ISTypes.ppt1 TDT4175 - Information Systems, Spring 2006 Today: Knowledge Management (Pearlson &...

ISTypes.ppt 1

TDT4175 - Information Systems, Spring 2006

Today:

Knowledge Management(Pearlson & Saunders, ch.11)

John Krogstie, IDI

2


Learning goals – this lesson

What is knowledge management?

From an organizational perspective, not just IT applications

Why manage knowledge in an organization?

And why more now than ever?

How to manage knowledge?

3


What is knowledge management?

Basic terminology:

Knowledge management: ”processes necessary to generate, capture, codify, and transfer knowledge across the organization to achieve competitive advantage”

Intellectual capital: ”knowledge that has been identified, captured, and leveraged to produce higher-level goods or services or some other competitive advantage for the firm”

Intellectual property = (no.) opphavsrett

Data: simple observations of the world

Information: …relevance, purpose

Knowledge: valuable information from the human mind, includes reflection, synthesis, context

Data is easy to capture and structure, knowledge is not (cf. Fig 11.1)

4


Data, Knowledge & Information (cf. Davenport, 1997)

Data Information Knowledge

Simple observations of the world:

•Easily captured

•Easily structured

•Easily transferred

•Compact, quantifiable

Data with relevance and purpose:

•Requires unit of analysis

•Needs consensus on meaning

•Human mediation necessary

•Often garbled in transmission

Valuable information from the human mind: includes reflection, synthesis, context

•Hard to capture electronically

•Hard to structure

•Often tacit

•Hard to transfer

•Highly personal to the source

5


Taxonomies of knowledge

Three ways of knowing (fig 11.2) Know-what: recognize, describe, and classify concepts

and things

Know-how: ability to apply the knowledge in practice

Know-why: synthesis of what and how, understanding causal relationships

Tacit vs. explicit knowledge (fig 11.3) Tacit knowledge

Experiences, beliefs, skills

Subjective, context-specific, hard to formalize

Explicit knowledge Objective, theoretical: Books, articles, reports

Procedures listed in manuals, …

6


WHY MANAGE KNOWLEDGE?

7


Factors to consider in Knowledge Management

Information and knowledge have become the fields in which businesses compete.

Several important factors include: Sharing Best Practice

Globalization

Rapid Change

Downsizing

Managing Information and Communication Demand

Knowledge Embedded in Products

Sustainable Competitive Advantage

8


Sharing Best Practice

Sharing best practice means leveraging the knowledge gained by a subset of the organization.

Increasingly important in organizations who depend on applying their expertise such as accounting, consulting and training firms.

KM systems capture best practices to disseminate their experience within the firm.

Problems often arise from employees who may be reluctant to share their knowledge.

9


Globalization: Knowledge is the new Strategic Factor

Historically three factors, land, labor and capital were the key to economic success

Knowledge has become a fourth factor.

Low international labor costs are driving globalization (as is telecom) and pushing companies that fail to take part out of business.

10


11


Other factors Rapid change: firms must be nimble and adaptive to compete

Downsizing: sometimes the wrong people get fired when creating a leaner organization

Managing Info Overload: data must be categorized in some manner if it is to be useful rather than overwhelming

Knowledge Embedded in Products: the intangibles that add the most value to goods and services are becoming increasingly knowledge-based

Sustainable Competitive Advantage: KM is the way to do this. Shorter innovation life cycles keep companies ahead of the competition.

12


Figure 11.5 Reasons for Managing Knowledge. ©IBM Global Services

Sharing Best Practices•Avoid “ reinventing the wheel”•Build on previous work

Sustainable Competitive Advantage•Shorter life-cycle of innovation•Knowledge as an infinite resource•Direct bottom-line returns Managing Overload

•Inability to assimilate knowledge•Data organization and storage is needed

Downsizing•Loss of knowledge•Portability of workers•Lack of time and resourcesfor knowledge acquisition

Globalization•Decreased cycle times•Increased competitive pressures•Global access to knowledge•Adapting to local conditions

Embedded Knowledge•Smart products•Blurring of distinction betweenservice and manufacturing firms

•Value-added through intangibles

Rapid Change•Avoid obsolescence•Build on previous work•Streamline processes•Sense and respond to change

Why ManageKnowledge?

13


KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

14


Knowledge managementKM involves four main processes:

1. Knowledge generation

2. Knowledge capture

3. Knowledge codification

4. Knowledge transfer

15


1. Knowledge generation

Knowledge generation concerns the efforts by an organization to acquire or create new knowledge.

This can be done in several ways (Figure 11.6): Research and Development (develop knowledge internally)

Adaptation (use existing knowledge in new ways)

Buy or Rent (obtaining knowledge from another source)

Shared Problem Solving (knowledge generation through “fusion” of different approaches)

Communities of Practice (obtain knowledge through an informal network)

16


Research and Development

Knowledge generated by R&D efforts frequently arises from synthesis

Synthesis brings disparate pieces of knowledge together, often from extremely diverse sources, then seeks interesting and useful relationships among them

Realizing value from R&D depends largely on how effectively new knowledge is communicated and applied across the rest of the firm

17


Adaptation

Adaptation is the ability to apply existing resources in new ways when external changes make old ways of doing business prohibitive

A firm’s ability to adapt is based on two factors: having sufficient internal resources to accomplish change and being open and willing to change

18


Buy or Rent

Knowledge may be acquired by purchasing it or by hiring individuals, either as employees or consultants, who possess the desired knowledge.

