Knowledge Management Practice

Proponents of knowledge management argue that long-term competitive advantage can come from mapping and tapping tacit knowledge. But simply agreeing with this principle on the grounds of commonsense does not tell us how to do it. And many accounts of Knowledge Management fall down on this issue.

One notable exception is The Knowledge Management Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building a Knowledge Management System (1999) by Amrit Tiwana. Tiwana points out that:

"In the technology industry, companies that have prospered are not the companies that have invented new technology, but those that have applied it. Microsoft is perhaps a good example of a company that had first relied on good marketing, then on its market share, and now on its innovative knowledge - mostly external."

Tiwana considers that Microsoft has also learned a great deal from its past failures, describing its founder Bill Gates as "the richest man in the world: a fierce, tireless competitor who hires people with the same qualities." Microsoft uses knowledge management without a specific knowledge management agenda and gains by applying knowledge rather than creating it. In fact, according to Tiwana, tangible business assets such as technology, patents or market share can only provide a business with a temporary advantage. Eventually, a particular market-leading technology, for example, becomes the staple of every business in the same industry. Tiwana instances Citibank, which introduced the Automated Teller Machine (ATMs - 'Hole in the wall' cash machines). This development as a competitive advantage initially but now every bank has them.

Often organizations do not know what they know. And if they do know what they DID know:

- That knowledge can be out of date
- The person(s) who possessed it may have gone - perhaps to a competitor
- The knowledge has been replaced or updated
- The location or possessor of the new knowledge is not known.

Knowledge Management

Tacit and Explicit Knowledge

Data, Information and Knowledge

The Psychology of Expertise