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Glossary
"Error Number 1: Not developing a working definition of knowledge." Larry Prusak, "The Eleven Deadliest Sins of Knowledge Management", California Management Review, Vol. 40, No. 3, Spring 1999 The following is a selection of terms that are key to understanding the KM process, may be new to novices, and may have different meanings in other contexts. The terms are also searchable: click "View records related to this term" to generate a search against sources that Gotcha can access using the specific term. [ A - B | C - D | E
- J | K | L - Z ] A - B [top] absorptive capacity - the individual
and/or organizational openness to change and innovation,
and the capability or preparedness for being able to integrate it. appropriability - the extent to
which something can be imitated. Things are said to have "strong" appropriability
if they are difficult to reproduce by another organization. The converse
is "weak" appropriability. A related concept is that of "sticky/slippery",
i.e., sticky knowledge is an integral part of a regime such that it cannot
be extracted in a meaningful whole. benchmarking - the practice of identifying
qualitative and quantitative metrics against which the success of an organization
can be measured, often in comparison to competitors and industry standards.
Identifying best practices or lessons learned
are common by-products of benchmarking. best practices- methods of performing
a process or sub-process that have been identified inside or outside of
the organization and which are validated, codified, diffused, and shared
with others to encourage reciprocity and knowledge sharing. bias for action- a term popularized
by Tom Peters in "Search for Excellence" that describes the propensity
for large, innovative companies such as Hewlett-Packard, 3M, Johnson &
Johnson to act first and analyze/contemplate later. "Just do it" is a
popular, synonymous phrase. boundary objects- objects that
are shared by more than one party, but are not perceived in the same way
by all parties. Because they are shared, they can form the basis for negotiation,
community, dialog, hence changes in perception, etc. For example, data
on fish in a specific watershed might be used by public fisheries to monitor
the health of the population, or by activists to promote a political agenda.
business process re-engineering (BPR) - a methodology that aims
to reorganize work in order to increase productivity and/or decrease costs.
Also known as BPR, it is often a companion or by-product of knowledge
management initiatives. C - D [top] collaboration - a key tenet of KM,
given that knowledge sharing--among colleagues and customers within and
outside of the organization--is an effective means of transferring "know-how"
or tacit knowledge between individuals
and therefore critical to competitive advantage.
collaborative filtering
- a voluntary practice and method, most prevalent on the Internet, of
pooling and ranking informed opinions on any particular topic. A relatively
well-known example is PHOAKS (People
Helping One Another Know Stuff) where anyone can post opinions of web
resources in Usenet Netnews which PHOAKS reads, classifies, abstracts
and tallies automatically. communities of practice
(COPs) - a self-organized, deliberate collaboration of people who share
common practices, interests or aims and want to advance their knowledge.
When the community proves useful to its members over time, they may formalize
their status by adopting a group name and a regular system of interchange.
competitive advantage- a
term popularized by Michael Porter of Harvard Business School and author
of the business classic "Competitive Strategy", it is the unique blend
of activities, assets, relationships, history, and market conditions that
an organization exploits in order to differentiate itself from its competitors,
and thus create value. competitive intelligence
(CI)- according to the Society of Competitive
Intelligence Professionals, CI is a "process of monitoring the competitive
environment to enable senior managers in companies of all sizes to make
informed decisions about everything from marketing, R&D, and investing
tactics to long-term business strategies." The field is populated by practitioners
who are former employees of powerful government/military intelligence
agencies such as the FBI and the CIA. However, CI should not be confused
with the illegal and unethical practices that characterize industrial
espionage. One example of how CI might be carried out is to guess what
R&D a rival firm is engaged in by noting the topics their in-house scientists
are presenting papers on at conferences. corporate memory - the practices
of organizations, embodied in its members, which influence its current
behavior--good or bad. Technologies that enhance corporate memory include
(but are not limited to) datawarehouses,
document management systems,
and expert systems. A complementary concept
is "learning to forget", where entities strive to retire traditional,
but no longer optimal, competitive strategies. core competencies - the key functions
that an organization does best and uses to create sustainable value and
wealth. These things are typically very complex orchestrations of activities
spanning much of the organization, such as Wal-Mart's just-in-time inventory
competency. When used to describe employees, the word "core" is left off
and refers to their capacity--comprised of education, skills, experience,
