What is your vision on Knowledge Management future ? What do you think the main trends are today and will be in the next years ?

Ten years ago, some polemical articles developped the idea that two KM strategies compete on the basis of culture, history, nature of business, etc.

• - A strategy of codification, by codifying knowledge into information (database, document databases, semi-structured data...)
   
• - A strategy of socialization, by managing knowledge flows through people. Tacit exchanges.

According to that theory, organizations should choose one or the other of these strategies, the two of them being incompatible. Yet studies show that companies works in a 50/50 mode, depending on their nature, their culture, etc. For instance a company with a strong engineering culture will be more in the codification while a consulting company will use the socialization model. In the future, I think that KM will be a mix of both strategies, using different tools, methods and strategic management. Codification and socialization, both strategies are operative. The two approaches are not opposed but complementary!
 

How organizations can use Knowledge Management to improve their competitiveness and optimize their businesses results? And what are the main expected benefits?

There are two ways to deal with KM in companies:

• - The defensive one: it consists in preventing the risk of loss of skills (for instance, developed countries are going to lose 40% of their workforce in the next 10 years because of massive retirement, that necessarily implies some knowledge loss) or no strategy of skills management (no strategic analysis of the knowledge portfolio, no anticipation, see Kodak for the digital photography for instance).
   
• - The Offensive one:
• > improving productivity: An OECD Study shows that companies that make KM a strategic priority increase their productivity.
• > enhancing the economic value with Knowledge Capital: stock market appreciate companies that have an important Intangible Capital, including Knowledge Assets.
• > improving the competitiveness: definitely, market shares are now conquered with knowledge and innovation in products and services.

To answer the question How?: It is necessary to initiate a “KM virtuous cycle” in four steps:

1. Strategic analysis of the knowledge portfolio: mapping of Critical and Strategic Knowledge
2. Knowledge capitalization: creating a structured repository of accessible, shared, scalable knowledge portfolio, codification and socialization… in short a “Knowledge Business Plan”.
3. Knowledge Sharing: designing social tools, learning tools, etc.
4. Innovation: designing an Innovation platform based on the knowledge repository.

The KM Virtuous Cycle is a process loop which enables the renewal of knowledge portfolio.

We just talked about the business benefits on a global perspective, but what are the benefits for employees?

There are benefits at all levels, not only for managers and stakeholders. It is essential to integrate the employees in the full cycle (strategic, operational, innovation). Benefits may be not enough recognized but they are real:

• - Employees need recognition of their knowledge, their skills, their function…
   
• - They love to share: "Knowledge shared is knowledge squared"
   
• - They don’t necessarily experienced sharing as a loss of power
   
• - They need Self-accomplishment within their job

For instance, in some engineering companies, there are “levels of expertise” patterns that rewards the knowledge contribution of employees. Thanks to this kind of approach, people can be recognized for the value of their knowledge which is very rewarding. The problem is that companies which only think about the bottom-line, the production process, don’t often realize it. Other type of benefits can be reached through KM: Customer Knowledge Management for instance provides better knowledge of customers to improve customer relationships management…

What are your recommendations to start an effective Knowledge Management project and its successful roll-out?

For the project deployment, organizations should adopt the “Water Lily strategy”. The water lily evokes a well known childish riddle: « a water lily doubles its surface every day, if it already took forty days to cover half of the pond, how many days are needed to cover the entire pond? ». An imprudent and too fast answer would be « eighty days» while considering that as much time is necessary to cover one half that the other. This answer neglects the water lily nature and the initial hypothesis! If you transcribe this riddle in term of project management, it may be: « a KM project is expensive, if the project costs 40 M€ to cover the needs for managing half of the Knowledge Capital, how much will be needed for managing the entire Knowledge Capital?». The linear extrapolation of costs will answer undoubtedly rather toward 80 M€ than 41M€! One doesn't have the habit to evoke the hypothesis of the water lily in this kind of problem.

