Defining KM

Last week I gave my first lecture about the evolution of KM for students of the Hague University in the Netherlands.  In this lecture I told them that KM is not rocket science. For thousands of years people have created and shared knowledge with each other. The Old Greek started with this before Christ and after the scientific revolution in th 17th Century (which is shaping and dictating contemporary science) this only increased. As it is a part of our own evolution for such a long time, you should think there is a clear definition of what KM means. I argued that this is far from the truth, because KM is in itself a complex discipline - or an interdisciplinary study. The definitions are being formulated by the professionals and academics working in the field from psychology to history to sociology to economy. All these different insights indicate the complexity of what knowledge is and how knowledge can be managed. Of course, there some interesting attempts out there (for example by Dave Snowden). However, I like the observation made by Madanmohan Rao during the latest International Conference on Knowledge Management:

You would think that after two decades the KM community would have a common definition of knowledge and KM, but I continue to be delighted with the new metaphors and descriptions that keep emerging. Edward Rogers, CKO, NASA, said KM is like a pair of shoes! “It has got to be comfortable, and get you to where you want to be. Fit KM to the unique character of your organisation,” he said. Max Boisot (author of the book “Knowledge Assets”), said there are 3 kinds of knowledge: experiential, narrative and abstract symbolic (reflecting “What do I see/hear/feel,” “What can I say about this,” and “What stable durable content can I extract from this”)

Of course, I would argue more than two decades, because Michael Polyani (1950s) already made a clear reference to current KM practices by arguing that much of the knowledge is tacit and will stay tacit, but I completely agree with the rest!