Knowledge Management (whatever it is)

Knowledge sharing from a 19 year old college professor

mcbridrl — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 16:56:26 +0000

This article that I have found is very interesting. It deals with the youngest professor in history, 19 year old Alia Sabu. She has mention something that is very relevant to knowledge management which is “Knowledge is power – especially when it is shared.” Since we know that the creation of knowledge is essential to managing knowledge then we first have to share the knowledge that we have created. In sharing this knowledge we are enabling each other to have some idea about what has originally been done and how others knowledge can improve your knowledge. This may help the individual that you have shared your knowledge with go further in the specific field that they are in or in a new direction. This apparent through Sabu’s answer about her teaching career. “It’s something where you can make a difference. It’s not just what you can do, but you can enable a lot of other people to make their changes.” Remember that when you share your knowledge you are enabling others to grow in their knowledge and expertise.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24273418/

E-Business Concerns

mdg10 — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:47:57 +0000

In my presentation yesterday, I covered how the structuring of an e-business needs to differ from that of a traditional brick and mortar business in today’s economy. In this post, I would like to touch upon in a little more detail the fierce business environment and the problems it presents e-businesses (specifically retail businesses). First of all, the internet removes the constraints placed on traditional businesses that need to build a distribution network with a physical presence in several places in order to remain competitive. This means that start up operations can easily enter the marketplace without having to build the infrastructure that burdens traditional businesses. Additionally, this lack of a physical presence means that their is less marketing occurring, requiring an e-business to promote its business even more than a traditional business might have to due to its physical presence and availability to the public eye.

Additionally, the greatness of the internet is that your product can be made available to virtually anyone through a web site. At the same time however, this is a problem for e-businesses when potential competitors can view your website and learn greatly about your operations. While accessibility is great, it is difficult to make your business publicly accessible and remove this threat. Furthermore, the continuous accessibility of the web requires 24 hour service to maintain the web structure of your e-business. If this is not possible, an event that incapacitates your site leads to the customer simply finding another e-business, and considering the fact that these are much easier to establish than traditional businesses, there are often several other options that are available to the customer.

competitive advantage

caruthcf — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:38:07 +0000

I think knowledge management is really all about one thing. And that is not gaining knowledge from other companies, or job security, or even the most useful way to run a meeting. It is about taking the knowledge you have or may gain and use it most efficiently for competitive advantage. The world of technology is quickly changing around us. But having the most complicated system isnt necessarily the most useful. Are you just trying to get the smartest people to use it? Like we talked about in class today, the most diverse groups will challenge each other the most, creating the best ideas. If everyone thinks in a group think, no one is stepping outside the box to take risks that may benefit a company. Technolofy is about advancement, but it doesnt have to be through computers. Technology can be through ideas. Efficiency is making things simple and effective, getting the most results from the least amount of work. So knowledge management is really about ways we can save time. Instead of getting wrapped up in overloads of knowledge information, lets refine ideas, challenge what we know, and facilitate ourselves to become efficient workers.

Can you develop trust while using technology?

chadlane — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:06:38 +0000

In many of the sources I have researched and other KM documents they point to trust and reciprocity for major reasons to transfer knowledge. In the ever increasing technological world I would argue that the people who would like to transfer knowledge are losing face. When communicating through email or other technological device many times people see that they are communicating with a computer not the person behind the computer. It has been discussed in class that knowledge is more likely to be transferred in a face-to-face interaction. This leads me to question whether the ever increasing capabilities of technology will eventually decrease knowledge sharing because of ones dependence on technology? Are people willing to trust a machine as they do people? Do we have greater ability to transfer and store knowledge but more reluctance to do so? Just something to think about…

Free business news, blog access

chahats75 — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:11:24 +0000

Northern light has introduced a free search engine for business news, articles, and blogs. it also provide an option of automated meaing extraction and collaborative social computing features.

