Today’s business environment is characterized by continuous, often radical change. Such a volatile climate demands a new attitude and approach within organizations—actions must be anticipatory, adaptive, and based on a faster cycle of knowledge creation.
Knowledge Management (KM) provides the processes and structures to create, capture, analyze, and act on information. It highlights both the conduits to knowledge, as well as the bottlenecks. The emphasis in Knowledge Management is on human know-how and how to exploit it to bring maximum return for an organization.
The Benefits of Knowledge Management
Whether to minimize loss and risk, improve organizational efficiency, or embrace innovation, Knowledge Management efforts and initiatives add great value to an organization. Knowledge Management:
Facilitates better, more informed decisions
Contributes to the intellectual capital of an organization
Encourages the free flow of ideas which leads to insight and innovation
Eliminates redundant processes, streamlines operations, and enhances employee retention rates
Improves customer service and efficiency
Can lead to greater productivity.
Knowledge Management does not have a beginning and an end. It is ongoing, organic, and ever-evolving.
Understanding Knowledge Management
The challenge of Knowledge Management is to determine what information within an organization qualifies as "valuable." All information is not knowledge, and all knowledge is not valuable. The key is to find the worthwhile knowledge within a vast sea of information.
KM is about people. It is directly linked to what people know, and how what they know can support business and organizational objectives. It draws on human competency, intuition, ideas, and motivations. It is not a technology-based concept. Although technology can support a KM effort, it shouldn’t begin there.
KM is orderly and goal-directed. It is inextricably tied to the strategic objectives of the organization. It uses only the information that is the most meaningful, practical, and purposeful.
KM is ever-changing. There is no such thing as an immutable law in KM. Knowledge is constantly tested, updated, revised, and sometimes even "obsoleted" when it is no longer practicable. It is a fluid, ongoing process.
KM is value-added. It draws upon pooled expertise, relationships, and alliances. Organizations can further the two-way exchange of ideas by bringing in experts from the field to advise or educate managers on recent trends and developments. Forums, councils, and boards can be instrumental in creating common ground and organizational cohesiveness.
KM is visionary. This vision is expressed in strategic business terms rather than technical terms, and in a manner that generates enthusiasm, buy-in, and motivates managers to work together toward reaching common goals.
KM is complementary. It can be integrated with other organizational learning initiatives such as Total Quality Management (TQM). It is important for knowledge managers to show interim successes along with progress made on more protracted efforts such as multiyear systems developments infrastructure, or enterprise architecture projects.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
case study in the knowledge management
Knowledge Leverage : The Ultimate Advantage By Touraj Nasseri
Read More in...A Case For Knowledge Management: Rethinking Business Technology Management for the New World of Uncertainty "...the first book on knowledge-driven organizations and knowledge workers that can survive and thrive in the new world of uncertainty and risk...." at www.kmbook.com Case Studies in Knowledge Management
Just imagine that your company is suddenly struck by a knowledge blight that erases all your corporate knowledge from the storage media including the employees' minds. The difference between the market values of the company before and after the blight struck is the value of the company's intellectual capital. Organizations fulfill their purposes and maintain their raisons d'être by what they know and how well they harness their knowledge. This fact should be a compelling reason for organizational governance and management to nurture most diligently the people and the systems that create, preserve, disseminate, renew and deploy knowledge. Is this so?, or are organizations squandering their supreme resource: the power and the product of the human mind? Is the advent of the knowledge economy thrusting the knowledge factor into the cores of corporate strategies?In a company, as in an economy, physical and mental or intellectual capital generate all the economic wealth and value. Intellectual capital is made up of human and knowledge capital. Human capital comprises individual talents and knowledge that is acquired through education, training, experience, and cognition. Knowledge capital is the documented knowledge that is available in such forms as research papers, reports, books, articles, manuscripts,patents and software. Knowledge capital consists of the artifacts of the human mind that are also stored outside the minds of their authors, and can therefore be available to whoever seeks them.The effective interaction and integration of the two kinds of intellectual capital is essential for maximizing its productivity.Clearly intellectual capital is the fundamental input to all wealth generating processes. Without knowledge natural resources could not be developed, and most of the value of manufactured goods consists in their knowledge contents. So physical assets owe most of their value to intellectual capital, and yet most companies are not organized to benefit fully from leveraging intellectual capital. The challenges to capitalizing on the knowledge advantage include: integration of intellectual capital with strategy; and monetary evaluation of intellectual capital.Knowledge and Business StrategyOnce a business has conceived its strategic intent, it must determine the capabilities, and the management systems it needs to achieve them. Strategic intents typically endeavor to explicate and communicate corporate ambitiousness: being the number one in providing certain customer benefits; being the world leader in a specific technology; delivering products with the best performance-to-cost ratio; and delighting stakeholders beyond their wildest expectations. The ambitious differentiation that drives strategies requires relentless innovation to improve every aspect of business: product development, engineering & manufacturing, business processes, marketing , learning, product delivery, customer relations, and sales & distribution. Innovation in a company is nourished and driven by knowledge-based capabilities and by management systems that leverage the capabilities. The potential inherent in well managed intellectual capital extends its impact well into the future as it adapts, renews, and replaces capabilities so that strategies remain responsive to rapid change and much uncertainty. Intellectual capital is therefore a company's most important strategic resource for competing and winning, and its management must match its importance. Dynamic and effective intellectual capital management determines a company's intellectual gap as the difference between its current and needed intellectual capital. It examines how effectively the current intellectual capital is used. It then designs and implements the most efficient mechanisms to close the gap in both intellectual capital and its management. As business conditions and strategies change new gaps are created and the system needs the dynamism to anticipate and respond appropriately . Intellectual capital management strongly influences many strategic decisions involving allocation of considerable resources of a company. These include :• The kind , quantity and quality of information that should be gathered . Information needs, in general, to be processed before it becomes knowledge that directly enlightens decisions. Information acquisition should therefor serve the knowledge needs of the company; this will also prevent information pollution.• What learning systems and environments should be created to encourage building and renewing human capital.• What kinds of knowledge and talent should the prospective employees command to support the human capital development strategy.• What information infrastructure should be installed so that it can best facilitate creation, tracking, storage and sharing of knowledge to support strategic and operational objectives .• What systems should be installed to safeguard intellectual capital ,and to ensure its quality and reliability. • What processes are to be implemented to mobilize intellectual capital for developing distinctive corporate capabilities that are essential to the strategy of the company. • What R&D programs to fund so that they can create the future knowledge that is needed.• What part of the R&D should be done in house, what part should be outsourced, and what part should be done collaboratively with competitors, suppliers and customers.• What kinds of business relationships and alliances should be established with external providers of strategic knowledge and technology.