Another technique is to support outside research in exchange for rights to the first commercial use of the results

19


Shared Problem Solving

Also called “fusion,” shared problem solving brings together people with different backgrounds and cognitive styles to work on the same problem

The creative energy generated by problem-solving groups with diverse backgrounds has been termed “creative abrasion”

20


Helping Fusion Work

Ideas that help fusion work effectively include:

(1) fostering awareness of the value of the knowledge sought and a willingness to invest in it;

(2) emphasizing the creative potential inherent in different styles of thinking and viewing the differences as positive;

(3) clearly specifying the parameters of the problem to focus the group on a common goal

21


Communities of Practice

Achieved by groups of workers with common interests and objectives, but not necessarily employed in the same department or location, and who occupy different roles on the organization chart.

Workers communicate in person, by telephone or by e-mail to solve problems together.

Communities of practice are held together by a common sense of purpose and a need to know what other members of the network know

22


Knowledge Codification

Codification puts the knowledge in a form that makes it possible to easily find and use

The boundaries of knowledge are difficult to identify because of context sensitivity; one person’s crucial fact is another person’s irrelevant trivia

Knowledge is unavailable across the firm until it has been codified in a manner that will allow those who need it to find it

23


Davenport and Prusak’s (1998) 4 basic principles of knowledge codification:

1. Decide what business goals the codified knowledge will serve (define strategic intent).

2. Identify existing knowledge necessary to achieve strategic intent.

3. Evaluate existing knowledge for usefulness and the ability to be codified.

4. Determine the appropriate medium for codification and distribution.

24


Knowledge Capture

Knowledge capture takes into account the media to be used in the codification process.

The 3 main knowledge capture activities are:

Scanning (gather “raw” information)

Organizing (move it into an acceptable form)

Designing knowledge maps (providing a guide for navigating the knowledge base)

25


Designing Knowledge Maps (Enterprise model)

A knowledge map serves as both a guide to where knowledge exists in an organization and an inventory of the knowledge assets available.

Although it may be graphically represented, a knowledge map can consist of nothing more than a list of people, documents, and databases telling employees where to go when they need help.

A good knowledge map gives access to resources that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to find

26


Capturing and Codifying Tacit Knowledge with Narratives

If the expert is unavailable or leaves the firm, the value of his or her knowledge will be lost. Capturing tacit knowledge through narratives prevents this.

Research has shown that knowledge is communicated most effectively through a good story, told with feeling, that resonates with other people.

More firms are beginning to circulate videotapes that tell stories, for example, about how an important sale was closed. These narratives “codify” the expert’s tacit knowledge of how to close a sale in a way that conveys much of its underlying meaning.

27


Nonaka and Takeuchi modes of knowledge creation

Explicitknowledge

From

Tacitknowledge

To Explicit knowledgeTacit knowledge

Combinationcreation of new explicitknowledge fromexplicit knowledge

Internalizationconversion of explicitknowledge to tacitknowledge

Externalizationconversion from tacit toexplicit knowledge

Socializationcreating tacitknowledge throughshared experience

Socialization Externalization

CombinationInternalization

FieldBuilding

Learning by doing

Dialogue

FieldBuilding

LinkingExplicitKnowledge

28


Spiral of organisational knowledge creation

Ontologicaldimension

Epistemologicaldimension

Explicitknowledge

Tacitknowledge

Knowledge level

Individual Group Organization Inter-organization

Combination

Socialization

Externalization

Internalization

29


Enabling conditions of knowledge creation

Intention; i.e. the knowledge spiral is driven by organisational intention.

Autonomy; ranging from the individual level through team levels to sections and departments.

Fluctuation and creative chaos; where fluctuation is viewed as an “order whose patterns are hard to predict at the beginning” which fosters continuous self-assessment and the creative chaos may be intentionally introduced to increase organisational tension and focus attention on problem definition and solving.

Redundancy; i.e. the existence of information that goes beyond the immediate operational requirements of the organisational actors.

Requisite variety; i.e. that an organisation's internal diversity matches the variety and complexity of the environment with which it interacts.

30


Types of KM projects

> 1/3 of budget on IT: an IT project rather than KM project (Davenport & Prusak)

Differences shown in fig 11.9

Internal or external focus

4 themes

Knowledge repositories

Knowledge access

Knowledge environment

Knowledge assets

31


Measuring success of KM

Project-based measures, e.g.,

Enhanced effectiveness, revenue generation from existing knowledge assets, increased value existing products/services, greater organizational adaptability, more efficient reuse of knowledge assets, reduced costs, reduced cycle-time

Intellectual capital report

Example: Skandia (fig 11.10)

Bottom-up approach looking at various knowledge assets

Valuation of knowledge capital (Strassmann)

Top-down approach looking at stock value

The amount an investor is willing to pay for intangible assets

Management value added, divided by the cost of capital

32


Figure 9.10 Skandia Intellectual Capital Framework (cf. Edvinson & Malone, 1997)

Market Value

Intellectual CapitalShareholder’s Equity

Structural CapitalHuman Capital

Customer CapitalOrganizational Capital

33


Conclusions

Knowledge management an emerging discipline

A process, not an end in itself

Managers must be flexible and open-minded

Not always the goal to make knowledge available

Also keep secrets when needed

Retaining vs. sharing

Thinking about the future?

…while documentet knowledge is about the past?

Look at scenarios

People and culture are essential

Personal and organizational willingness to learn

34


Last lecture: Friday

Collecting some loose ends

Summary of the entire course

How everything fits together

What you should hopefully have learnt from this course

…for the exam

…and for later work-life

Also: possible questions lecture nearer the exam

ISTypes.ppt1 TDT4175 - Information Systems, Spring 2006 Today: Knowledge Management (Pearlson &...

Documents

Transcript of ISTypes.ppt1 TDT4175 - Information Systems, Spring 2006 Today: Knowledge Management (Pearlson &...