The Mystery of KM

1
The Mystery of KM
Knowledge management complexity

• Johann Kinghorn

2
Our Menu for Today

• Why early KM is not KM
• Where Early KM came from
• Knowledge is....?
• Traditional and Experiential Knowledge
• Scientific Knowledge
• The revolution of Industrialisation
• Codified, Embedded, Enacted Knowledge
• Knowledge Systems en Knowledge Technologies
• KM is about how to manage the organisations of
  the Knowledge Economy
• Conclusions

3
Half a Billion KMs on the web!

• Web Results 1 - 10 of about 419,000,000 for
  knowledge management. (0.27 seconds)      
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• Sponsored Links
• Knowledge Managementwww.xpertrule.com     
  business rules documents for customer service
• Knowledge Managementwww.rightnow.com/kb4     
  Self-learning, organizing, and maintaining allows
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• Knowledge Management Network and the WWW Virtual
  Library on ...
• What is Knowledge Management? Definition of
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  on Knowledge Management. Scholarly Research on
  Knowledge

With so much knowledge about knowledge
(management), how can it be a mystery?
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Knowledge as resource (please ignore)

• Knowledge as resource is unfortunately hidden
  and must be extracted
• KM is the technique of extraction (from tacit
  to explicit, or from data to information)
• This is document, opinion, people, data,
  competence, knowing management, but not knowledge
  management

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Where did this come from? (Do not repeat)

• Early 1990s the dogma of downsizing
• and then things do not work....
• brain drain
• Since mid-1980s the IT revolution
• new typewriters for all
• got linked by the internet, later the Web
• infinite possibility of sending communicating
  (and losing docs)
• The Battle Cry Sharing (and hoarding)

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Whats the Problem?

• What are you sharing? Knowledge? Really? How is
  that determined?
• Mistake 1 confusing individual knowing with
  knowledge
• Mistake 2 if I can e-mail something, or put it
  on the Web, it must be knowledge
• Mistake 3 assuming all information is knowledge
• Mistake 4 assuming all tacit thinking is
  knowledge
• Basic mistake no one had a definition of
  knowledge

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What is Knowledge?

• Broadest definition is from Sociology
• Knowledge is that cognitive capacity that human
  beings have to act autonomously and purposefully
• Knowledge is a dynamic (not a resource)
• Knowledge is a capacity (not a thing)

8
Experiential and Traditional Knowledge

• We can do many things, but most of them we do
  not do
• Because they are not worth doing
• Because they are not useful
• All societies and individuals develop through
  experience and experiment traditions of useful
  actions, and that is knowledge
• It is knowledge because of the consensus
• Something is knowledge because it is known to
  all and agreed to by most!

9
Enter Scientific knowledge

• Scientific knowledge is equally knowledge by
  consent
• But it is constructed knowledge (not derived
  from experience)
• Science uses the language of mathematics
• Science sees what the human eye can not

10
Science
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sees what the eye can not...
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Where and when did Science start?
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but it exploded around 1400 in Europe

• new mathematical questions debated
• first biological experiments
• but the biggest question is geography and
  astronomy
• In 1543 Copernicus shocks the religious leaders
  with the claim of a heliocentric universe
• Then follows a raft of inventions and discoveries

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and then turned into industrialisation

• Inventions between 1700 and 1800
• battery
• bifocal glasses
• carbonated water
• cotton gin
• electricity
• guillotine
• Celsius and the metric system
• spinning Jenny
• hot air balloon
• parachute
• piano
• steam engine

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A century ago
1842 Bensons vision of flying
Frosts Ornithopter 1904
16
1980
The total force (Lift Drag) is the integral of
pressure over the contour of the wing.
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The Greatest Revolution ever

• Industrialisation changed the world physically
  buildings, machines
• It changed the world humanly cities,
  population explosion
• It changed the content of knowledge
• It changed the format of knowledge now
  knowledge gets formalised outside the person

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Knowledge formalisation

• Massive increase in the written and since the
  computer also coded expressions of knowledge
• But also knowledge gets embedded in machines
  and artifacts
• And the machines and artifacts become more
  complicated over time, as more knowledge is
  invested in it

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and

• So the volume of knowledge grows every day
  (written and embedded knowledge)
• as this happens the question of what is useful
  knowledge become more complex
• BUT 99 of useful knowledge is knowledge with
  its roots in scientific knowledge

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Knowledge Accumulation
21
The Knowledge Economy

• By 2000 it was finally realised that the economy
  of advanced countries must be measured in
  knowledge intensity
• The concept of the KE was born
• It is a knowledge economy because production
  processes and products depend more on knowledge
  than any other component

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Knowledge Management

• Knowledge Management is involved in the process
  to determine what useful knowledge is (includes
  innovation management)
• When useful knowledge is established KM is the
  management of organisations so that their
  structures, processes and systems synchronise
  with the KE (organisations of trust, agility,
  artificial intelligence, fun)

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The Knowledge Dynamics Model

• Cognition Discourse Consensus
• Prior K (human embedded) Codification
• K-innovation
• Paralysis Homeostasis Embedding
• K-systems K-artifacts
• Blue Knowledge Articulation Green
  Knowledge Substantiation
• Yellow Knowledge Objectification Orange
  Knowledge Memorisation

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The Public Service and KM 1

• KM will not solve incompetence, ignorance or
  capacity constraints in the PS these must be
  addressed by old fashioned strict discipline,
  training and recruiting
• The role of the Public Service is to provide
  structure so that society can be productive. In
  the Knowledge Economy the PS must structure
  itself and its social functions in ways that
  synchronise with the KE

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The Public Service and KM 2

• Unfortunately I must report to you that my
  experience has been that our PS is going into the
  opposite direction partly because too much of
  our legislation is KE negative (despite the
  positive rethoric)
• Debilitating bureaucracy is growing faster than
  our sports teams lose matches.
• A learning PS is one which is agile and flexible
  in observing the global environment and adjusting
  its services accordingly