Posted by Katie Hawks on March 26, 2003 at 10:56:08:

In Reply to: KM theory and Practice posted by Jerry Zhu on March 24, 2003 at 21:31:54:

In our enterprise (a small, innovative, change-agent company in partnership with large corporations), there is no such thing as a "knowledge management" endeavor.

However, in our objective of translating data and information into actionable knowledge (which can then drive strategic development and tactical implementation in our industry), KM always informs us.

The tenets of knowledge management have been invaluable to the work that we do. However, if we approached any of the work we do as a "KM endeavor", I believe we would fail. KM is theory, and transforming information into knowledge is is work. The theory creates context and *informs* what we do. But we are not in the business of "doing theory."

We also recognize that the endeavor of translating information/data into knowledge is where we are focused now (and I suspect that's the norm in most organizations.) Truth be told, we have very little knowledge to manage at this point!

Managing the "information" (or the data) is alot of work in itself -- in the form of QA, warehousing, mining, auditing, benchmarking, reporting, etc. When people speak about the "failures" of KM, they very rarely relate what exactly is failing.

For example, if an organization is "failing" in their data management, it's probably going to be difficult to succeed in a "KM" initiative. Similarly, if they are not explicit about the differentiation between knowledge and information/data, a "KM" initiative is also probably going to fail.

Best,
Katie Hawks

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Follow Ups:

• Re: KM theory and Practice prac 14:27:22 04/08/03 (0)
• Re: KM theory and Practice- Info vs. Knowledge Reilly Atkinson 18:50:23 03/31/03 (0)

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