• What incentives and corporate culture are needed to foster and inspire efforts to enhance corporate intellectual prowess.Much confusion and waste of resources can result if companies do not have an intellectual capital management system to provide a coherent process for making decisions on questions of the kind listed above to yield the highest strategic value.Knowledge And Its Monetary WorthThere is difficulty in evaluating intellectual capital by the prevailing accounting rules that are used to evaluate physical capital. It seems that this difficulty has regrettably discouraged investment in intellectual capital. Not withstanding this,there cannot be any reasonable doubt that intellectual capital is very valuable. Just imagine that your company is suddenly struck by a knowledge blight that erases all your corporate knowledge from the storage media including the employees' minds. The difference between the market values of the company before and after the blight struck is the value of the company's intellectual capital. You might wish to continue the thought experiment by estimating how much will it cost to recreate the lost intellectual capital and to restore it to its original functionality, and you will have a measure of the lost value. Worthy efforts are underway to ascribe monetary value to intellectual capital. The difference between market value and asset value as recorded on the balance sheet has been used as a measure of the intangibles which include corporate knowledge. Brands, another intangible asset, are routinely evaluated and paid for handsomely in business transactions. The experience with "brand" evaluation may be helpful to the efforts to put a monetary price on intellectual capital. Intellectual capital manifests its value by how it is managed to enhance the performance and development of a company on the route to achieve its strategic intent. For any company it is possible to assess the contribution of intellectual capital to increased market share and profits through new products and faster product developments,through cost reduction,and by positioning the company for seizing future opportunities. The management system that is in place to leverage intellectual capital can measure continually its effectiveness by company-specific metrics, and demonstrate the real business worth of intellectual capital . Emerging Trail BlazersRecognizing the critical importance of intellectual capital to sustainable business success, a few notable companies have taken the leadership in launching considerable and serious efforts to understand and enhance intellectual capital management. The members of this select club include Sweden's Skandia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce,and Hughes Space & Communications, to name but three. Some organizations have created chief knowledge officer or equivalent positions to provide stewardship and management for knowledge, as the chief financial office was established for financial capital. They are also designing processes for measuring and enhancing the business value of their intellectual capital. Some companies have installed systems that facilitate networking and information diffusion. Even though a holistic approach to intellectual capital management has not yet been applied , these pioneering efforts are commendable and inspiring. Enlightened self interest and survival instinct will encourage other companies to follow this lead and focus management attention on intellectual capital. After all business would seem to have given information technology,which is but a tool for managing intellectual capital , a good deal of attention and resources. The difficulties of accounting for intellectual capital as if it were physical capital is no excuse for a lackadaisical approach to intellectual capital managment. Senior executives might wish to start the process of heightening awareness of the knowledge factor in their companies by finding out what proportion of their intellectual capital has been mapped and what proportion of it is being productively used to achieve strategic objectives.
Read More in...A Case For Knowledge Management: Rethinking Business Technology Management for the New World of Uncertainty "...the first book on knowledge-driven organizations and knowledge workers that can survive and thrive in the new world of uncertainty and risk...." at www.kmbook.com Case Studies in Knowledge Management
Just imagine that your company is suddenly struck by a knowledge blight that erases all your corporate knowledge from the storage media including the employees' minds. The difference between the market values of the company before and after the blight struck is the value of the company's intellectual capital. Organizations fulfill their purposes and maintain their raisons d'être by what they know and how well they harness their knowledge. This fact should be a compelling reason for organizational governance and management to nurture most diligently the people and the systems that create, preserve, disseminate, renew and deploy knowledge. Is this so?, or are organizations squandering their supreme resource: the power and the product of the human mind? Is the advent of the knowledge economy thrusting the knowledge factor into the cores of corporate strategies?In a company, as in an economy, physical and mental or intellectual capital generate all the economic wealth and value. Intellectual capital is made up of human and knowledge capital. Human capital comprises individual talents and knowledge that is acquired through education, training, experience, and cognition. Knowledge capital is the documented knowledge that is available in such forms as research papers, reports, books, articles, manuscripts,patents and software. Knowledge capital consists of the artifacts of the human mind that are also stored outside the minds of their authors, and can therefore be available to whoever seeks them.The effective interaction and integration of the two kinds of intellectual capital is essential for maximizing its productivity.Clearly intellectual capital is the fundamental input to all wealth generating processes. Without knowledge natural resources could not be developed, and most of the value of manufactured goods consists in their knowledge contents. So physical assets owe most of their value to intellectual capital, and yet most companies are not organized to benefit fully from leveraging intellectual capital. The challenges to capitalizing on the knowledge advantage include: integration of intellectual capital with strategy; and monetary evaluation of intellectual capital.Knowledge and Business StrategyOnce a business has conceived its strategic intent, it must determine the capabilities, and the management systems it needs to achieve them. Strategic intents typically endeavor to explicate and communicate corporate ambitiousness: being the number one in providing certain customer benefits; being the world leader in a specific technology; delivering products with the best performance-to-cost ratio; and delighting stakeholders beyond their wildest expectations. The ambitious differentiation that drives strategies requires relentless innovation to improve every aspect of business: product development, engineering & manufacturing, business processes, marketing , learning, product delivery, customer relations, and sales & distribution. Innovation in a company is nourished and driven by knowledge-based capabilities and by management systems that leverage the capabilities. The potential inherent in well managed intellectual capital extends its impact well into the future as it adapts, renews, and replaces capabilities so that strategies remain responsive to rapid change and much uncertainty. Intellectual capital is therefore a company's most important strategic resource for competing and winning, and its management must match its importance. Dynamic and effective intellectual capital management determines a company's intellectual gap as the difference between its current and needed intellectual capital. It examines how effectively the current intellectual capital is used. It then designs and implements the most efficient mechanisms to close the gap in both intellectual capital and its management. As business conditions and strategies change new gaps are created and the system needs the dynamism to anticipate and respond appropriately . Intellectual capital management strongly influences many strategic decisions involving allocation of considerable resources of a company. These include :• The kind , quantity and quality of information that should be gathered . Information needs, in general, to be processed before it becomes knowledge that directly enlightens decisions. Information acquisition should therefor serve the knowledge needs of the company; this will also prevent information pollution.• What learning systems and environments should be created to encourage building and renewing human capital.• What kinds of knowledge and talent should the prospective employees command to support the human capital development strategy.• What information infrastructure should be installed so that it can best facilitate creation, tracking, storage and sharing of knowledge to support strategic and operational objectives .• What systems should be installed to safeguard intellectual capital ,and to ensure its quality and reliability. • What processes are to be implemented to mobilize intellectual capital for developing distinctive corporate capabilities that are essential to the strategy of the company. • What R&D programs to fund so that they can create the future knowledge that is needed.• What part of the R&D should be done in house, what part should be outsourced, and what part should be done collaboratively with competitors, suppliers and customers.• What kinds of business relationships and alliances should be established with external providers of strategic knowledge and technology.