The search engine will automatically connect the business researcher with thousands of relevant business news, leading business publication, which automatically save users time and provide highly reliable sources. furthermore, the users can analyze their search results and extract meaning from the articles or blogs.

Further the product offer market intelligence Wiki and a series of widgets designed to leverage the search activity. The Market Intelligence Wiki provides a detail overview of selected industries and business trends, with a detailed picture of market segments, issues, breaking news, companies and government regulations. actions

taking charge of e-mail

chahats75 — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:53:45 +0000

i found this article really interesting, because it talks about the new product that is coming out in market. Coveo solutions has released a limited of Coveo G2B for email. the company claims that Coveo G2B is the only email searching product that deliver unified search across both live and archieved email from any desktop, or any mobile device.

further the company says that it give a better protections for companies who uses the product. for example an employee cannot walk or send company data through company’s server because Coveo application will detect the threat.

Web self-service: searching for answers

mcbridrl — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:06:17 +0000

This article deals with customers on the internet who want to search for specific information and their frustration with the online search. Zachary McGeary, principal analyst at Jupiter Research states that, “Customers often are not sure how to phrase their questions or search requests. In addition, over half the customers who report usability problems say that their searches offer too many results to be helpful.” The problem with asking question on the internet is when customers ask them in ways that are not considered standard. This causes many issues but as technology continues to enhance the systems that allow for the customer to ask questions are becoming more aware of natural language. This means that a customer can ask a question in any way that he or she pleases and the system will attempt to find the answer regardless of how the customer phrased the question.

http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/Web-self-service-searching-for-answers-41338.aspx

New Trends in KM

webbjy — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:43:15 +0000

“Knowledge management is the process of transforming information and intellectual assets into enduring value. It connects people with the knowledge that they need to take action, when they need it.”

Several trends will shape the field of knowledge management in the near future. 1) Emerging technology solutions- will become easier and with faster technologies being developed everyday, we will need to keep up. 2) The convergence of knowledge management with e-business. The trend toward portals as the technology tool of choice for knowledge leads to this Keeping data on-line will become the norm. 3) The movement from limited knowledge management projects to move enterprise wide projects. More knowledge=more development. 4) Increasing use of knowledge management to enhance innovation. 5) Increasing use of tacit knowledge (rather than explicit knowledge).

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM0044.pdf

Research Report: Enterprise Planning Systems (ERP)

dylan25 — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:37:58 +0000

In an organization, you want to have a competitive advantage over your competition. However, competitive advantages are not easily obtained and ever harder to keep. One way of gaining a competitive advantage is to implement an Enterprise Resource Planning systems or ERP.

The Enterprise Resource Planning system allows a company or business to consolidate and integrate all the different aspects of its business practice. The ERP systems are information systems, but they incorporate the entire organization and are online networking systems that allow cross-functional processes using a common database. There are many organizations that use the ERP systems to gain to competitive advantage by consolidating and integrating all the different aspects of its business practice to provide an overall view of the corporation. Also, the ERP systems give you much better access to real time information, which can make decision making much easier and more accurate.

However, ERP systems are very complex and hard to implement. These systems require huge amounts of time and money to implement and to keep them running properly. Though there are ERP systems that work great and give the company a competitive edge, most have failed. Companies continue to use ERP systems because if they are implemented correctly, they do give the company a competitive advantage over the competition. Also, in some markets, if your competitors are implementing these systems, it may be wise for you to consider it. Because of how beneficial these systems can be and how hard they are to implement, knowledge management approaches are being used to help the implementation process.

