Friday, June 30, 2006

What's the next big thing in KM?

Just ruminating a bit before the 4th of July holiday….

I’ve been lucky enough to do this “thing” called knowledge management for nearly a decade now and it still surprises me how many opportunities exist to help organizations just to get started improving their business through knowledge sharing methods. So there’s no real dearth of “starter” stuff or KM 101-type things that we can all think about or do, but what of the more advanced organizations? What can we offer them? What have they done or can do to take their KM programs to the next level? That is, what’s the next big thing in KM?

I’ll be taking some time away from the office next week, and maybe the break will give me a chance to refresh my thoughts on this. In the meantime though, I hope that when I do get back, I’ll find lots of ideas here from others to help me get a conversation going.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My thoughts:

integration with other corporate goals, e.g.

* innovation
* quality

and organic integration with business functions/departments.

I'll be interested to see what you suggest.

Also, you might like to post your list of 'top 10' or 'top 20'must-dos for orgaisations starting with KM 101, and the 'top 10 risk factors'and 'top 10 success factors'. Particularly I'd be interested in your thoughts around the people side - how to get people enrolled in the agenda.

vijeesh papulli said...

Lauchlan did bring out an interesting point that I would be very much interested in. And that is, how organizations can better their innovation capabilities. Does the so called mature KM processes garuntee increase in innovation in an organization. If not, what does? Great to see some kinf study done on these lines.

Jim Lee, PMP said...

Lauchlan, great thoughts there. After all, we shouldn't be doing this "thing" called knowledge management unless it has some real value to the organization. Certainly, any progressive organization cares about innovation, and quality can also be enhanced by the added consistency that a good KM program can provide.

Making KM "the way business is done" is also a great aspiration. When functions, departments, geographies or other organizational entities (think of artificial boundaries) have embraced KM as a part of their daily activities, then the vision of KM will have been achieved.

Finally, I like your thoughts on the "Top 10" (or Bottom 10, for that matter). I've been kicking that idea around for a while myself. Of course, I haven't done it yet, so perhaps we can take up your call.

How about it? Anyone want to get us started on Lauchlan's lists?