History Of Knowledge Management

The Journey of Knowledge Management – Beginning till 2013

Where did it start?

The Journey that has left a profound impact on me is the Journey of the Knowledge Management moving from the EAST to WEST. This Journey that I mention is the one that is the base of all of Nonaka’s Literature on Knowledge Management. Lets see this mentioned in the

For Nonaka, a person whose formative experience is Japanese, what matters is the practice, the doing, the embodiment of knowledge. Intangible knowledge has no value until it gains organic concentration and focus in people immersed in situations of living and doing. Nonaka’s spiral process describes disciplined practices that make an embodied argument for the independence and availability of tacit knowledge. The disciplines suggest ways we in the West might experience tacit knowledge newly, and conceptualize it differently.

So I shall quote the mid 1980s as the beginning of the Journey of Knowledge Management

Where did it peak?

In a knowledge-based economy, the new coin of the realm is learning.

—Robert Reich

As Reich notes in “The Company of the Future”

Want to build a business that can outlive its first good idea? Create a culture that values learning. Want to build a career that allows you to grow into new responsibilities? Maintain your hunger to learn—and join an organization where you’ll be given the chance to learn continuously.

So in order to answer when the peak happened, we will say the 1990s as this is when the resource that was valued most was the knowledge capital of any economy or organization.

Where are we in 2013?

In the current times , we are all about the Knowledge Enablers and Enablement. To this note I count myself as being lucky to have been given a role in a great place where Knowledge accountability is key for its success. I look forward to an era of self-enablement which will be where we want to go in future as an organization and an economy. Note that I have to keep on reminding myself that KM Enablers are not just people its culture , technology , process , structure but still the most important factor still remains people.

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Key terms : 

i) Ikujiro Nonaka, whose formative experience is Japanese, is an established scholar who has written about

large business organizations. He sees knowledge at the heart of the organization and its products and aims to

develop Michael Polanyi’s conception of tacit knowledge in a practical direction to enhance organizational

“knowledge creation..” For Nonaka, what matters is the practice, the doing, the embodiment of knowledge. An

organization can amplify and crystallize individuals’ tacit knowledge in a process that allows them to

experience deeper understanding . Nonaka holds that it is iimportant to explore the potential that knowledge

holds. His spiral process describes disciplined practices that make tacit knowledge independent and available

to restructure the organizational knowledge context.

ii) Knowledge Management - is not about data and information . Its about making use of data and information to get value be it for yourself ( ie Personal Knowledge Management) or for the Organisation or for the Economy as a whole

iii) Knowledge Enablers as in the People: Are those that form part of the Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Typical examples may include software engineers , architects, engineers, scientists and lawyers, because they "think for a living". These are the folks that ensure that Knowledge remains and get transferred efficiently throughout the organization while at all time creating a better cycle of innovation for the organization. Innovation = Money!