Knowledge Management

Dr. Abhishek N. Singh

 Learning Objectives

• Knowledge management landscape

– Value chain
– Knowledge management system cycle
• Role of knowledge management in business

• Enterprise-wide knowledge management systems

– Value for business

• Major types of knowledge work systems

• Intelligent techniques for knowledge management

 The Knowledge Management Landscape

Important dimensions of knowledge

Knowledge is a firm asset
 Intangible
 Creation of knowledge from data, information, requires organizational
resources
 As it is shared, experiences network effects
Knowledge has different forms
 Explicit (documented) and tacit (residing in minds)
 Know-how, craft, skill
 How to follow procedure
 Knowing why things happen (causality)

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 The Knowledge Management Landscape

Important dimensions of knowledge..

• Tacit Knowledge
– Subjective, cognitive and experimental learning
– Highly personal and difficult to formalize
– E.g. experience, thinking, competence, etc.

– Embedded knowledge: Localized within the brain of an individual or embedded

in the group interactions within a department
– Sticky Knowledge: relatively difficult to pull it away from its source

• Explicit Knowledge
– Objective, rational and technical knowledge
– E.g. data, policies, procedures, software, documents, etc.

– Leaky knowledge: Ease with which it can leave an individual, document or the
organization
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 The Knowledge Management Landscape
Important dimensions of knowledge..
Knowledge has a location
 Cognitive event
 Both social and individual
 “Sticky” (hard to move), situated (enmeshed in firm’s culture),
contextual (works only in certain situations)
Knowledge is situational
 Conditional: Knowing when to apply procedure
 Contextual: Knowing circumstances to use certain tool
• To transform information into knowledge, firm must expend
additional resources to discover patterns, rules, and contexts
where knowledge works

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 The Knowledge Management Landscape
Wisdom: Collective and individual experience of applying knowledge
to solve problems
Involves where, when, and how to apply knowledge

• Knowing how to do things effectively & efficiently in ways others

cannot duplicate is prime source of profit & competitive adv.
E.g. Having a unique build-to-order production system

Organizational learning: Process in which organizations learn

[„Learning Organizations‟ – Peter Senge]
 Gain experience through collection of data, measurement, trial and
error, and feedback
 Adjust behavior to reflect experience
○ Create new business processes
○ Change patterns of management decision making

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 Knowledge Management Value Chain

Knowledge Management
Set of business processes developed in an organization to
create, store, transfer, and apply knowledge

Knowledge Management allows organizations to share knowledge

and experience among employees

Knowledge Management Value Chain:

Each stage adds value to raw data and information as they are
transformed into usable knowledge
 Knowledge acquisition
 Knowledge storage
 Knowledge dissemination
 Knowledge application

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 Knowledge Management Value Chain
1. Knowledge Acquisition
 Documenting tacit and explicit knowledge
○ Storing documents, reports, presentations, and best practices
○ Unstructured documents (e.g. e-mails)
○ Developing online expert networks
 Creating knowledge
○ Tracking data from TPS and external sources

2. Knowledge Storage
 Databases and document management systems
 Role of management:
○ Support development of planned knowledge storage systems
○ Encourage development of corporate-wide schemas for indexing documents
○ Reward employees for taking time to update and store documents properly
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 Knowledge Management Value Chain
3. Knowledge Dissemination
 Portals; Push e-mail reports; Search engines; and Collaboration tools
 A deluge of information?
○ Training programs, informal networks, and shared management experience
help managers focus attention on important information

4. Knowledge Application
 To provide return on investment, organizational knowledge must become
systematic part of management decision making and become situated in
decision-support systems
○ New business practices
○ New products and services
○ New markets

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 Knowledge Management Value Chain
KM Systems, Value Chain and Organizational Activities

Knowledge management involves both information systems activities and a host of

enabling management and organizational activities

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The Knowledge Management Landscape
New organizational roles and responsibilities
Chief Knowledge Officer
Dedicated staff / knowledge managers
Communities of practice (COPs)
 Informal social networks of professionals and employees within and outside
firm who have similar work-related activities and interests
 Activities include education, online newsletters, sharing experiences and
techniques
 Facilitate reuse of knowledge, discussion
 Reduce learning curves of new employees

