KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOR BUSINESS IMPACT

The concept of knowledge management is not new. For generations businessmen have passed on knowledge of how to run a business to their children. But the size, scope technological sophistication and organizational complexity of modern organizations requires new solutions to ensure that employees not only have a sufficient data base of knowledge to draw from but that it is easily accessible when the demands of doing business require it. Increasingly the leadership of organizations must rely on the collective knowledge of its employees to make meaningful strategic decisions; and often that knowledge is localized, in various pockets throughout an organization, making it difficult to access all the information needed when it is needed. Not only is the range of knowledge in an organization extensive; the forms in which it exists and can be accessed are wide-ranging as well. It may be documented and available in print or soft form. And even if it is not documented, knowledge exists with employees in the form of their expertise and experience. However, if an organization's knowledge base is not centrally organized and easily accessible to all, being able to determine and apply the precise solution to remedy a specific problem is not likely to be easy and may not always be possible, even though the solution may reside somewhere in an organization's collective knowledge base. It is for this reason that "the right knowledge," in the right form, must be made available to employees, so that decisions can be made that have a high impact on business. Besides having the need to make existing knowledge centralized and accessible, organizations strive to find and create new knowledge to help them grow and sustain their position in competitive markets. And there is "tacit knowledge" held by employees of an organization in the form of intuition that can and should be drawn upon in an effort to marshal all of an organization's resources to maintain its competitiveness. These forms of knowledge need to be harnessed as well. The objectives of this book are to convey to the reader why organizations should manage knowledge, to explain the barriers that exist that can sometimes prevent them from doing so successfully, and to demonstrate how to tread the path to knowledge management successfully so that it can become a factor in helping an organization achieve its business objectives.