Yet a KM project is not linear, but of exponential growth. The overall cost benefit from experience. Small projects that succeed are then spread within the organization. The Water Lilly is a strategy with constant effort and exponential results. My recommendation: when it comes to KM, do not use a “roadmap” strategy it does not work! Organizations must instead start small. It is the best way to include the change process, incentive factors, and the emergence phenomenon in complex systems. Organizations will also need the commitment of the top management. The benefits multiply with a constant energy injection.
In short: Start too small!

In your opinion, what are the major hurdle to overcome and the pitfalls to avoid?

• - 1st trap: "everything is information". > KM is NOT information management and information tools are not enough.
   
• - 2nd trap: assigning the KM strategy to HR only. > HR must work with other departments (strategy, information systems, quality, operationnal department…) and with “field people” as it is from them that most KM requests come…
   
• - 3rd trap: starting too big at the beginning of the project…
   
• - 4th trap: "we have always done it this way" so the usual tools (training, documentation, database, talent management, etc.) are enough. > It is completely untrue because we have entered the new era of knowledge economy and must make the transition from knowledge as an “handicraft” to knowledge as an “industry”. The issue is historically new as, for instance, the extent of the aging population in the scale of humanity. The importance of knowledge in the economy also has a new dimension therefore is no longer handled with traditional tools. That’s why KM has to be reviewed in new perspectives, to be optimized and developed.

Do you think there are cultural specificities on Knowledge Management maturity depending on your geographical location?

For sure !

For example: there are socialization countries (e.g. Latin cultures) and codification countries (e.g. northern developed countries). The issues do not arise in the same way depending on countries. Depending on their historical situation, there are different approaches to the problem. For instance in India there is plenty of young people. For them, the main problem is "the last mile problem": they possess the knowledge, but 1 billion people need to be trained so for them this is more an issue of knowledge dissemination. In the Industrialized countries we have exactly the opposite: we are going to lose 40% of our workforce in the next 10 years therefore it’s more a knowledge preservation issue…

What is your vision on Knowledge Management future ? What do you think the main trends are today and will be in the next years ?

Quoting Jean Pierre Le Goff, sociologist,  “Knowledge, techniques and competencies are continuously renewing themselves, and time seems too short to adapt oneself”. There is a challenge because knowledge takes years or even centuries to harvest and digest. Indeed management means nowadays short term overexploiting of resources. What’s the sake for a manager to invest in knowledge in his entity while he is going to move to another job role or company in the following two years?

So the trends today are: knowledge management is shrinking in most organizations, and the tendency is to try and google or source or crowdsource what you need to know at little or no cost. The overall result will be obviously poor or of ill-omen. In a few areas, knowledge centers will specialize and attract knowledgeable people. A little like middle-ages universities or monasteries.

How organizations can use Knowledge Management to improve their competitiveness and optimize their businesses results? And what are the main expected benefits?

They must select who to ask for important questions, whether internal or external. They must use technology watch (ranging on all continents and cultures).

What are your recommendations to start an effective Knowledge Management project and its successful roll-out?

First thing you can ask is:

- Do you believe sincerely a tool (e.g. Web 2.0) will solve your problems and that people will capitalize knowledge just because you said so?

- Is it mission critical or some desirable or fashionable purpose?

- What are you ready to invest in terms of time, money? Who will capitalize and drive others to do so? Which effort-recognition are you going to provide?

Well if the management can answer these questions and is ready to persist over time, you can face launching a project. If not, forget it.


In your opinion, what are the major hurdle to overcome and the pitfalls to avoid?

The short-term, overexploiting management tends by nature to limit time spent on knowledge. The term “management” implies knowledge is something that must be “managed”. Why is it then that “management” often ends up being inefficient?


Do you think there are cultural specificities on Knowledge Management maturity depending on your geographical location?

Knowledge brings social status as much as money, which is a good thing to begin with.

What is your vision on Knowledge Management future ? What do you think the main trends are today and will be in the next years ?

Collaboration and improved performance...
 

