CH 2.

Introduction to Knowledge Management

Intellectual Capital is the most basic asset of the knowledge, essential for ensuring
sustainable success of an organization
Intellectual Capital: Know everything about the organization (what we are and what we
have as an organization). We can not measure it.
Quantitative definition
Not just the financial results assure the future success of an organization.
 The skill and expertise of a company’s human resources
 The extent and financing of its R&D investments
 The efficiency of existing and potential work processes
 IT’s infrastructure and customer base
A simplified estimation
The value of intellectual capital, being intangible is difficult to estimate
Some methods to estimate the value of IC:
Intellectual capital = Market value – Book value
Limitations of simplified estimation
 Cynics
 People may believe neither in MV nor BV
 Takes time to calculate MV
Human Capital has to do with the people of the organization: knowledge, innovation,
and skills
Structural capital: is the sum of the organization’s capabilities and core competencies
Balance scorecard: Arrives at a set of chosen indicators, Financial, Customer, Internal
Processes, and Innovation and learning

CH 3. Strategy in KM
Business Strategy based on core competencies
 Corporate identity can’t be defined solely in terms of products and services
 What does the organization need to know in order to be able to develop better,
faster, and more cheaply?
 Core competencies more sustainable but need to be reinvented
The goal: stay ahead of the game
The goal of strategic management is to ensure that the organization does not fall asleep
In a world quickly changing, the pace of organizational renewal has to be at least as fast
as the external pace of events
Managing Knowledge
Knowledge should be managed strategically
Core knowledge of an organization has been defined, a strategy for managing it needs to
be designed, too
First, decide what the organization needs to know, and then move to designing how to
develop the organizational knowledge
The failure of km without strategy
 Investments without any use
 No strategy, not understanding the relevance or meaning
Km serves the overall business strategy
 One of the biggest challenges in planning strategy is choosing the focus of
resources and eliminating secondary options
 Wide band of opportunities and threats and maintain flexible
 They can do this by continuously learning and keeping their eyes open to the
outside world
 Product life cycles are getting shorter
 The organization needs to identify its core capabilities
Km serves the overall business strategy (cont)
Secret to success lies in becoming an open laboratory for the next generation
Just as an individual who wants to succeed needs to continuously learn all his life, as
well as an organization
SWOT analysis
 Sensitivity to external trends and the ability to detect weak signals
 Consumer, competitors, implications, demands, etc.
 Look in the mirror with honest answers, S and W
Effective communication
 Knowledge café. Special meetings designed to promote knowledge creation and
sharing
 Many people at once in a conversation

Ch.4 The role of culture in Knowledge Management

Definition of culture
Composed of three building blocks: beliefs, values, and behavioral norms
 Values: central position in organizational culture
 Values reflect the person’s or the organization’s beliefs
 Also serve as the basis of the norms
Moral aspects
Moral foundations of the organization underlie and must be established before the
specific values to KM
It’s important to appeal to workers’ moral dimensions

Do you encourage kS?

 Managerial standpoint, the value of KS reflects an organizational belief that
when workers share knowledge, the organization saves time
 Managers should make sure their workers gain by sharing knowledge
 Top – bottom
CH 5. The human focus
Most common Kw
 Nonroutine Workers
 Promote different ways to solve problems
Trust
 Many start-ups
 Loyalty seems a thing of the past
 KW become mobile, moving from organization to organization, based on where
the higher salary and/or professional interest lie
 Employees have seen an advantage of stable companies
 Companies have learned to continue investing in their employees
importance of mobility
 KW are the main assets of the organization and are not easily replaced
 You cannot force people to stay, make them want to stay
The challenge of retention
 Challenge of attracting and retaining
 Organizations compete for talents just as for customers
 Not just raise of salaries
 Different for everyone
Retention tactics
 Lifetime employment
 Bonus
 Recognition
 Increase in salaries
Is the salary the main factor?
Studies have proven that it’s not the main factor.
Leadership styles
 Directive
 Democratic
 Developer
Make every assignment interesting or meaningful
 Achieve commitment
 Incorporate the full life cycle of a project as a necessary professional experience
 Change a KW’s job
 Enrich a routine
Create and maintain a full knowledge matrix
 Avoid a situation where an entire organization is relying on one person, or a
small clique of experts
 Show interest for your employees
 Regular meetings
 Special care for starters
 Keeping in touch with KW who leave
 Retiring KW
Types of compensation
Two main groups, hard (explicit) and soft (implicit)
 Hard:
 Bonuses
 Promotion
 Access
 Soft:
 Community members
 Establishing a personal reputation among peers
 Personal gratification