• What incentives and corporate culture are needed to foster and inspire efforts to enhance corporate intellectual prowess.Much confusion and waste of resources can result if companies do not have an intellectual capital management system to provide a coherent process for making decisions on questions of the kind listed above to yield the highest strategic value.Knowledge And Its Monetary WorthThere is difficulty in evaluating intellectual capital by the prevailing accounting rules that are used to evaluate physical capital. It seems that this difficulty has regrettably discouraged investment in intellectual capital. Not withstanding this,there cannot be any reasonable doubt that intellectual capital is very valuable. Just imagine that your company is suddenly struck by a knowledge blight that erases all your corporate knowledge from the storage media including the employees' minds. The difference between the market values of the company before and after the blight struck is the value of the company's intellectual capital. You might wish to continue the thought experiment by estimating how much will it cost to recreate the lost intellectual capital and to restore it to its original functionality, and you will have a measure of the lost value. Worthy efforts are underway to ascribe monetary value to intellectual capital. The difference between market value and asset value as recorded on the balance sheet has been used as a measure of the intangibles which include corporate knowledge. Brands, another intangible asset, are routinely evaluated and paid for handsomely in business transactions. The experience with "brand" evaluation may be helpful to the efforts to put a monetary price on intellectual capital. Intellectual capital manifests its value by how it is managed to enhance the performance and development of a company on the route to achieve its strategic intent. For any company it is possible to assess the contribution of intellectual capital to increased market share and profits through new products and faster product developments,through cost reduction,and by positioning the company for seizing future opportunities. The management system that is in place to leverage intellectual capital can measure continually its effectiveness by company-specific metrics, and demonstrate the real business worth of intellectual capital . Emerging Trail BlazersRecognizing the critical importance of intellectual capital to sustainable business success, a few notable companies have taken the leadership in launching considerable and serious efforts to understand and enhance intellectual capital management. The members of this select club include Sweden's Skandia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce,and Hughes Space & Communications, to name but three. Some organizations have created chief knowledge officer or equivalent positions to provide stewardship and management for knowledge, as the chief financial office was established for financial capital. They are also designing processes for measuring and enhancing the business value of their intellectual capital. Some companies have installed systems that facilitate networking and information diffusion. Even though a holistic approach to intellectual capital management has not yet been applied , these pioneering efforts are commendable and inspiring. Enlightened self interest and survival instinct will encourage other companies to follow this lead and focus management attention on intellectual capital. After all business would seem to have given information technology,which is but a tool for managing intellectual capital , a good deal of attention and resources. The difficulties of accounting for intellectual capital as if it were physical capital is no excuse for a lackadaisical approach to intellectual capital managment. Senior executives might wish to start the process of heightening awareness of the knowledge factor in their companies by finding out what proportion of their intellectual capital has been mapped and what proportion of it is being productively used to achieve strategic objectives.
KM The Art of Enhancing Productivity and Innovation with HR in your Organization
Knowledge Management: The Art of Enhancing Productivity and Innovation with the Human Resources in Your Organization
Stephan Kudyba
DM Review Magazine, April 2003
The focus has intensified and the trend is set for corporations to enhance the efficiency in which they operate in the marketplace. Years ago, organizations seemed to concentrate more on the acquisition of innovative technologies to provide the means to streamline operations, communicate with customers and more effectively compete in the new information economy. There is no doubt that these new technologies are essential components to corporate infrastructures; however, recent strategic initiatives have turned from merely acquiring these technologies to using them more intelligently in order to achieve success. A major part of this focus entails the utilization of information technologies to help organizations better identify, develop, access and apply the skills and experiences of their employees to augment business processes and drive innovation. This is called knowledge management.
Firm-level productivity or efficiency has largely been attributed to technological capital within corporations; but, in reality, productivity comes from the strategic use of a combination of an organization's entire resource base which includes capital, IT capital, labor, etc. Knowledge management addresses this concept as it involves the incorporation of management policies including strategic decision making, technological implementations and firm- level cultural issues with the intent to identify, develop, communicate and utilize the skills and talents of the employee base within the firm. Organizations are increasingly realizing that one of the most important resources, perhaps the most important, is the people that make it tick. Each employee has a set of skills and talents that needs to be appropriately allocated within a firm's operations. Additionally, with proper training, guidance and collaboration, employee skills can be enhanced to better suit the continuously evolving corporate structure. How is this achieved? Well, it's not easy because it involves the management of complex resources (people).
As is the case in any quest for increased organizational efficiency, key decision making as to resource allocation is a prime requisite. Knowledge-management initiatives are no exception. A knowledge-management initiative is a strategic plan that seeks to develop and utilize the existing assets of knowledge and experience of individuals within an organization in order to enhance a business process. It attempts to make employee knowledge and experience more accessible and available to those that require it in a timely manner. Managers at all levels and across functional departments must make accurate decisions as to which business processes to address, the type of technology to acquire, the personnel needed to support the cause and, ultimately, to determine the effectiveness of a given plan. More specifically, in relation to knowledge-management projects, decision-makers must decide the project scope to be addressed (e.g., particular business process such as enhancing sales call success rates) or a larger initiative (e.g., customer relationship management). Each of these projects leverages existing information technologies available in the organization and may require additional investment. Managers must also consider the complementary scope of employee participation relative to proposed initiatives (e.g., potential need of employee participation across functional areas), especially with regard to an enterprise project such as customer relationship management (CRM).
Decision-makers must not ignore a key fundamental requirement for achieving an effective knowledge-management project – the creation of a positive collaborative, trustworthy and supportive culture for those involved with the initiative. A positive corporate culture plays a vital role in the success of any strategic plan. A trustworthy and collaborative environment is required for employees to more seamlessly share knowledge and experiences relative to proposed business strategies. This cultural aspect opens an entirely new strategic process, however, which is beyond the scope of this article. Regardless of the strategic and cultural complexities of a knowledge-management project, there is little doubt that knowledge-management philosophy has grown dramatically over the past decade. One of the main underpinnings to this heightened popularity has been the introduction of innovative information technologies that have increased the efficiency by which organizations can store, retrieve and communicate information, experiences and knowledge.
New Dimensions
As mentioned, the concept of knowledge management is a widely encompassing initiative. The process of identifying, developing and communicating employee skills, experiences and knowledge in order to drive innovation and corporate efficiency involves a gamut of supportive activities. Fortunately, new information technologies have simplified some of the tasks that are involved. More specifically, there are a number of IT systems that can facilitate knowledge-management initiatives. These include intranet-based knowledge maps or directories that provide locations and contact information to expert employee resources throughout an organization. In order to increase the efficiency of a business process (e.g., provide clients with vital product or process information), employees often need timely insights from company experts. Knowledge maps enable employees to locate experts more quickly and gain best practices information, enabling them to overcome obstacles they face in carrying out an activity. Document repositories accessible through portals contain value-added information and knowledge sources about products, services and general activities. These documents can involve technical specifications of new products, presentation materials, best practices literature for particular initiatives and more. A well-designed document repository with portal access helps spread the available captured knowledge and experience existing within the firm to those in need of this information. Other IT attributes such as search engines in some initiatives also augment the process of retrieving vital documentation or expert contacts. Even more simple IT systems such as e-mail and online internal chat systems facilitate informal networking channels for employees to correspond and share experiences, information and knowledge which can help reduce redundancy of errors and lead to innovative techniques for processes and product development. Finally, the spectrum of business intelligence also plays a significant role in enhancing the knowledge-management initiative.