Knowledge Management enables effective and efficient problem solving, dynamic

learning, strategic planning and decision making

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The Knowledge Management Landscape
Communities of Practice

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The Knowledge Management Landscape
Knowledge Management System Cycle
Creates knowledge through new
ways of doing things or develop
know-how

Identified as valuable and

represented in a reasonable way

Places knowledge in context so it is

actionable

Stores knowledge in a reasonable

format in a repository

Reviews for accuracy and relevance

Makes knowledge available at all

times to anyone

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 Knowledge Management Systems
Knowledge Management Systems:
- three major types
Enterprise-wide knowledge management systems
 General-purpose firm-wide efforts to collect, store, distribute, and apply
digital content and knowledge
Knowledge work systems (KWS)
 Specialized systems built for engineers, scientists, other knowledge workers
charged with discovering and creating new knowledge
Intelligent techniques
 Diverse group of techniques such as data mining used for various goals:
discovering knowledge, distilling knowledge, discovering optimal solutions

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 Knowledge Management Systems
Major Types of Knowledge Management Systems

These three categories can be broken down further into more specialized types of
knowledge management systems

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 Knowledge Management Systems
• Knowledge management system is a methodology applied to
business practices than a technology or product

• IT enables knowledge management by providing the enterprise

architecture upon which it is build

• KMS are developed using:

 Communication technologies
 Collaboration technologies
 Storage and retrieval technologies

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Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management
Systems
Three major types of knowledge in enterprise:
Structured documents
 Reports, presentations
 Formal rules
Semi-structured documents
 E-mails, videos
Unstructured, tacit knowledge
 80% of an organization’s business content is semi-structured or
unstructured

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Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management
Systems
Enterprise Content Management Systems
Capture, store, retrieve, distribute, preserve
 Documents, reports, best practices
 Semi-structured knowledge (e-mails)
Tools for communication and collaboration
Bring in external sources
 News feeds, research

An enterprise content management

system has capabilities for classifying,
organizing, and managing structured
and semi-structured knowledge and
making it available throughout the
enterprise. E.g. Motorola
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 Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management
Systems
Knowledge Network Systems
Provide online directory of corporate experts
in well-defined knowledge domains
Use communication technologies to make it
easy for employees to find appropriate
solutions or experts
May systematize solutions developed by
experts and store them in knowledge
database
 Best practices
 FAQ repository

 KNS maintains a database of firm experts, as well as

accepted solutions to known problems.

 Solutions created in this communication are added to

a database of solutions in the form of FAQs, best
practices, or other documents.
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Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management
Systems
Portal and Collaboration Technologies
Enterprise knowledge portals: access to external and internal information
 News feeds, research
 Capabilities for e-mail, chat, videoconferencing, discussion
Use of consumer Web technology: Blogs, Wikis, Social bookmarking

Learning Management Systems

Provide tools for management, delivery, tracking, and assessment of various types
of employee learning and training
Support multiple modes of learning
 CD-ROM, Web-based classes, online forums, live instruction, etc.
Automates selection and administration of courses
Assembles and delivers learning content
Measures learning effectiveness
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 Knowledge Work Systems

Knowledge Work Systems

Systems for knowledge workers to help create new knowledge
and integrate that knowledge into business

• Knowledge workers
Researchers, designers, architects, scientists, engineers who
create knowledge for the organization

Three key roles:

 Keeping organization current in knowledge
 Serving as internal consultants regarding their areas of expertise
 Acting as change agents, evaluating, initiating, and promoting change projects

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 Knowledge Work Systems

Requirements of knowledge work systems

Substantial computing power for graphics, complex calculations
Powerful graphics and analytical tools

Communications and document management

Access to external databases
User-friendly interfaces

Optimized for tasks to be performed

E.g.: design engineering, financial analysis

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 Knowledge Work Systems
Requirements of Knowledge Work Systems

Knowledge work systems

require strong links to
external knowledge
bases in addition to
specialized hardware and
software.