VIDEOS
JEFF BEZOS (AMAZON)
They are focus in three main ideas:
1. Thinking long-term
2. Putting the customer in the center of the universe
3. Inventing
 Articles
Develop Deep Knowledge in Your Organization — and Keep It
The best leaders understand that the current success of their business, and any future
innovation, depends upon the “deep smarts” of their employees — the business-critical,
experience-based knowledge that employees carry with them.
Take architectural and engineering firm EYP as an example. Leila Kamal, vice president
for design and expertise, not only reports to the CEO but also is a member of the board.
An architect herself, she brings great credibility and visibility to programs of learning and
knowledge exchange. An early in-house program called A16 treated 16 junior architects
to 16 weeks of intensive training, including knowledge mentorship from highly
experienced architects. The educational concepts developed in that program have since
evolved into a larger learning program called EYP University, which provides an average
of 20 courses a year for architects, engineers, and a combination of the two. Instructors
combine traditional lectures with hands-on activities, including challenging participants
to solve a difficult problem before they are presented with the solution. This mode of
learning embodies what educational researcher Robert Bjork call “desirable difficulty,”
compelling learners to fully engage mentally to discover nonobvious answers to
problems. Senior thought leaders who are mentors at EYP have to submit a learning plan
for their mentees, describing not only goals but also specific tasks the learner will
undertake, such as a client presentation. The learners, in turn, provide performance
evaluations on their mentors’ skills as a mentor or on their ability to teach and share
knowledge through the EYP U curriculum. Moreover, the mentoring flows “up and
down” — from juniors to seniors, as well as vice versa. For example, new hires tend to
come in knowing building information modeling from school, and can tutor experienced
designers and architects in how to incorporate their deep practical knowledge into the
software.
Contrast the example above with an organization where one manager noted: “I think we
are very good at managing information, but not very good at managing knowledge.” It’s
an astute observation. Knowledge differs from information in that the former is at least
partially based on experience. Organizations that are proactive about managing the flow
of knowledge focus on several potentially essential ingredients to future success, such as:

 Retaining experience-based know-how, including not only technical knowledge

but also so-called “softer” skills, such as project management and maintaining
critical relationships inside and outside the organization that have been built up
over years. For example, many top sales people know clients personally; subject
matter experts know others in their field. Such trusted relationships facilitate
communications and speed decision making.

 Helping mentors pass along their expertise more effectively and helping
mentees learn more efficiently. Mentors can teach through practical problem sets
and hands-on diagnoses instead of lectures and presentations. Newcomers can
 learn more efficiently by keeping “learning logs” that chronicle their experiences
and through scheduled feedback sessions with their mentors.

 Encouraging reverse mentoring from newcomers to elders, such as having

newcomers tutor experienced personnel in social media.

 Generating new knowledge by conducting research, benchmarking, or

bringing in “resident” artists or scientists whose interactions with employees can
spark creativity.
The single largest obstacle to managing human knowledge is a lack of time.

A 5-Step Process to Get More Out of Your Organization’s Data

Step 1: Improve data quality.
Step 2: Link different data
Step 3: Analyze your data.
Step 4: Infuse your data with theory.
Step 5: Implement changes and keep track of outcomes