energy and attitudes--to act in a wide variety of situations. corporate culture -the values
of an organization, frequently expressed as behaviors that are incented
and rewarded. For example, some investment banks in the early 80's promoted
individual initiative (versus team work) through practices such as putting
several people into one position: the person who out-performed his/her
peers got to keep that position--until the next round of candidates was
hired to challenge the survivor. corporate instinct - Based on
the collective explicit and tacit
knowledge of an organization and its core
competencies, it is an organization's innate intelligence that, along
with analytical reasoning, an aspect of decision making. data mining - a type of application
with built-in proprietary algorithms that sort, rank, and perform calculations
on a specified and often large data set, producing visualizations that
reveal patterns which may not have been evident from mere listings or
summaries. data warehouses - a separate, centralized,
integrated (i.e., cleaned up, merged, and redesigned) repository of information
optimized for data retrieval and reporting. Usually, data warehouses are
read-only analytical tools, and as such contain data that is historical,
stable, and adjusted for errors that may have occurred in the transaction
systems (i.e., day-to-day business applications). decision support systems
- business applications that usually contain summaries of large amounts
of data, filtered and synthesized particularly to support strategic decision-making.
deskilling - a mostly unfavorable situation
whereby organizations--and even individuals--lose critical competencies,
corporate memory, or knowledge as a result
of attrition, downsizing, automation, lack of learning, or bad management.
document management systems
(DMS) - a family of applications which facilitate the management of compound
documents, including storage/archiving, cataloging/indexing, search and
retrieval, analysis, workflow, routing, aggregation, diffusion, and distribution.
Examples
of DMS can be found on our products page. dynamic capabilities - a theory
of creating competitive advantage, especially in times of rapid technological
change, through identification of new opportunities followed by efficient
coordination of internal technical, organizational, and managerial processes
for rapid and innovative product delivery. E - J [top] early adopter - a minority of clients/users
that are the first to perceive value in new products, services, or ideas,
begin to use them, and become adept with them before the majority of eventual
clients/users does. On a curve of total eventual users, the early adopter
is succeeded by the fast follower, who is succeeded by the late bloomer.
enabling technologies - any
software, hardware, or operative methodology that permits the interaction
of separate components. For example, enterprise messaging or middleware,
connect distributed, diverse, and sometimes previously incompatible computers
and software. expert systems - applications of
artificial intelligence techniques to perform decision-making tasks based
on a programmed set of rules and logic within specific subject areas.
Examples include insurance underwriting or investing which frequently
employ case-based reasoning or semantic analysis. experiential learning - see
"situated learning" explicit knowledge- knowledge
that has been expressed in words and numbers and shared in the form of
data, scientific formulae, specifications, manuals, etc. It is easy to
distribute and it is "slippery". Explicit knowledge, which is also known
as "codified" knowledge, is the opposite of tacit
knowledge. gatekeeper - individuals, units, or
even objects that act as accepted, authoritative information channels
employed in the information seeking process. Gatekeepers frequently also
contribute to bridging terminological cultures and value systems. One
example of this is using the telephone yellow pages (the gatekeeper) as
a source of mechanics to work on a broken appliance. information architecture
- an aspect of information systems development, commonly referred to within
the context of website design, which focuses on organizing information
and developing a navigational structure. Common tasks of the "information
architect" would include site map design and content management. The information
architect's focus on content management complements the roles of graphic
designers and usability experts who are usually also part of a website
development team. information audit - a study of
the fluency and efficiency of flows of information, i.e., blockages, duplicative
data collection, failure to coordinate and/or combine, etc. innovation - a primary focus of KM given
that innovation, or the ability to craft often
radically new solutions/products, is often viewed as one of the sole sustaining
competitive advantages of the modern firm. intellectual capital - the
sum of everything the people of an organization know which can be converted
into value or formalized, captured, and leveraged to produce a higher-valued
asset. This is actually one of a family of terms--such as social and process
capital--used to identify types of knowledge assets. intellectual property - knowledge,
almost exclusively explicit, which is
recognized and protected under the US laws for copyright, patents, trademarks,
and trade secrets. It is further characterized by being amenable to valuation
which permit pricing and contractual agreements such as licensing.
