Visions of KM 2: paper finished at last

Well, it had to happen . After many months of rewriting and peer-reviewing (and enough version shenanigans to discredit me as a document manager), the paper is done.

For quite a while now, I’ve felt that most business managers were not getting a clear message about knowledge management. There is a lot of academic debate that not even the academics can make practical sense of, a lot of discredited methods still trying to prove themselves, quite a lot of smoke about social software and enterprise 2.0… and a cart load of vendor-talk about all sorts of technology or services solutions. No wonder KM has a fame as a perplexing discipline.

And it shouldn’t. Managing knowledge is a practical part of business management, an essential good practice. Every organization does it, at least by default, and it can bring great benefits if done well.

“Visions of Knowledge Management 2 – Knowledge Wave” aims to deliver a business-friendly view of what KM is about, what it is good for, and (in very broad lines) how to go about it. It’s no rehash of literature: it reflects my opinions and experience, and while there is a basic theorethical layer, it’s as practical as it gets… but it’s not a complete manual, of course . 27 pages can only serve as a primer.

So – here it is. Click on the picture to download.

Special thanks to the patient peer reviewers, Rosanna Tarsiero, Ed Mitchell, Paul Ritchie and Patrick Lambe. All have brought hammer and chisel and a very particular point of view. The finished paper does not fit the vision of any of them – which is good: it aims to be a bridge between different ways of looking at knowledge management.

As always, comments will be more than welcome: even if it’s finished, it remains open to changes, just as every other paper published here.

[Added: if you don't get along with the download page, try a direct route].