Transforming Data into Information
Organizations continue to capture vital data corresponding to almost every activity. There is a wealth of information in this data; and with better information comes enhanced knowledge and hopefully more accurate decision making. Data repositories provide the baseline source to the knowledge-enhancement process. With the use of extraction and reporting components, data is transformed to information, which is communicated to appropriate functional areas. The knowledge-enhancement process is further augmented by the utilization of online analytical processing (OLAP) which facilitates an interactive analytic methodology where decision-makers can identify elements of failure or success corresponding to business processes (sales, CRM, supply chain, marketing or production). The business intelligence (BI) implementation is then extended by data mining which provides perhaps the most significant knowledge enhancer by enabling decision-makers to perform "what-if" simulations and identify reliable relationships among business variables. The final result is a better informed decision-maker who uses the corresponding information along with experiences in the marketplace to formulate strategies. Is BI (reporting, OLAP, data mining) the real driver to corporate efficiency? The answer is simply no. Strategic cubes, insightful reports and complex models all require effective collaboration among individuals affiliated with corresponding business processes. In order to achieve enhanced knowledge from BI, decision- makers at all levels must communicate needs, provide feedback on initiatives and direct the process that creates value-added BI systems. (For more information on the BI knowledge connection, see Information Technology, Corporate Productivity and the New Economy by Kudyba and Diwan, Greenwood Publishing, 2002.)
Results – Competitive Advantage
Knowledge management reflects the shift of corporate enterprises from focusing merely on investment in new forms of technologies to enhance productivity to concentrating on combining all the available resources within an organization in order to become more efficient. Firms are realizing that perhaps the most important of these resources is something in which it has already invested – the labor force. As prominent business theory has proven, one of the most reliable components of an organization's competitive advantage in the marketplace is not its technology but the chemistry that exists among the people who work with this technology to bring products and services to the market.
Stephan Kudyba
DM Review Magazine, April 2003
The focus has intensified and the trend is set for corporations to enhance the efficiency in which they operate in the marketplace. Years ago, organizations seemed to concentrate more on the acquisition of innovative technologies to provide the means to streamline operations, communicate with customers and more effectively compete in the new information economy. There is no doubt that these new technologies are essential components to corporate infrastructures; however, recent strategic initiatives have turned from merely acquiring these technologies to using them more intelligently in order to achieve success. A major part of this focus entails the utilization of information technologies to help organizations better identify, develop, access and apply the skills and experiences of their employees to augment business processes and drive innovation. This is called knowledge management.
Firm-level productivity or efficiency has largely been attributed to technological capital within corporations; but, in reality, productivity comes from the strategic use of a combination of an organization's entire resource base which includes capital, IT capital, labor, etc. Knowledge management addresses this concept as it involves the incorporation of management policies including strategic decision making, technological implementations and firm- level cultural issues with the intent to identify, develop, communicate and utilize the skills and talents of the employee base within the firm. Organizations are increasingly realizing that one of the most important resources, perhaps the most important, is the people that make it tick. Each employee has a set of skills and talents that needs to be appropriately allocated within a firm's operations. Additionally, with proper training, guidance and collaboration, employee skills can be enhanced to better suit the continuously evolving corporate structure. How is this achieved? Well, it's not easy because it involves the management of complex resources (people).
As is the case in any quest for increased organizational efficiency, key decision making as to resource allocation is a prime requisite. Knowledge-management initiatives are no exception. A knowledge-management initiative is a strategic plan that seeks to develop and utilize the existing assets of knowledge and experience of individuals within an organization in order to enhance a business process. It attempts to make employee knowledge and experience more accessible and available to those that require it in a timely manner. Managers at all levels and across functional departments must make accurate decisions as to which business processes to address, the type of technology to acquire, the personnel needed to support the cause and, ultimately, to determine the effectiveness of a given plan. More specifically, in relation to knowledge-management projects, decision-makers must decide the project scope to be addressed (e.g., particular business process such as enhancing sales call success rates) or a larger initiative (e.g., customer relationship management). Each of these projects leverages existing information technologies available in the organization and may require additional investment. Managers must also consider the complementary scope of employee participation relative to proposed initiatives (e.g., potential need of employee participation across functional areas), especially with regard to an enterprise project such as customer relationship management (CRM).
Decision-makers must not ignore a key fundamental requirement for achieving an effective knowledge-management project – the creation of a positive collaborative, trustworthy and supportive culture for those involved with the initiative. A positive corporate culture plays a vital role in the success of any strategic plan. A trustworthy and collaborative environment is required for employees to more seamlessly share knowledge and experiences relative to proposed business strategies. This cultural aspect opens an entirely new strategic process, however, which is beyond the scope of this article. Regardless of the strategic and cultural complexities of a knowledge-management project, there is little doubt that knowledge-management philosophy has grown dramatically over the past decade. One of the main underpinnings to this heightened popularity has been the introduction of innovative information technologies that have increased the efficiency by which organizations can store, retrieve and communicate information, experiences and knowledge.
New Dimensions
As mentioned, the concept of knowledge management is a widely encompassing initiative. The process of identifying, developing and communicating employee skills, experiences and knowledge in order to drive innovation and corporate efficiency involves a gamut of supportive activities. Fortunately, new information technologies have simplified some of the tasks that are involved. More specifically, there are a number of IT systems that can facilitate knowledge-management initiatives. These include intranet-based knowledge maps or directories that provide locations and contact information to expert employee resources throughout an organization. In order to increase the efficiency of a business process (e.g., provide clients with vital product or process information), employees often need timely insights from company experts. Knowledge maps enable employees to locate experts more quickly and gain best practices information, enabling them to overcome obstacles they face in carrying out an activity. Document repositories accessible through portals contain value-added information and knowledge sources about products, services and general activities. These documents can involve technical specifications of new products, presentation materials, best practices literature for particular initiatives and more. A well-designed document repository with portal access helps spread the available captured knowledge and experience existing within the firm to those in need of this information. Other IT attributes such as search engines in some initiatives also augment the process of retrieving vital documentation or expert contacts. Even more simple IT systems such as e-mail and online internal chat systems facilitate informal networking channels for employees to correspond and share experiences, information and knowledge which can help reduce redundancy of errors and lead to innovative techniques for processes and product development. Finally, the spectrum of business intelligence also plays a significant role in enhancing the knowledge-management initiative.
Transforming Data into Information
Organizations continue to capture vital data corresponding to almost every activity. There is a wealth of information in this data; and with better information comes enhanced knowledge and hopefully more accurate decision making. Data repositories provide the baseline source to the knowledge-enhancement process. With the use of extraction and reporting components, data is transformed to information, which is communicated to appropriate functional areas. The knowledge-enhancement process is further augmented by the utilization of online analytical processing (OLAP) which facilitates an interactive analytic methodology where decision-makers can identify elements of failure or success corresponding to business processes (sales, CRM, supply chain, marketing or production). The business intelligence (BI) implementation is then extended by data mining which provides perhaps the most significant knowledge enhancer by enabling decision-makers to perform "what-if" simulations and identify reliable relationships among business variables. The final result is a better informed decision-maker who uses the corresponding information along with experiences in the marketplace to formulate strategies. Is BI (reporting, OLAP, data mining) the real driver to corporate efficiency? The answer is simply no. Strategic cubes, insightful reports and complex models all require effective collaboration among individuals affiliated with corresponding business processes. In order to achieve enhanced knowledge from BI, decision- makers at all levels must communicate needs, provide feedback on initiatives and direct the process that creates value-added BI systems. (For more information on the BI knowledge connection, see Information Technology, Corporate Productivity and the New Economy by Kudyba and Diwan, Greenwood Publishing, 2002.)
