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Saturday, May 18, 2002
 

I have to admit, I'm beginning to get frustrated with much of the rhetoric on knowledge management and even with the writing/research that has been done.  There seems to be a lot of people spinning their wheels, saying similar things, but trying fundamentally the same approaches.  I had a conversation with a KM software provider this week and while they recognize that KM is 20% technology and 80% people, they still have a tech-centric view of KM while saying that they are focused on the bigger KM cultural/organization issue.  I don't fully get it.

Verna Allee's paper article that we read for class last week left me a bit disappointed.  In my mind, she didn't say anything really new.  The concept that value is not just goods, services and revenues is a rather obvious one (or it should be) and is not a recent phenomenon.  It's unclear to me why she arbitrarily breaks off knowledge and "intangible benefits" as the separate value dimensions.  It seems there are a hundred ways by which we can divide up the value that crosses from one organization to another.  The remainder of the approach also does not look like anything different than a number of academics have already arrived at.

I think part of my issue is that I am biased to KM from the perspective of learning.  Thus I think much of what has been written about how people learn is very interesting to the KM field.  Myles Horton's We Make the Road by Walking is a great book.  Even Robert Gagne's Principles of Instructional Design gives some great insight into what knowledge is and how it is created.  I also very much liked the Nonaka chapter from "The Knowledge-Creating Company".  Finally, I've seen Hubert St. Orge quoted a number of times (although I haven't read anything written by him) and he always has very interesting things to say.

Just some thoughts...


8:56:04 AM    

In class we discussed this idea of whether or not computers can have knowledge or do they just have information.  The example was a calculator adding 2 + 2:  is that knowledge of addition?  I'm still not sure what I think here.  My general reaction is that this is the processing of information but I'm not sure how that differs from knowledge.  Does the ability to follow a procedure or execute an algoritm require knowledge?  What about IBM's Big Blue Chess computer?  Does that have knowledge of the game of chess? 

I personally like the idea that knowledge requires human interaction - it requires cognition, context, experience, etc.  However, I'm not certain that this is true.  Nonetheless, I think it is this type of knowledge that is more interesting and has more value within organizations.  That is dynamic knowledge vs. static knowledge


8:45:15 AM    



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