Standardizing Management of Knowledge

by John Berry

As the problem child of business intelligence, knowledge management (KM) has suffered an identity crisis for some time, which explains organizations' total lack of enthusiasm today for any technology or management strategy yoked to those two words. As I pointed out in a previous Executive Report [1], KM means almost anything, therefore it means almost nothing. Yet the cruel truth is that KM might just be the single most important management subject today given how the production, use (sharing), manipulation (creation, enhancement), and categorizing of information (knowledge) -- activities associated with KM -- are fundamental to the wealth creation of so many businesses. Rescue just might be at hand. KM is poised to extricate itself from the quicksand of its own contradictions, freed through a completely new way of looking at the subject that includes a concept historically alien to it: standards.