What's in store for the future of knowledge management? Some experts believe KM systems must become both more interconnected and more diffused throughout organizations. They also argue that KM should be more user-friendly and integrated into ordinary business processes.
Others state that the trends shaping KM in the near future will include an expansion in the use of emerging technologies, a convergence between knowledge management and e-business, an enterprise-wide integration of KM technology and culture, and an increased focus on innovation and tacit knowledge.
Business intelligence (BI), a subset of knowledge management, is mirroring the trends of KM as a whole. That is, BI designers are placing greater emphasis on providing informational context to users, and they're trying to make BI systems better able to respond to changing queries. BI, like KM in general, is most effective when it is closely tied to overall business strategy and integrated throughout the company.
Retaining the knowledge of exiting employees is also on the radar of many KM professionals. David Boath and David Y. Smith of technology services firm Accenture warn employers that "as the workforce ages - and workers of all ages continue to be more transient - many companies are looking at an ongoing, irreplaceable loss of the knowledge, experience, and wisdom that have been a primary source of competitiveness and profitability."
Strategies to keep this knowledge include the institutionalization of information, the formation of knowledge communities, and improved e-learning. Some companies have had great success with programs that use their retirees as mentors, keep them connected through part- or flex-time work, or establish pools of retirees willing to work on a per-project basis. Such knowledge-retention programs may work best if they are assembled in small, manageable pieces that can later be linked to each other.
The focus on the knowledge held by employees who may retire speaks to a central tenet of KM: people are key. "Knowledge sharing cannot be forced; people will only share knowledge if there is a personal reason to do so," advise Marleen Huysman from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Dirk de Wit from O & I Management Partners. This view has social capital as the cornerstone of KM. In fact, some posit that social capital drives economic success. Accordingly, ways to facilitate social networking are an ongoing area of exploration.
One new possibility lies in social-networking software, which capitalizes on the contacts of co-workers, brought together by online networks and analysis tools. Such contacts facilitate information exchange by helping workers find experts who have needed knowledge and gain a personal introduction that makes sharing more likely.
On the more legislative side of KM, intellectual property protection - including trade secret policies, noncompete agreements and the like - continue to be a concern. These issues involve HR policies, but they're influenced by market strategies, international copyright law, and employees' mindsets about ownership. Further, data security is becoming more crucial and complicated as information network attacks increase and as the number and mobility of information-carrying devices proliferate.
On the bright side, KM practitioners have a growing number of tools at their disposal, and creativity flourishes in the development of new technology. Forward-thinking knowledge managers may find ways to use tools such as wikis, blogs, and RSS feeds to collect and disseminate knowledge. They may also find a new way of thinking about how to keep and categorize that knowledge in the growing buzz around noncentralized information storage and folksonomy.
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