. Culture

A culture of knowledge-centricity and innovation right at the top levels of management was present in all featured companies. EDS has a Knowledge Management Office and an innovation engine portal for employees to submit innovative ideas, EMC aims to have KM culture ultimately nurtured via peer pressure, i2 preserves its start-up oriented culture of learning fast, IBM conducts extensive research on KM and formulates concepts like the Cognizant Enterprise Maturity Model, i-Flex has the QPati quiz program and K-Webcast conferences with experts, Infosys uses mottos like "Learn Once, Use Anywhere," Oracle has a network of change agents, Novell has promoted a culture of synergy during its acquisition of companies like Cambridge Technology Partners and SilverStream, and MITRE aligns KM systems with three corporate values: "people in partnership," "excellence that counts," and "outcomes in the public interest". Quiver (acquired by Inktomi) had to deal with cultural obstacles like the "engineering versus the rest" attitude and "sell and forget" mindset; its merger with a larger company also required cultural adjustment to harness KM. Fujitsu Consulting went through a period of "cultural confusion" in the early days, which even led to a period of "dis-enlightenment" with KM until the program was put back on track. In a QAI survey of KM in 100 software companies, 3 out of 10 projects on knowledge management were found to fail because of insufficient support from a change management roll out plan.

5. Capacity

Building capacity for knowledge-centric behaviors received strong support from all featured IT companies: for instance, EMC has formal training programs, Hughes Software Systems hosts KM workshops and a day-long knowledge-sharing event, and i-flex invests heavily in software process certification for its employees. QAI India recommends the use of external consultants for capacity building in KM. Inktomi provides its knowledge workers with training on cost-performance activity, Unified Modeling techniques, statistical charting processes, and job rotation opportunities to understand knowledge impacts on performance measures and productivity gains.

6. Cooperation

The more forward-looking IT companies promote a strong culture of internal cooperation between employees and business units, and external cooperation with industry consortia and universities. For instance, EDS conducts collaborative research with a top US business school, HSS taps into external sources of knowledge such as industry consortia and collaborative research with universities, IBM conducts extensive research in client-focused consortiums such as the IBM Institute of Knowledge-based Organizations, MITRE's Knowledge Partners initiative includes contributions from highly qualified MITRE retirees, Open Text has a Knowledge Management Advisory Board with representatives from about 20 of its top customers, Oracle plans to extend KM beyond the enterprise via the Oracle Technology Network and Oracle Partner Network, and Xerox is active in sponsorship of KM forums and participation in consortia on learning, knowledge and productivity such as APQC. In an inspiring move, SunPhil is even taking the KM message to the national level through its active support of the Knowledge Management Association of the Philippines (KMAP).

7. Commerce

Many of the featured IT companies have a mix of commercial and non-commercial incentives to "price" and reward knowledge contributions. Infosys has devised Knowledge Currency Units (KCUs) whereby employees can award points to knowledge assets posted by their colleagues, and can also earn points when their own posted knowledge assets are utilised or ranked by their colleagues; these can be encashed into gifts at a local e-tailer. MITRE has a $5,000 President's KM Achievement Award (presented by the CEO), ten Corporate KM Recognition awards of $1,000 each (presented by the CIO), and an award for the best paper that makes an external contribution to KM theory/practice. EDS has an EDS Fellows Program for top performers in the company and the annual EDS Innovation Forum for top innovative thinkers from across the globe; awards are given to the patent of the year, innovator of the year, and community of the year. IBM has a corporate-wide award called Knowledge Advantage and individual business units give their own KM awards.

8. Capital

Substantial investments were made in the KM systems of the featured companies, and strict metrics adopted to assess RoI. Xerox's Eureka is credited with solving over 350,000 problems annually that otherwise would have been recreated by other customer service engineers (CSEs) wasting both parts and labor as they try to find a solution -- parts and labor savings are in excess of $15 million annually, with increased customer satisfaction and faster learning cycles for the CSEs. At EDS, KM metrics are driven by the Intellectual Capital Balance Sheet. EMC's KM practice today has helped improve worldwide sharing of solutions and shorten learning curves. Fujitsu Consulting has delivered a measurable improvement in gross margin via KM tools like ProjectFinder. i2 has used knowledge-centric strategies to position new products to new clients in shorter time. IBM uses systemic metrics to ensure that KM practices help corporate business objectives like innovation, responsiveness, efficiency and competency. Infosys' KM portal KnowledgeShop helps the company improve teamwork, refine software, re-use code, and meet growth expectations. At MITRE, tangible benefits of KM have been realised in reduced operating costs, improved staff productivity, and cost avoidance.

