knowledge strongmanagementstrong problems, promises, realities, and.pdfVIP

K n o w l e d g e M a n a g e m e n t Knowledge Management: Problems, Promises, Realities, and Challenges Gerhard Fischer and Jonathan Ostwald, University of Colorado Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. —George Santayana Innovation is everywhere; the difficulty is learning from it. —John Seeley Brown he first quote reflects the motivation underlying traditional knowledge Tmanagement (KM), in which the goal is to store information from the past so that lessons will not be forgotten. This perspective implies that future information needs will be the same as past needs. Consequently, this perspective treats knowledge workers as passive recipients of information. approaches according to how they perform these The second quote more closely reflects a design basic activities. For example, different approaches The authors’ perspective 1 of knowledge management. In this per- might store different kinds of information, support spective, knowledge workers constantly create new different people to create information, or employ dif- knowledge knowledge as they work. KM’s goal is to enable ferent mechanisms and strategies to disseminate innovative practice at an organizational (community) information. management level by supporting collaboration and communica-