Case Study of Revised Knowledge Retention System
Case Study of Revised Knowledge Retention System
Overview
It is becoming more apparent that in the post industrial era, a firm’s success or failure lies in its intellectual assets rather than in its physical assets. The predominance of high skill labour requirements, new computing and telecommunications technologies and an accelerating pace of change have initiated a dramatic shift in the ways companies compete in today’s market place. Firms are now recognising the need to organise and co-ordinate their information and knowledge sources in a way that allows them “corporate agility” to be able to sense and respond to constantly changing trends and markets, to encourage creativity and innovation, and to help their employees continuously learn and improve the productivity of their work. A knowledge-based approach to business will be the key to success in this new environment.
Your company's intellectual assets – the proprietary knowledge it has developed and accumulated over time – are of critical value. Protecting those knowledge assets is increasingly difficult as senior expertise retires or moves to competitors.
Knowledge Management
People often confuse Information Management with Knowledge Management (KM). Often it's an exercise in efficiency, where they try to trim a few people but provide no new economic value. However though, rather than simply use KM to manage information overload and eliminate positions, it should be used to boost revenues by methods such as providing better information for proposals/projects that ultimately result in increased business.
Knowledge Management (KM) is not about technology, it is mostly about people, information, and sharing.
Knowledge Management offers exciting opportunities for transforming companies, however though it is also much harder than it looks to implement; typically not because of the technology, but because of the people.
Current Implementation Issues with Knowledge Management
Despite the obvious advantages of embracing a Knowledge Management culture there are still several common issues which can hinder it’s success:
1. Everyone agrees knowledge is key to competitive advantage, but few organisations are effectively managing theirs.
2. Executives believe the greatest pay-off from knowledge management will be in innovation, but their efforts to date seem focused on efficiency.
3. An organisation’s knowledge advantage depends mostly on people, however organisations don’t have their priorities straight.
Suggested solutions to this issue could encompass:
• mapping sources of internal expertise
• establishing new knowledge roles
• create networks of knowledge workers.
4. A “Chief Knowledge Officer” might play a valuable role in leading knowledge management efforts, however though this might just contribute to bureaucracy.
5. The...