Results – Competitive Advantage
Knowledge management reflects the shift of corporate enterprises from focusing merely on investment in new forms of technologies to enhance productivity to concentrating on combining all the available resources within an organization in order to become more efficient. Firms are realizing that perhaps the most important of these resources is something in which it has already invested – the labor force. As prominent business theory has proven, one of the most reliable components of an organization's competitive advantage in the marketplace is not its technology but the chemistry that exists among the people who work with this technology to bring products and services to the market.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Knowledge Management in the Real World
Written by Richard MacManus / June 11, 2004 5:48 PM
Knowledge Management is a term that many people dislike, myself included. Firstly it's a misnomer - you can't "manage", at an organization or corporate level, something as subjective and contextual as knowledge. It's even debatable whether you can manage knowledge at a personal level - because we don't always know what we know.
Secondly, the term 'knowledge management' has become one of those awful IT cliche buzz words - like (my personal favourite) "leverage" and "portal". People who want to sound important in IT business meetings, but actually know little about IT, use buzz words frequently. e.g. "Yes we are addressing that with our new Knowledge Management initiatives, which will leverage off our Web Portal."
But despite these faults, the term 'knowledge management' is widely accepted as the name of a business discipline (alongside 'accounting' and 'marketing' and so forth). So it makes sense to go with the flow and continue to use the term. Indeed I've done so in my own weblog categorisation, which mostly matches the community topic mapping applications I use. It isn't my purpose here to try and change the term 'knowledge management'. I do however want to try and grasp what exactly is knowledge management and how is it done in the real world?
Is KM Nonsense?
I came across an interesting paper that debunks some myths about KM. Written by Professor T.D. Wilson of the University of Sheffield, the paper is provocatively entitled The nonsense of 'knowledge management'. The professor researched journal papers that had the term 'knowledge management' in their titles and he found that the occurance of such papers grew exponentially from 1997 onward. His data takes us to 2002, which was the peak but also showed signs of a slow-down. Professor Wilson discovered the following tendencies among the journals he researched (nb: I've separated the points into a numbered list):
1. A concern with information technology.
2. A tendency to elide the distinction between 'knowledge' (what I know) and 'information' (what I am able to convey about what I know).
3. Confusion of the management of work practices in the organization with the management of knowledge.
The 3 things above aren't the Professor's conclusions, just an excerpt I've selected that covers what I consider to be 3 key points. His actual conclusion later in that paper is that KM is a "management fad, promulgated mainly by certain consultancy companies". That may be so, but I'm more interested in what KM is in practice in the business world.
Work Practices
I want to pick up on the third point from above, "management of work practices in the organization". This is dismissed by Professor Wilson in his conclusion as a "Utopian idea", but I believe it is a practical way forward for KM. The current crop of personal content management and 'social software' tools (weblogs, wikis, etc) go some way to giving individual workers control over their information gathering and sharing. It's by no means a perfect solution - I've written before that I'm skeptical about how many 'normal' people (i.e. non-geeks) will use these technologies. But even so, technologies such as weblogs do emphasize subjectivity and context - which as I mentioned at the beginning of this post are two main tenets of 'knowledge'.
Bottom-up KM
One of the best articles I've seen on KM was written a week or so ago by Dave Pollard. He entitled it Confessions of a CKO: What I should have done. As the title indicates, Dave used to be a "Chief Knowledge Officer" (at Ernst & Young I think? if so, then it's one of the consultancy firms that Professor Wilson picked on in his paper!). In a previous article, Dave had outlined his principles of KM and in this latest article he tackles the processes. They are grounded in the following observation:
"...I realized that we have been looking at it all wrong, from above, from a systems perspective, instead of from ground level, from an activity level."
Which is another of saying that KM should be bottom-up, rather than top-down - a theme that I've written on before (as have many others in the blogging world).
KM Job Description
What really grabbed me about Dave's article was his ideal "job description" for KM - or "Work Effectiveness Improvement" as he re-named it. He outlined 6 bullet points and I've decided to crudely cut out the action points from those, which ironically loses the context somewhat. But generally speaking there are far too few KM action points in the world (as opposed to reams and reams of KM theory). So here goes:
1. Introduce personal content management and social networking tools.
2. Provide personalized training, tools, suggested processes and 'cheat sheets' to workers; plus provide recommendations for more systematic changes.
3. Establish standards, procedures, filters and measurements to reduce unnecessary e-mails, information flows, paperwork, meetings and interruptions.
4. Develop voluntary training programs.
5. Assess the aggregate cost to the organization of information; and objectively evaluate information adequacy, quality, and overload, and recommend changes to tools, repositories, and processes.
6. Develop a set of Work Effectiveness Principles.
Summary
The key point I take away from Dave Pollard's article and Professor Wilson's paper is that Knowledge Management isn't just a term to be used and abused in management meetings and journal papers. Knowledge Management - despite being mis-named - is a personal, collaborative, active 'doing word'. It is founded on subjectivity and context.
Let me put it this way: Knowledge Management should be a verb, not (as the word 'management' implies) a noun.
Our jobs as KM researchers or practitioners is to enable that in organizational settings. Now... if only I could get such a job! I'm currently a Web Producer, but I much prefer working at the Analysis and Strategy level. So I'd be interested to know how Dave Pollard worked his way to be a CKO, as that's something I'd like to aim towards.
Written by Richard MacManus / June 11, 2004 5:48 PM
Knowledge Management is a term that many people dislike, myself included. Firstly it's a misnomer - you can't "manage", at an organization or corporate level, something as subjective and contextual as knowledge. It's even debatable whether you can manage knowledge at a personal level - because we don't always know what we know.
Secondly, the term 'knowledge management' has become one of those awful IT cliche buzz words - like (my personal favourite) "leverage" and "portal". People who want to sound important in IT business meetings, but actually know little about IT, use buzz words frequently. e.g. "Yes we are addressing that with our new Knowledge Management initiatives, which will leverage off our Web Portal."
But despite these faults, the term 'knowledge management' is widely accepted as the name of a business discipline (alongside 'accounting' and 'marketing' and so forth). So it makes sense to go with the flow and continue to use the term. Indeed I've done so in my own weblog categorisation, which mostly matches the community topic mapping applications I use. It isn't my purpose here to try and change the term 'knowledge management'. I do however want to try and grasp what exactly is knowledge management and how is it done in the real world?
Is KM Nonsense?
I came across an interesting paper that debunks some myths about KM. Written by Professor T.D. Wilson of the University of Sheffield, the paper is provocatively entitled The nonsense of 'knowledge management'. The professor researched journal papers that had the term 'knowledge management' in their titles and he found that the occurance of such papers grew exponentially from 1997 onward. His data takes us to 2002, which was the peak but also showed signs of a slow-down. Professor Wilson discovered the following tendencies among the journals he researched (nb: I've separated the points into a numbered list):
1. A concern with information technology.
2. A tendency to elide the distinction between 'knowledge' (what I know) and 'information' (what I am able to convey about what I know).