In the knowledge management structure, knowledge goes through four stages; creation, storage/retrieval, transfer, and usage/application. Knowledge creation is both creating new knowledge and/or replacing old knowledge that is no longer relevant to the organization, but not getting rid of knowledge because you store it for future reference. This is the next stage, knowledge storage/retrieval. It is important for an organization to store all its knowledge, including the knowledge it replaces, because it will allow the transfer of knowledge in the organization. This knowledge transfer references the old and new knowledge to keep from repeating mistakes. Finally, there is knowledge application. This step refers to putting all the knowledge that you know have into every aspect of your organization. In an ERP systems case, this will help with integration into the whole organization because you will not have to reinvent the wheel every time you run into a problem. However, the knowledge management approach is also affected by the organizational culture.

In every organization you are going to have individuals who are not excepting of change and do not want anything to do with the new system. This change often forces individuals inside the organization to learn new ways of doing a task or performing a process. These individuals, if left unchecked, can pose a serious problem to the knowledge management process, which will effect the integration of the ERP system. It is imperative that the organization makes sure it members understand why they implementing a new system and not just told to do it. If the individuals are more excepting of the new system, they will seek help and learn from other people in the organization, which it knowledge management.

The advantages of a successfully implemented ERP system are great. However, you must first be aware of the risk associated with ERP systems, and understand how to combat these risks when they occur. ERP systems can give a company a competitive advantage if implemented correctly or can loose the organization millions if implemented incorrectly. This is why many companies are using knowledge management with the implementation of the ERP systems. Though it does add another step to the implantation, it decreases the risk of failure and allows the company to learn from its mistakes.

(Sorry about the weird spacing, I couldn’t get it to line up the right way)

Lit survey: The Application of Knowledge Management in Enhancing the Performance of Malaysian Universities

chahats75 — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:03:46 +0000

The Malaysian Ministry of Education wanted to improve Malaysia’s higher education system and turn Malaysia into a country known for its excellent higher education especially in the South East Asian region. The Ministry identified Knowledge Management (KM) as one of the key requirements to achieve its goal.

The main theme of this study was to identify the core component of Knowledge Management. The study concluded that the main areas of KM includes the creation/generation of knowledge by faculty and students, the sources or channels that they use to acquire knowledge, the process of storing the acquired knowledge, and finally the dissemination or sharing of the knowledge in their respective universities. Furthermore, the Ministry also wanted to find out the level of the aforementioned practices in Malaysian Universities. The second stage of this study was to identify and analyze the social and technical aspects of knowledge management. The technical aspects are as follows:

Infrastructure: This deals with the technical component of KM such as software and hardware.

Info-culture: Which deals with predominant attitudes and behaviour whereby a set of rules and guidance are established for members of a group or an organization to follow.

Info-structure: This deals with people’s views and reactions towards different organizational infrastructures such as IT, infrastructure policy, and organizational hierarchy.

The last part of this process was to analyze the different factors that affect the implication of Knowledge Management.

In order to accumulate data for their study, the Ministry formulated a survey and had eight universities participate in it. The Ministry used different statistical techniques e.g. descriptive analysis, factor analysis, and multiple regressions in order to analyse the data. After analysing the data, the Ministry found that the participant universities have a high level of KM practices; such that the students and faculties generate knowledge through class discussion, discussion with peers, observation, and experimentation. They acquired knowledge through researches, the internet, intranets, conferences, bulletin boards, and workshops. The knowledge acquired was stored as both hard and soft copies, and was also properly filed in databases. Finally, they shared their knowledge extensively through publications, conferences, workshops, dialogues, forums, informal discussions, teaching and trainings, and consultancies. Based on the survey, the Ministry concluded that the first four components of KM did not need any readjustments or new implementations because the results from the survey were satisfactory.

After analyzing the data for social and technical components of KM, the Ministry found out that most of the participants were satisfied with organizational culture and structure but some of the participants were moderately satisfy with IT infrastructure such as IT maintenance, data security, and adequate IT support. Based on these findings, the Ministry found out that the socio-technical components were the key factors in enhancing the performance of the universities. Thus the implementation of an IT infrastructure or knowledge management system which utilized human capital with best practice and procedures was found to be the most efficient way of enhancing the performance of the universities.