Knowledge Economy

Understanding the driving forces and characteristics of knowledge economy provides motivation for the organization to be serious about knowledge management. After all, if nothing but knowledge can sustain competitiveness, where is the room for putting off activities of knowledge accumulation and knowledge application?

It's clear that smart product and service impress customers. It's also clear that smart products and services are only delivered by smart people through smart business process and smart management. It's less clear, however, how to create a smart organization that is characterized by extraordinary value-creating power. The field of knowledge management represents an attempt to systematically deal with this challenge.

I learn, I know, I grow, and I rejoice

Knowledge is an outcome of learning. Learning feeds innovation. Innovation creates value, value for all stakeholders. Learning is an essential skill in the knowledge economy. One of the best things a business manager can do and should do is to develop and nurture a culture of organizational learning in the organization. Technological tools are great. But, ultimately, it's people that make the greatest difference. The same people may perform very differently under different leaderships and management styles. Besides, not all types of knowledge ought to be treated in the same way. How to best synchronize application domain, people, technology, process, and measurement still remains a major challenge for managers today. Is it analytic or holistic in nature? Both, I'd say. Is it more important for some sectors than the others. I'd be tempted to quickly say Yes. But a little more thinking pulled me back to say "Well, not quite." Nobody can solely rely on his muscle to perform excellently at work. Brain power has to be drawn upon and utilized in order to produce innovative value and sometimes even just to get by in today's business environment.

Knowledge Management Technology - Expert System

Expert systems are developed to solve complex problems in a specific domain, such as system configuration, trouble shooting, data interpretation, etc. The core of an expert system is a knowledge base, which is primarily a collection of decision rules that represent explicit knowledge about the target domain. The amount and the quality of the knowledge in the knowledge base determine how useful and powerful the system is to the user.

Expert systems in business are usually developed with an expert system development tool. There used to several dozens of these tools in the market, ranging from many thoudand dollars in price to free of charge or less than $100. A great shakeup and the consequent consolidation took place around 15 years ago. Now there are only a few out there. For an example, go to www.exsys.com.

When the first batch of expert systems appeared, people were amazed at the problem-solving power and create unrealistic expectations for something even more powerful. When the expectation "bubble" bursted, the pendulum swun to the opposite extreme almost overnight. Even until today, expert system technology is still viewed as either completely useless or at least not practical for business applications.

The fact is, expert system is a great technology for certain types of problems. Often , they are integrated with other front-end or back-end applications to deliver intelligent services at some points of user-system interaction experience. It's how the technology is used, rather than the technology itself, that determines its value to the user.

Knowledge Management Technologies - Search

Although technology alone is not sufficient, it is usually essential for successful implementation of effective km initiatives. A number of technolgies pop up in my mind when speaking of km technology: collaboration software, expert system, data mining, neural network, search, content management, intranet, extranet, concept map, Web 2.0 tools (e.g., blog, wiki), just to name some of them. Different tools are designed for different purposes. Since an organization typically manages different types of knowledge and km activities, a portfolio of technologies is required to achieve ultimate success.

Search is becoming a powerful way of finding knowledge. In the data and information management era, quick finding is ensured by proper organization. Organization depends on classification and hierarchical layering. While classification and hierachical structuring are still important, they are becoming more and more difficult due to the very nature and massive amount of knowledge resource. More than once when I was looking for an e-mail or a paper file in my computer, after a series of fruitless clickings, I clicked on the Google Desktop icon. That brings up a reasoanly short list of possible spots. With one more click, the right thing was found. Powerful search engines have beat my memory and my organization capability.

With such an important role to play for knowledge management, search tools are bound to continue to advance. Currently, for example, finding rare, local services is still not readily accessible.

What's so unique about Nucor Steel?

For one thing, the phrase Knowledge Management doesn't seem to appear anywhere on the company bulletin board. What matters is not the label, of course. It's doing what you know that makes knowledge a source of competitive advantage that truly matters.

Making sure good knowledge constantly gets created is fundamental. Networking with external sources is important. But being aggressive and systematic in running good experiments to create proprietary knowledge from within the organization can bring about even greater value.

Knowledge is created by people and applied by people to boost performance. Recruiting people from knowledge management perspective is an age old wisdom with a little new significance in today's knowledge economy.

Blogs and Wikis

We've barely scratched the thinnest surface of blogs and wikis as educational tools. Blogs and wikis have some things in common. But they are also different in several ways. Both can be used to capture thoughts and ideas. Blogs look just like a personal bulletine board that allows visitors to leave comments. Time is one of the most basic dimension in our experience. Content organization based on date and time, in and of itself, is a facinating feature. The core spirit of wikis is collaboration. Both blogs and wikis invite user participation in content creation. Wikis seem to be more open in terms of content contribution, while blogs give bloggers more control. Wikis give more room for participants to make their contribution. That is, more space is furnished by wikis. Just like time and space are both distinctive and related in some way, so are blogs and wikis.

I know I'm ready to use both blogs and wikis more for future teaching and research. Both are great tools for creation, organization, and distribution of both personal and enterprise knowledge. Increasing return is not just a good idea in knowledge economy. It's also a great driver in the enterprise of meaningful living.
Here's a great website on blogs and wikis for education. Now that I have put it down in my blog, I won't forget it when I need it. Ha! Ha!
http://opencontent.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Bloggers for hire

A recent BusinessWeek article introduced a new Internet company called Federated Media Publishing Inc. (http://www.federatedmedia.net/blog/) that active bloggers would be excited about. This company functions as a broker matching big advertisers with cool blogs. It's an equivalent of Google's Adsense in a sense. Instead of relying on programs to automate every single step of the process, Federated Media has human specialists providing blog authors with valuable supports to make their blogging more efficient and more attractive. With this kind of service, bloggers can more seriously consider blogging an endeavor not only emotionally but also financially rewarding.

Sharing your experience, insight, and observations is usally like an echo chamber. But you are the only one in the chamber. Perhaps, that's a great reminder that we are simply rushing from one day to the next most of the time. There is not enough might, soul, and heart engaged on the life journey. Or, you've got to double check on your crowded schedule and see if it's possible to set aside a little more quiet time for yourselves. If even for nothing else, reflecting on your classes and your study can be very beneficial for improving your academic performance.

Blogs also should be used as a community building tool.