3. Confusion of the management of work practices in the organization with the management of knowledge.
The 3 things above aren't the Professor's conclusions, just an excerpt I've selected that covers what I consider to be 3 key points. His actual conclusion later in that paper is that KM is a "management fad, promulgated mainly by certain consultancy companies". That may be so, but I'm more interested in what KM is in practice in the business world.
Work Practices
I want to pick up on the third point from above, "management of work practices in the organization". This is dismissed by Professor Wilson in his conclusion as a "Utopian idea", but I believe it is a practical way forward for KM. The current crop of personal content management and 'social software' tools (weblogs, wikis, etc) go some way to giving individual workers control over their information gathering and sharing. It's by no means a perfect solution - I've written before that I'm skeptical about how many 'normal' people (i.e. non-geeks) will use these technologies. But even so, technologies such as weblogs do emphasize subjectivity and context - which as I mentioned at the beginning of this post are two main tenets of 'knowledge'.
Bottom-up KM
One of the best articles I've seen on KM was written a week or so ago by Dave Pollard. He entitled it Confessions of a CKO: What I should have done. As the title indicates, Dave used to be a "Chief Knowledge Officer" (at Ernst & Young I think? if so, then it's one of the consultancy firms that Professor Wilson picked on in his paper!). In a previous article, Dave had outlined his principles of KM and in this latest article he tackles the processes. They are grounded in the following observation:
"...I realized that we have been looking at it all wrong, from above, from a systems perspective, instead of from ground level, from an activity level."
Which is another of saying that KM should be bottom-up, rather than top-down - a theme that I've written on before (as have many others in the blogging world).
KM Job Description
What really grabbed me about Dave's article was his ideal "job description" for KM - or "Work Effectiveness Improvement" as he re-named it. He outlined 6 bullet points and I've decided to crudely cut out the action points from those, which ironically loses the context somewhat. But generally speaking there are far too few KM action points in the world (as opposed to reams and reams of KM theory). So here goes:
1. Introduce personal content management and social networking tools.
2. Provide personalized training, tools, suggested processes and 'cheat sheets' to workers; plus provide recommendations for more systematic changes.
3. Establish standards, procedures, filters and measurements to reduce unnecessary e-mails, information flows, paperwork, meetings and interruptions.
4. Develop voluntary training programs.
5. Assess the aggregate cost to the organization of information; and objectively evaluate information adequacy, quality, and overload, and recommend changes to tools, repositories, and processes.
6. Develop a set of Work Effectiveness Principles.
Summary
The key point I take away from Dave Pollard's article and Professor Wilson's paper is that Knowledge Management isn't just a term to be used and abused in management meetings and journal papers. Knowledge Management - despite being mis-named - is a personal, collaborative, active 'doing word'. It is founded on subjectivity and context.
Let me put it this way: Knowledge Management should be a verb, not (as the word 'management' implies) a noun.
Our jobs as KM researchers or practitioners is to enable that in organizational settings. Now... if only I could get such a job! I'm currently a Web Producer, but I much prefer working at the Analysis and Strategy level. So I'd be interested to know how Dave Pollard worked his way to be a CKO, as that's something I'd like to aim towards.
Friday, January 4, 2008
The Knowledge Management Practices as Moderator in the Relationship between Corporate Strategy and Firm Performance among Public-listed Organizations
Despite interest in managing knowledge, however, there has been very little research about incorporating the knowledge management practices in the corporate strategy agenda of the organization. Lack of empirical evidence creates a gap between theory and practices of knowledge management in the corporate strategy issues. In this study, the researchers integrate theories on the knowledge-based view and the resources-based view of the firm and strategy to develop a suitable framework and model for knowledge management research; develop a knowledge management construct and empirically tested the research model within the moderation perspective along with the Miles and Snow’s strategy typology. In particular, the influenced of the knowledge management practices as key moderating variable which have been neglected in Malaysian previous studies are examined. The theoretical model is empirically tested using data from 123 public-listed organizations in Malaysia. Data from the survey is analyzed using the higher order interaction effects of the Moderated Multiple Regressions analysis. Results indicate that corporate strategy and the knowledge management practices positively impact firm performance. The moderating effect of the knowledge management practices explains 13% of variance in firm performance increase and beyond the increased explained by the corporate strategy. An important management implication of this study is that it confirms that either the corporate strategy alone or knowledge-related activities alone do not adequately enhance business activities which in turn leads to contribute to the performance of the organizations. Instead, this study suggests that greater utilization of the knowledge management practices in crafting the corporate strategy both in the aspect of operational effectiveness (internally) and strategic positioning (externally) help organizations to pinpoint areas within the organizations where the knowledge management practices is creating value. It is the fit between the organization structure, process and the corporate goals for the knowledge management practices facilitates the success of a good structure, which in turn, leads to better firm performance and contribute the understanding of how the knowledge management practices can improve firm performance.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
How the World Bank launched a knowledge management program
Author: Michel JL Pommier
Introduction
Drawing from the lessons of experience for launching a broad knowledge management program in a global organization like the World Bank, eight pillars were instrumental to support the Bank's initiative defining a clear strategy based on the business needs of the organization; keeping small the central KM unit which oversees overall implementation; making available a budget to allow communities to function; supporting the development of communities of practice; keeping information technology user-friendly and responsive to its users needs; orchestrating systematic communications to explain what knowledge means and to keep every one informed; introducing new incentives to accelerate the shift towards a knowledge culture; and developing a set of metrics to measure progress.
Defining a Knowledge Strategy
Defining a knowledge sharing strategy which will be endorsed by senior management and front-line staff is a difficult but essential first step. The strategy should clearly articulate why the organization should share its know-how, what the organization will share, with whom the organization will share and how the organization will share. One critical element in the World Bank knowledge sharing strategy was the public commitment made by its president to build a "knowledge" Bank. This decision to share, taken by the chief executive officer, sheltered the organization from lengthy discussions that typically surround the development of strategies in large organizations.
Deciding why to share:
Given the characteristics of the global economy, and the plummeting costs of communication and computing, the World Bank perceived that sharing knowledge would enhance its organizational performance, and therefore, its global impact on poverty. This was a business decision anchored on the realization that the new opportunities were worth the shock of cultural and technological transformations that the Bank was going to introduce. Knowledge management was not undertaken for its own good. It was motivated by a decision to increase the speed and quality of service delivery, lower the cost of operations by avoiding rework, accelerate innovation, and widen the Bank partnerships to fight poverty.
Deciding what to share:
The knowledge sharing program of the Bank is designed to share country and sector know-how, and global best practices and research in the field of development. The program would have been designed differently if the knowledge of competitive intelligence, processes or individual clients would have been at the core of the Bank's business. The issues of the quality and authentication of what is being shared is addressed by the thematic group leaders.