In sum, paying close attention to all the parameters of the 8C’s framework has helped the profiled IT companies develop successful KM practices. The most successful IT companies also have KM practices that have been successively benchmarked as among the best in the world.

Knowledge Management in the Context of Development

Thus far you have learned that knowledge management or KM evolved in the 1990s amid economic, social and technological changes which advanced globalization. New opportunities and increased competition that ensued compelled companies to adjust in order to survive. However, in the process, they lost company knowledge. While the academics and consultants mulled over knowledge management as a new business process, it became apparent that companies which capitalized on their knowledge assets gained competitive advantage. This set the stage for organizations to integrate KM into their management process.

That KM Is vital to a company’s staying power need not be belabored. Organizations throughout the world are realizing that their next critical resource is knowledge. It is appropriate to see how development organizations can harness KM to enhance their performance and leverage the knowledge they have cumulated to help developing communities. How far have they gone?

At the turn of the century, international development organizations began making claims about the role of knowledge in national development strategies in the developing countries. An increasing commitment to ‘knowledge-based aid’ was observed in their discourses, and projects were initiated that aimed to make the agencies more efficient and effective at acquiring, using, and transmitting knowledge both internally and in their work with partners in developing countries. The idea was reportedly born in 1996 when the World Bank declared that it was to become a ‘knowledge bank.’ It was picked up by many bilateral and multilateral agencies such as the British Department for International Development (DFID), the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the European Commission (EC), among others.

In 1996, the World Bank embarked on a comprehensive knowledge-sharing program making available to the global public the development knowledge it had accumulated through its programs. Making a major corporate reform, the Bank made knowledge management and sharing an integral part of its operations, documenting their KM activities and strategies and recently evaluating these efforts.

In a parallel move, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), developed in 2004 what they call a SDC-ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) Concept. Two components are featured in this concept: 1) access to information and knowledge (Knowledge for Development), and 2) communication for development (C4D). To make this operational they developed their KM system, making tools and materials available on their website (http://www.sdc.com) like the World Bank did.

King and McGrath (2002) have done a comparative study of the involvements of four international development organizations in knowledge-based aid:

the World Bank—led the movement toward knowledge-based aid by becoming a “knowledge bank” in 1996
British Department for International Development (DFID)—embarked on a knowledge sharing project
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)—developing a new knowledge management network
German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ)—developing a new knowledge management network

The knowledge-based activities of these development organizations and a few others, according to King and McGrath, may be categorized into four:

Knowledge discourses—Analysis showed that beyond the World Bank’s concepts about how knowledge interacts with development, knowledge was not a major part of the other agencies’ discourse;
Knowledge products—There has been a massive growth in the production and availability of agency documents, both hard copy and electronic. These have an ‘overwhelming bias in references to knowledge produced in the North,’ implying that lack of knowledge is the problem in the South;
Knowledge projects—Wide range of knowledge projects have been the most visible proof of knowledge-based aid; includes establishment of gateways, networks, knowledge sharing projects. JICA has a Knowledge Management Project
Knowledge practices—Everyday practices of development organization staff have been radically changed by ICT, resulting in greater decentralization, better communication among departments and agencies, and more regular communication with partners. New technologies also facilitated growth of more communities of practice. But change in practice is not directly linked to knowledge activities and discourse but to technological change and a broader development cooperation paradigm.

WORKSHOP A

Let’s Exercise!

List Rao’s 8 C’s of KM Success.

With 5 being the highest (100% compliance) and 0 the lowest (0 compliance), rate your community vs each Key Ingredient. Add up the score.

A perfect 40 will indicate that KM will succeed in your community. A low score, however, should not discourage you from using KM. It just means you have a lot to do in terms of making your community KM-ready.

Highlight the C’s which you scored low.
What would be some activities that could bring the scores up? Keep these in mind, for when you will be planning your KM strategy in Unit II..