Posted by Denham on October 21, 2000 at 00:50:43:

In Reply to: Definition of Knowledge Management Metrics and Knowledge Measurements posted by bay on October 20, 2000 at 23:34:27:

Greetings Bay,

There is very little agreement in this area. I'm afraid you will have to live with some contradictions and many views as knowledge is everywhere and in everything and carried by everybody. Just to set the scene, you will find most of the measurement emphasis at the Intellectual Capital end of the KM spectrum, i.e. when dealing with explicit knowledge (information) which has been secured (branding, trade marks, copyright, patents). Here is easier to 'negotiate' and assign a market related value.

There is an endless stream of metrics (things to measure) e.g. number of times a best practice is accessed in the knowledgebase, the time saved through learning from previous projects, the revenue earned from new products, how quickly new folks become productive through mentoring, how you can influence retention via communities of practice.........

The issues with KM measurements are they are all very subjective and indirect, how do you measure knowledge sharing culture, creativity, learning, business intelligence?? - all things KM can help with. If you do get 'hard' figures exactly what contibution do you allocate to KM and what do you ascribe to luck, good fortune, serendipity?.....

At a personal level, I believe it is damaging to concentrate on ROI (return on investment), trying to cost justify KM activities which have uncertain influences and very different time lags. Rather talk values and principles, collect stories, compare with what others are doing within your industry. Start with knowledge practices and get clear what values you wish to focus on and how knowledge work can help you get there, measurements tend to take care of themselves.

If you need an article, try Carl Moore, 1999, Performance measures for knowledge management, In Liebowitz, J (ed) Knowledge Management Handbook, CRC Press, (section 6)

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