Deciding with whom to share
The knowledge-sharing vision of the World Bank is ambitious. It drives the institution to share its development know-how both internally with staff at headquarters and in the field, and externally with clients, partners and stakeholders. Internally, the audience is the members of the thematic groups and the objective is to collect and make accessible the latest and best sector and country development knowledge that exists globally to allow operational staff to bring higher quality advice to their clients while saving time and costs. In itself, collecting, synthesizing and authenticating this knowledge is already an endeavor. External knowledge sharing poses further issues such as the confidentiality of information given to the Bank by its clients and partners, copyright of documents, and for the Bank activities supporting the private sector, the protection of proprietary assets. Instead of developing constraining procedures to address these issues, the Bank is dealing with them as they arise.
Deciding how to share
The Bank uses a multitude of different channels to share various forms of knowledge. For instance, a number of thematic groups are providing a mentor for each new recruit to quickly familiarize them with sector strategies, lending procedures and key professional contacts. Every staff can also call a help desk, where packets of information and referral services are available. Seasoned professionals will attend and contribute to technical clinics (working lunches of one-to-two hours) or search the knowledge collections on the Intranet. Externally, knowledge sharing takes place virtually on the Web, and face-to-face with clients and partners, either during field missions or during sector weeks organized annually by sector boards and their thematic groups.
Introduction
Drawing from the lessons of experience for launching a broad knowledge management program in a global organization like the World Bank, eight pillars were instrumental to support the Bank's initiative defining a clear strategy based on the business needs of the organization; keeping small the central KM unit which oversees overall implementation; making available a budget to allow communities to function; supporting the development of communities of practice; keeping information technology user-friendly and responsive to its users needs; orchestrating systematic communications to explain what knowledge means and to keep every one informed; introducing new incentives to accelerate the shift towards a knowledge culture; and developing a set of metrics to measure progress.
Defining a Knowledge Strategy
Defining a knowledge sharing strategy which will be endorsed by senior management and front-line staff is a difficult but essential first step. The strategy should clearly articulate why the organization should share its know-how, what the organization will share, with whom the organization will share and how the organization will share. One critical element in the World Bank knowledge sharing strategy was the public commitment made by its president to build a "knowledge" Bank. This decision to share, taken by the chief executive officer, sheltered the organization from lengthy discussions that typically surround the development of strategies in large organizations.
Deciding why to share:
Given the characteristics of the global economy, and the plummeting costs of communication and computing, the World Bank perceived that sharing knowledge would enhance its organizational performance, and therefore, its global impact on poverty. This was a business decision anchored on the realization that the new opportunities were worth the shock of cultural and technological transformations that the Bank was going to introduce. Knowledge management was not undertaken for its own good. It was motivated by a decision to increase the speed and quality of service delivery, lower the cost of operations by avoiding rework, accelerate innovation, and widen the Bank partnerships to fight poverty.
Deciding what to share:
The knowledge sharing program of the Bank is designed to share country and sector know-how, and global best practices and research in the field of development. The program would have been designed differently if the knowledge of competitive intelligence, processes or individual clients would have been at the core of the Bank's business. The issues of the quality and authentication of what is being shared is addressed by the thematic group leaders.
Deciding with whom to share
The knowledge-sharing vision of the World Bank is ambitious. It drives the institution to share its development know-how both internally with staff at headquarters and in the field, and externally with clients, partners and stakeholders. Internally, the audience is the members of the thematic groups and the objective is to collect and make accessible the latest and best sector and country development knowledge that exists globally to allow operational staff to bring higher quality advice to their clients while saving time and costs. In itself, collecting, synthesizing and authenticating this knowledge is already an endeavor. External knowledge sharing poses further issues such as the confidentiality of information given to the Bank by its clients and partners, copyright of documents, and for the Bank activities supporting the private sector, the protection of proprietary assets. Instead of developing constraining procedures to address these issues, the Bank is dealing with them as they arise.
Deciding how to share
The Bank uses a multitude of different channels to share various forms of knowledge. For instance, a number of thematic groups are providing a mentor for each new recruit to quickly familiarize them with sector strategies, lending procedures and key professional contacts. Every staff can also call a help desk, where packets of information and referral services are available. Seasoned professionals will attend and contribute to technical clinics (working lunches of one-to-two hours) or search the knowledge collections on the Intranet. Externally, knowledge sharing takes place virtually on the Web, and face-to-face with clients and partners, either during field missions or during sector weeks organized annually by sector boards and their thematic groups.
Knowledge Management: The Key to Success for Life Sciences and Pharmaceutical Companies
Your company has recently completed a merger with another new life science organization, and is on the way to achieve the integration of the information systems that supported the operations of both companies. However, the departments that are starting to get consolidated are facing new challenges they did not encounter within the separate, regionally based, organizations. The sharing of information, best practices, and experiences, at different levels, is becoming more than ever a critical factor for the success of the merger. "Knowledge Management may be the key", you started to reflect, "but how exactly will it apply to the different departments and their disparate problems?"
Research and Development:
The pharmaceutical industry is knowledge intensive, and therefore Knowledge Management is critical to improve R&D productivity and reduce product cycle time. To achieve these goals, the trend in drug development is to work in multidisciplinary project teams due to the multiple skill requirements. The success of this approach depends, among other things, on the availability of information from multiple sources, presented to the team members properly organized around the research topics, and personalized to each researcher's needs.R&D professionals need to share their findings and conclusions with a geographically dispersed team. Although the discovery phase tends to be localized in "centers of excellence", the globalization created by industry mergers and worldwide testing, operations and distribution, makes knowledge sharing a critical success factor for clinical improvement. At the same time, regulations, markets, and health care issues that were unique to geography need to be considered from a global management perspective in order to achieve the advantages of economies of scale.To move quickly in a rapidly changing competitive environment, pharmaceutical and life science companies have performed bold strategic moves. One of these moves is to outsource elements of the R&D value chain through collaborative relationships with a widening field of players, such as dedicated biotechnology firms, contract research organizations, university laboratories, and other pharmaceutical companies. This portfolio of collaborative relationships needs to be managed, which includes source selection and monitoring based on internal knowledge and efficient transfer of knowledge from the external sources to the internal team. Knowledge must also be transferred within each team, and "lessons learned" need to be shared among the teams. Companies must learn from their experiences in collaborative relationships to strike better deals in the future. They must also be able to gauge their own knowledge capital when evaluating possible mergers or acquisitions.R&D strategic knowledge can be organized best through knowledge maps, establishing the relationships among key players in the company’s processes and including in the ontology people, departments, documents, procedures, and other important components. A skilled Knowledge Management consultant can rapidly develop very sophisticated knowledge maps that are invaluable for researchers, analysts, managers and team leaders, The results can be presented in a familiar, easy to use browser interface, that enables the R&D community to access key personalized knowledge in a fast and effective way through the company's intranet.
Standards and Regulations:
One of the most complex challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry is accelerate the process for moving drugs from concept to discovery, then to clinical trials, and finally to licensing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and similar country organizations worldwide. It would be very advantageous for a company to have a single source that should provide exhaustive references regarding regulatory references, as well as advice on process shortcuts and lessons learned in the regulatory affairs area in order to provide replicable approaches for the opportunity teams, such as knowledge about how to prepare for presenting data and their case for drug approval to the FDA advisory board. An effective Knowledge Management discipline would use knowledge maps to show the relationships and references in a clear graphical way, help shortening the learning cycle time, and allow for fast dissemination of critical knowledge.