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 Knowledge Work Systems
Examples of knowledge work systems
CAD (computer-aided design):
 Creation of engineering or architectural designs
Virtual reality systems:
– Simulate real-life environments
– 3-D medical modeling for surgeons
– Augmented reality (AR) systems
Investment workstations:
 Streamline investment process and consolidate internal, external data
for brokers, traders, portfolio managers

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 Intelligent Techniques

Intelligent Techniques: Used to capture individual and collective

knowledge and to extend knowledge base
Capture tacit knowledge: Expert systems, case-based reasoning,
fuzzy logic
Knowledge discovery: Neural networks and data mining
Generating solutions to complex problems: Genetic algorithms
Automating tasks: Intelligent agents

• Artificial intelligence (AI) technology:

 Computer-based systems that emulate human behavior

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 Intelligent Techniques
Expert Systems:

Capture tacit knowledge in very specific and limited domain of

human expertise
Capture knowledge of skilled employees as set of rules in
software system that can be used by others in organization
Typically perform limited tasks that may take a few minutes or
hours, e.g.:
 Diagnosing malfunctioning machine
 Determining whether to grant credit for loan
Used for discrete, highly structured decision-making

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 Intelligent Techniques
Rules in an Expert System

An expert system contains a

number of rules to be
followed.

The rules are inter-connected;

the number of outcomes is
known in advance and is
limited; there are multiple
paths to the same outcome;
and the system can consider
multiple rules at a single time.

The rules illustrated here are

for simple credit-granting
expert systems.

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 Intelligent Techniques
How expert systems work
Knowledge base: Set of hundreds or thousands of rules
Inference engine: Strategy used to search knowledge base
 Forward chaining: Inference engine begins with information entered by user
and searches knowledge base to arrive at conclusion
 Backward chaining: Begins with hypothesis and asks user questions until
hypothesis is confirmed or disproved
• Successful expert systems
Con-Way Transportation built expert system to automate and optimize
planning of overnight shipment routes for nationwide freight-trucking business
• Most expert systems deal with problems of classification
Have relatively few alternative outcomes
Possible outcomes are known in advance

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 Intelligent Techniques
Inference Engines in Expert Systems

• An inference engine works by searching through the rules and “firing” those rules that are triggered by
facts gathered and entered by the user.
• Basically, a collection of rules is similar to a series of nested IF statements in a traditional software
program; however, the magnitude of the statements and degree of nesting are much greater in an expert
system.

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 Intelligent Techniques
Case-Based Reasoning (CBR)
Descriptions of past experiences
of human specialists (cases),
stored in knowledge base
System searches for cases with
problem characteristics similar to
new one, finds closest fit, and
applies solutions of old case to
new case

CBR applications:
- Medical diagnostic systems
- Customer support

The system uses a six-step process to generate

solutions to new problems encountered by the user.

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 Intelligent Techniques
Neural Networks
Find patterns and relationships in massive amounts of data too
complicated for humans to analyze

“Learn” patterns by searching for relationships, building models, and

correcting over and over again

Humans “train” network by feeding it data inputs for which outputs are
known, to help neural network learn solution by example

Used in medicine, science, and business for problems in pattern

classification, prediction, financial analysis, and control and
optimization

Machine learning: Related AI technology allowing computers to learn

by extracting information using computation and statistical methods

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 Intelligent Techniques
Genetic Algorithms
Useful for finding optimal solution for specific problem by examining
very large number of possible solutions for that problem

Conceptually based on process of evolution

 Search among solution variables by changing and reorganizing component parts using
processes such as inheritance, mutation, and selection

Used in optimization problems (minimization of costs, efficient

scheduling, optimal jet engine design) in which hundreds or thousands
of variables exist

Able to evaluate many solution alternatives quickly

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 Intelligent Techniques
Intelligent Agents
Work in background to carry out specific, repetitive, and predictable
tasks for user, process, or application
Use limited built-in or learned knowledge base to accomplish tasks or
make decisions on user‟s behalf
 Deleting junk e-mail
 Finding cheapest airfare
Agent-based modeling applications:
 Systems of autonomous agents
 Model behavior of consumers, stock markets, and supply chains; used to
predict spread of epidemics

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 Intelligent Techniques
Intelligent Agents in P&G‟s Supply Chain Network

Intelligent agents are helping P&G shorten the replenishment cycles for products,
such as a box of Tide
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Thank You!