K [top] knowledge - justified belief that increases an entity's capacity for
effective action (Nonaka); the highest degree of the speculative faculties,
which consists in the perception of the truth of affirmative or negative
propositions (Locke).
knowledge brokers - in the knowledge
markets paradigm popularized by Laurence Prusak, the party that facilitates
connections between buyers and sellers.
Brokers are guides, and as such contribute to other peoples' success.
Other terms for this role include trusted intermediary and "infomediary".
knowledge buyers - in the knowledge
markets paradigm popularized by Laurence Prusak, the party requesting
"commodities" such as insights, judgments, and understanding. knowledge creation - as defined
by Ikujiro Nonaka, it is a spiraling process of interactions between explicit
and tacit knowledge where ideas form in
the minds of individuals; interaction with others is usually a critical
step in developing the ideas. Nonaka's model of this process is
composed of 4 steps: socialization (tacit to tacit); externalization (tacit
to explicit); combination (explicit to explicit); internalization (explicit
to tacit). knowledge management - the strategies and processes of identifying, capturing,
and leveraging knowledge to enhance competitiveness (adapted from the
American Productivity & Quality Center.)
knowledge maps - guides or inventories
of an organization's internal and external information and knowledge sources.
The sources of information include files, web pages (in intranets and
extranets), document management
systems, recordings of best practices,
databases, data warehouses and data marts.
Sources of knowledge include subject
experts, business rules, workflow charts, procedure manuals, "cookbooks",
and diagrams. knowledge markets - a concept
developed by Laurence Prusak which sees knowledge in firms behaving like
a traditional, tangible commodity which can be exchanged, bought, bartered,
found, and generated. The main price mechanism of the knowledge market
is reciprocity, the expectation that one will receive valuable knowledge
in return for giving it. Additionally, the knowledge may have either present
or future value for parties to the transaction. knowledge repositories -
collections of knowledge "nuggets", the contents of which are characterized
by having the authority of a best practice
(which in turn implies a review for quality and validity) and having been
organized according to some scheme to facilitate visualization,
manipulation, and navigation. Examples of repositories include:
threaded discussion databases that hold "lessons learned" and which must
be created with--at a minimum--a date, author and subject classification;
product marketing materials and methods, which represent a distillation
of product knowledge; competitive
intelligence; and people(!). knowledge transfer - the action
and flow by which largely tacit knowledge
is transmitted among people. knowledge worker - a term coined
by Peter Drucker to describe participants in an economy where information
and its manipulation are the commodity and the activity. Contrast this
with the industrial age worker who was primarily required to produce a
tangible object. Examples of knowledge workers include--but are not limited
to--marketing analysts, engineers, product developers, resource planners,
researchers, and legal counselors. L - Z [top] legitimate peripheral
participation - a theory that recognizes that learners can contribute
even as novices while also influencing their "teachers" and changing the
body of knowledge they are acquiring. A synonymous concept is that of
the apprentice/master relationship and arrangement. metadata - "data about data," it provides
information about resources, such as title, author, location, and date
of creation of the information being described, like a book or a website,
for example. OLAP - stands for "online analytical processing",
a type of application that attempts to facilitate multidimensional (i.e.,
data that has been aggregated into various categories or "dimensions")
analysis. That is, OLAP should help a user synthesize enterprise information
through comparative, personalized viewing as well as through analysis
of historical and projected data. situated learning - a synonym
for apprenticeship that emphasizes the contextual, real-life learning
and mentoring aspects of knowledge acquisition which in turn requires
absorbing tacit and explicit
knowledge. subject matter expert - an
individual with expertise in a certain subject area; within the context
of KM, this person may be seen as an authority and act as the gatekeeper
of knowledge for their particular subject area. tacit knowledge - knowledge that
is not made explicit because it is highly personal, not easily visible
or expressible, and usually requires joint, shared activities in order
to transmit it. Examples of tacit knowledge include subjective insights,
intuitions, and hunches. Also known as informal knowledge, it is the opposite
of explicit knowledge.
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