The future of knowledge management

In just over four months’ time, KM Europe 2003 gets underway at the Amsterdam RAI in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It will be the fourth event in the record-breaking series, which began in Brussels in the autumn of 2000. In all, the annual event has attracted over 10,000 visitors, a phenomenal number for a show dedicated to a discipline many said would be relegated to organisational backwaters within a few years of its original conception. Instead, the knowledge-management community has flourished, and KM Europe has become the most important event in the KM calendar, representing a unique opportunity for practitioners, vendors, consultants, academics and just about anyone involved in the knowledge-management industry to get together in one place and decide how to take the discipline forward.

This year’s event looks like it will be bigger and better than ever before. Continuing the tradition of bringing delegates the most exciting and compelling keynote speakers on the conference circuit, KM Europe 2003 will feature Verna Allee, Dorothy Leonard, Ciaran McGinley, Carla O’Dell, Dave Snowden and Fons Trompenaars. Among those exhibiting will be BT, Convera, Entopia, Fast Search & Transfer, Fujitsu, IBM, Inxight, SAP, SPSS and Verity. The European Commission will also be showcasing the EC IST programme in its dedicated on-site ‘village’, while visitors will have the opportunity to attend the free KM advisory centre and benefit from the advice of industry-leading consultants. In all, it should be quite a show. You can register now at www.kmeurope.com. Remember, entrance to the show and the conference is free, while each keynote costs only Euro75 to attend. I look forward to seeing you there.

In the meantime, our profile of Carla O’Dell, beginning on page eight and continuing our series of interviews with this year’s headline presenters, should give you a taster of some of the issues KM Europe 2003 will be looking to address. In addition, our special focus this month is the future of knowledge management, a subject that always provokes strong opinions and no small amount of controversy. Beginning with the Your Say feature on page ten, our exploration of what lies beyond the horizon for KM continues with articles by Joe Firestone and Mark McElroy, Adam Gersting and Karl Wiig. While you may not agree with all of the conclusions this month’s contributors reach, this edition of Knowledge Management should certainly give you plenty to think about.

Features

Your Say: beyond the horizon Free
Many expected knowledge management to go the way of business-process re-engineering, but almost a decade after the term was coined, KM is still going strong. Simon Lelic talks to representatives from Delta Strategies, EDS Solutions Consulting, iBILT Technologies, IBM and UNIC, and explores what’s next for knowledge management, as a discipline and as an industry.

The new knowledge management Free
The future value of knowledge management in a corporate context is dependent on the discipline’s ability to overcome many of the limitations of its current guise. Drawing on research conducted for their most recent book, Joseph M. Firestone and Mark W. McElroy discuss eight issues that they feel will define what they call ‘new knowledge management’.

An integrated future Free
Organisations looking to get the most from their knowledge-management investment are starting to recognise the value of adopting an integrated approach to KM, content management and portal implementation. Adam M. Gersting explains why consolidated environments are the future for KM, and how a defined approach to taxonomy development will be the difference between success and failure for your firm.

The next generation Free
Knowledge management is well established as a management discipline, but it is also subject to continual development and improvement. Karl Wiig discusses the fundamental principles that define new-generation knowledge management, a revised take on traditional KM that is already bearing fruit in a number of leading knowledge-based enterprises.

How to get from A to B (without going via Z) Free
In just about any industrial sector, low productivity is directly related to poor decision making. Arnold Kransdorff explains how to beef up this critical management skill with a technique that overcomes the limitations of existing methodologies.

The rules of the game Free
At the end of March earlier this year, Ark Group hosted its first conference on the value of business simulations in an organisational context. Eilif Trondsen, chairman at the event, shares his thoughts on the key learnings delegates and presenters were able to take away, having heard from the likes of BT, Pfizer, KLM, Orange and the London Business School.

Regulars

Country focus: Canada Free
Simon Lelic talks to Robert Angel, president of the Guildford Group and board member of the CRMA, about the growth of knowledge management in Canada.

The knowledge: Carla O’Dell Free
As president of APQC and the impetus behind the organisation’s International Benchmarking Clearinghouse, Carla O’Dell has had a unique perspective on the development of knowledge-management principles and practices since before the term was even coined. She talks to Simon Lelic about her KM journey so far, and her take on the issues that will dominate the discipline in the years to come.

Five minutes with: Reuters Free
Jacquie Bran, project manager with the Knowledge Management events team, speaks to Chris Charlton, principal consultant at Reuters, about his involvement implementing the company’s enterprise-wide taxonomy.

On the web: Is a whale a hippo or a horse? Free
Taxonomies have stepped out of the life-sciences world and are demonstrating their value within a business context. Mark Field outlines three basic steps to creating a corporate taxonomy that touch on ninja librarians, aquatic carnivorous horses and anorak sideshows.

Book review: The Attention Economy Free
Mikko Arevuo reviews The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business by Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck.