How Can IT Support Effective Knowledge Management?: Opening Statement

by Karl M. Wiig

Computer science and computational capabilities are constantly introducing different and more powerful approaches for creating knowledge management (KM)-related support facilities for both commercial and societal enterprises. However, there are complications. Creating the new capabilities requires new understandings, advanced skills, and different disciplines that may not be available in the organizations that attempt to implement them. As human factors expert Martin Helander pointed out long ago [4], the success of computer systems for support of knowledge workers depends primarily upon how well the systems are designed from the user and business perspectives, not the IT professional's perspective or the technical excellence of the implementation.