Technology Spawns a KM Rebirth

November 14, 2007: Returning home after an appearance discussing Enterprise 2.0 at a ‘KMWorld’ conference in Silicon Valley last week, Ross Dawson tells IDM how technology is shaking the foundations of knowledge management.

After sharing his expertise on Enterprise 2.0 to the American audience, Ross Dawson, chairman of the Future Exploration Network noticed a general conference theme discussing the death and consequent rebirth of ‘knowledge management.’

“It’s been revitalised,” says Dawson. “It was on a downward trend in attendance, which fitted with the general consensus on knowledge management. This year’s theme was KM 2.0, so much of the event was about Enterprise 2.0 and social media.”

As a profession, Dawson does not believe the work has hit a brick wall, but rather diversified in its application. “It’s less about people associated with KM pursay than it is about how about people involved in communicating within and organisations and outside of it,” he says.

Dawson said the conference had a running theme of speakers discussing this so call decline of knowledge management and its subsequent reinvigoration which appears to have occurred as ‘2.0’ tools enter organisations.

“What was knowledge management has now become a set of activities in enhancing value, with organisations now drawing on different disciplines, but usually seeking the same objectives that knowledge management was looking to achieve.

It’s a refresh of knowledge management sparked by trends it the ‘open web,’ a term Dawson applies to what others label as the ‘consumer web.’ Increasingly, the Facebook generation is penetrating the enterprise as corporations stand-up to take note of how consumer obsessions can translate to employee productivity in the workplace.

Tools in the Open Web are finding value in the organisation. Often it’s senior executivies who have seen their children using them an realised they could ad value in their organisation,” says Dawson.

With 2.0 tool proliferating the Open Web space it’s now up to organisations to determine their strategy of embrace, adapt of reject the social mediums entering the workforce. While some organisations already have well developed strategies around Enterprise 2.0 tools including RSS feeds, wikis, blogs and tagging, social networking now presents it’s own set of challenges.

“Knowledge workers who are better networked are ore productive and effective,” says Dawson. “If organisations understand that they social networks are important then that’s a starting point, the next is to determine the right strategy.”

Read more from Ross Dawson in the next edition of IDM Magazine

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