How organizations can use Knowledge Management to improve their competitiveness and optimize their businesses results? And what are the main expected benefits?

- Faster implementation of changed business procedures and methods
- Lower costs per delivered unit
- Reduced risk in projects

What are your recommendations to start an effective Knowledge Management project and its successful roll-out?

- Convince top management about the feasibility on KM and commit them to their role in their new learning organization
- Select an important pilot and execute with success
- Delegate KM support/management to a qualified change manager

In your opinion, what are the major hurdle to overcome and the pitfalls to avoid?

- To get priority for a long term strategy
- Risks related to the focusing on organisational learning competing with other needed efforts
- Yes - we have allready a learning organization
- Managing by cost budget in public organisations may be a hinder for commitment to learning and performance improvement

Do you think there are cultural specificities on Knowledge Management maturity depending on your geographical location?

Yes – some cultures focused historically on IT-environments and failed. High power distance may limit delegation of learning power and horizontal communication

What is your vision on Knowledge Management future ? What do you think the main trends are today and will be in the next years ?

The rise of Knowledge Management (KM) in the 90’s was, according to me, tightly connected with project management. Seen as a response to an accelerated competitive environment, project management started to change the way organizations use knowledge.
In the years 2000, Internet and networking tools, by creating a real collective mind, deeply changed the practice and speed of knowledge creation and management. From a hierarchical and analytical way of dealing with knowledge, we start moving to a more fuzzy and intuitive knowledge management pattern.
I think, in the next decade, two main trends will be essential :  instant everywhere access to  quite all explicit knowledge will shape a new scheme of interaction between humans ;  and  thanks to neurocognitive science research progress,  we will upgrade our understanding of the tacit dimension of knowledge and its unconscious part, seen as a core competency regarding creativity and innovation.
 

How organizations can use Knowledge Management to improve their competitiveness and optimize their businesses results? And what are the main expected benefits?

What we could call : “KM compass” in project management is  “to aim locking a degree of freedom only when having raised optimal  Knowledge level”, as put by Midler (1993)[i]. Project management and its core teams patterns focus more on multi-dimensional shared visions and ability to create a learning trajectory. Dassault System 3D conception software’s efficiency is based on this statement : to see the same things !

What are your recommendations to start an effective Knowledge Management project and its successful roll-out?

First, you have “to know what you know” and this is really a huge problem. That means creating a kind of datacenter automatically alimented with business datas, in which your teams can share information and knowledge.
But, as put by Cholle (2011)[iii], intuitive intelligence (80% of our cognitive process is done by our unconsciousness) is as important as rational and analytical approaches. So, your KM needs to care about the tacit dimension of knowledge, uneasy to catch, difficult to deal with, but critical when regarding performative interactions.

One of the major hurdles to overcome is surprisingly just reaching a clear diagnosis about KM potential, as we generally make confusion about data, information and knowledge on the one hand, and on the other hand, underestimate the role of tacit knowledge. Then, as knowledge is power, the risk of sharing and its organizational impact in terms of management is always a concern. But the biggest risk is certainly to avoid the KM subject.
The best way to address KM stakes is may be to rely on external tools specialists, creating a partnership that has three advantages : 1) staying neutral regarding power distribution, 2) improving maturity of KM schemes and disposals, 3) having a clear vision of the “self-acting” dimensions of tools when introduced into organizations - and that’ s essential !
To improve our skills to tap into things we know but we don’t know we are knowing”, I’ve proposed a matrix to understand how to leverage tacit knowledge in business situations, by paying attention to the type of managerial mandate (Barbier,2005)[iv]. This model was applied for instance to French clusters (Barbier, 2009)[v].

In France, land of Descartes, we are certainly overestimating explicit knowledge. We could certainly learn a lot from oriental civilizations and even from so called “ancient primitive societies”.

[i] Midler C. (1993), L’Auto qui n’existait pas, management des projets et transformation de l’entreprise, Dunod, Paris