Sales:
The competition in the drug development industry is intense, and physicians and health care organizations are being saturated with sales communications. To broaden the value proposition and gain mind share, pharmaceutical companies also need to provide knowledge gained from experiences regarding the comparative drug efficacy for clinical targets. More than classical clinical-trial data and descriptions of the drug benefits, physicians and pharmacists need constantly updated information about drug interactions, contraindications, and adverse effects to facilitate their decision-making and advice giving. A knowledge transfer link between the companies and the physician can make a difference m the choice of drugs. The link works both ways, and the companies can benefit from the early feedback of results of the use of their drugs in the medical practice.Globalization-enabling knowledge management infrastructures will increase the amount of knowledge shared across the multiple geographies. This includes not only knowledge about the effectiveness of different drugs and therapies, but also about the economic and health care aspects that are important when selling to groups with high bargaining power. A rapid dissemination of "lessons learned" across geographies and product lines can improve the company's sales results. This knowledge can be captured through the recording of collaborative interactions, and organized, shared, displayed, and disseminated on the company’s portal.
Patents:
Pharmaceutical companies need to manage their intellectual property assets with even more care than they manage their physical assets. The clearest example is patent management. The companies need to know the industry patent ownership and filings, track and manage their organization's patent licensing, and be aware of the industry trends by analyzing competitors’ patents and their relationships. Underutilized patents, and protection from infringements on patents related to key product lines are sources of wealth that need to be captured, understood, and acted upon. Knowledge management tools can provide valuable input to patent analysis by automatically extracting key information, creating summaries, and suggesting trends through automatic clustering and classification of patents.
Conclusions:
The implementation of a knowledge management discipline can provide very significant and measurable advantages in today's competitive environment. Knowledge management solutions provide a comprehensive and effective environment for building an enterprise wide knowledge infrastructure supporting the needs of the industry.
Daniel Tkach is a charter member and the first Technology Director of the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management. Previously, Daniel Tkach was the Principal and Practice Leader, of the IBM Global Services LA Object Technology Solutions Practice. Mr. Tkach has authored many publications including two books that were translated to French and Japanese, and many journal editorials and white papers. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, trade shows and international workshops. Send your questions and comments about this article to Daniel Tkach at dtkach@wistechnology.com
Research and Development:
The pharmaceutical industry is knowledge intensive, and therefore Knowledge Management is critical to improve R&D productivity and reduce product cycle time. To achieve these goals, the trend in drug development is to work in multidisciplinary project teams due to the multiple skill requirements. The success of this approach depends, among other things, on the availability of information from multiple sources, presented to the team members properly organized around the research topics, and personalized to each researcher's needs.R&D professionals need to share their findings and conclusions with a geographically dispersed team. Although the discovery phase tends to be localized in "centers of excellence", the globalization created by industry mergers and worldwide testing, operations and distribution, makes knowledge sharing a critical success factor for clinical improvement. At the same time, regulations, markets, and health care issues that were unique to geography need to be considered from a global management perspective in order to achieve the advantages of economies of scale.To move quickly in a rapidly changing competitive environment, pharmaceutical and life science companies have performed bold strategic moves. One of these moves is to outsource elements of the R&D value chain through collaborative relationships with a widening field of players, such as dedicated biotechnology firms, contract research organizations, university laboratories, and other pharmaceutical companies. This portfolio of collaborative relationships needs to be managed, which includes source selection and monitoring based on internal knowledge and efficient transfer of knowledge from the external sources to the internal team. Knowledge must also be transferred within each team, and "lessons learned" need to be shared among the teams. Companies must learn from their experiences in collaborative relationships to strike better deals in the future. They must also be able to gauge their own knowledge capital when evaluating possible mergers or acquisitions.R&D strategic knowledge can be organized best through knowledge maps, establishing the relationships among key players in the company’s processes and including in the ontology people, departments, documents, procedures, and other important components. A skilled Knowledge Management consultant can rapidly develop very sophisticated knowledge maps that are invaluable for researchers, analysts, managers and team leaders, The results can be presented in a familiar, easy to use browser interface, that enables the R&D community to access key personalized knowledge in a fast and effective way through the company's intranet.
Standards and Regulations:
One of the most complex challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry is accelerate the process for moving drugs from concept to discovery, then to clinical trials, and finally to licensing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and similar country organizations worldwide. It would be very advantageous for a company to have a single source that should provide exhaustive references regarding regulatory references, as well as advice on process shortcuts and lessons learned in the regulatory affairs area in order to provide replicable approaches for the opportunity teams, such as knowledge about how to prepare for presenting data and their case for drug approval to the FDA advisory board. An effective Knowledge Management discipline would use knowledge maps to show the relationships and references in a clear graphical way, help shortening the learning cycle time, and allow for fast dissemination of critical knowledge.
Sales:
The competition in the drug development industry is intense, and physicians and health care organizations are being saturated with sales communications. To broaden the value proposition and gain mind share, pharmaceutical companies also need to provide knowledge gained from experiences regarding the comparative drug efficacy for clinical targets. More than classical clinical-trial data and descriptions of the drug benefits, physicians and pharmacists need constantly updated information about drug interactions, contraindications, and adverse effects to facilitate their decision-making and advice giving. A knowledge transfer link between the companies and the physician can make a difference m the choice of drugs. The link works both ways, and the companies can benefit from the early feedback of results of the use of their drugs in the medical practice.Globalization-enabling knowledge management infrastructures will increase the amount of knowledge shared across the multiple geographies. This includes not only knowledge about the effectiveness of different drugs and therapies, but also about the economic and health care aspects that are important when selling to groups with high bargaining power. A rapid dissemination of "lessons learned" across geographies and product lines can improve the company's sales results. This knowledge can be captured through the recording of collaborative interactions, and organized, shared, displayed, and disseminated on the company’s portal.
Patents:
Pharmaceutical companies need to manage their intellectual property assets with even more care than they manage their physical assets. The clearest example is patent management. The companies need to know the industry patent ownership and filings, track and manage their organization's patent licensing, and be aware of the industry trends by analyzing competitors’ patents and their relationships. Underutilized patents, and protection from infringements on patents related to key product lines are sources of wealth that need to be captured, understood, and acted upon. Knowledge management tools can provide valuable input to patent analysis by automatically extracting key information, creating summaries, and suggesting trends through automatic clustering and classification of patents.
Conclusions:
The implementation of a knowledge management discipline can provide very significant and measurable advantages in today's competitive environment. Knowledge management solutions provide a comprehensive and effective environment for building an enterprise wide knowledge infrastructure supporting the needs of the industry.
Daniel Tkach is a charter member and the first Technology Director of the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management. Previously, Daniel Tkach was the Principal and Practice Leader, of the IBM Global Services LA Object Technology Solutions Practice. Mr. Tkach has authored many publications including two books that were translated to French and Japanese, and many journal editorials and white papers. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, trade shows and international workshops. Send your questions and comments about this article to Daniel Tkach at dtkach@wistechnology.com
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