Sorting out the knowledge warehouse

Most of us spend our days immersed in a datastream that often resembles a raging torrent. What process do we use to cope? "We turn the raw data into relevant information," said Betty Lin, general manager of for Brio Software (Greater China) Ltd. "The information becomes fact as we recognize patterns, and we find knowledge when it becomes actionable." This is knowledge management (KM).

"One thing, however, that you don't want to do," cautioned Les Hales, director of IT Management Programs for FoundationAsia, is confuse KM with IT. This can lead to the belief that KM is only about capturing and organizing information -- which is only part of the story." Lin also pointed out that neither should KM be confused with business intelligence (BI): "BI is finding intelligence to help run your business better. KM is finding what's valuable in your company and sharing it around."

However, Hales noted that KM and IT are intimately linked, especially "in the way that IT has changed the world to the point where knowledge has become the source of future wealth." He pointed out that technology's huge impact on organizations is so powerful that new business initiatives are typically labeled with what he called "IT-influenced 'TLAs' (Three Letter Acronyms) such as ERP and CRM."

Rather than spinning in tight circles of TLAs, John Maloney, founder and sponsor of the San Francisco-based Knowledge Management Cluster, suggests four criteria for what he calls "Edge KM," or electronic people-to-people collaboration, which he described as the "future of KM."

The KM Cluster -- founded in 1998 -- offers free membership and describes itself as "vendor agnostic." The organization does not endorse or embrace any particular KM orthodoxy, method or technique -- rather, it draws upon its open community to set event themes, drive agenda and recommend speakers.

Speaking at the Hong Kong Knowledge Management Society's Fourth Asia Pacific KM Conference in HK last week, Maloney outlined his four criteria. First and foremost, he said, is exchange of complicated documents.

"The keyword is exchange," he emphasized. "Edge KM is not about access or access strategies," noted Maloney, adding that often firms make this mistake, thinking that "knowledge management" means acquiring another company's complicated documents. "Documents must be compound -- data, text, graphical, audio -- and improvisational," said Maloney, adding that these documents must also be new and innovative, rather than policies and procedures.

Maloney's second point is that the participants must be higher-strata, or as he put it: "fluid groups, stars and leaders reliant on expertise that