RE: Martin‘s comments, that is really some interesting stuff, Martin, and I am glad that this weblog post may be able to provide you with some further insights. Actually, I have been checking out your weblog and it looks like you would have lots of great material to work with and I am wondering if you are planning to make the final study from your Master Thesis available to everyone so that we could all benefit from the great insights I am sure would be coming out of it. Is there a chance you could share the study with us all whenever it is ready ? Thanks !

RE: Niall‘s comments, it certainly is, Niall. And to build up from what you have mentioned above I am sure that the latter method, the “facilitate and aggregate” knowledge (The tacit knowledge) would probably become much more relevant and meaningful to every single business out there. Reason why ? Because up until now, businesses have been more or less mandating their knowledge workers to share their knowledge by using whatever incentive programmes and the end result has been that people have not been very keen on being told what to do, regardless of whatever the incentives.

However, with the tacit knowledge exchange the environment surrounding it is completely different because people would feel they would want to share their knowledge and experiences with others just for the sake of sharing it, not even thinking about incentives. Because of that people are starting to use more and more tools that enable and facilitate the ease of use when sharing information, like Wikis, weblogs, social bookmarking, etc. etc. without having to go through complicated approval processes, or content editors or whatever the complicated content management tools. People would just want to share knowledge with others and benefit from that collaborating with others in a much more open environment, which will make it all even more efficient and effective.

Some very interesting thoughts in here. To follow my argument through, I wonder if the outcome of a “command and control” mentality is just explicit knowledge, and “facilitate and aggregate” is implicit?

Niall

One of the more interesting aspects of Web 2.0 are the parts that encourage the development of effective online social communities. It’s true though, that even from the beginning of the Web we had these, whether they were folks in IRC, obsessiv…

“You do a great job laying out the case that the successful companies will be the ones that can to a better job of aggregating and implementing knowledge from workers that goes beyond a company’s existing knowledge base. You also hit on the idea that these web 2.0 tools allow individuals to get more personally involved in building knowledge in organizations.”

What a great commentary, indeed ! I agree with you 100% and I am glad to see I am not the only thinking along those lines. I actually think that one of the main key success factors for businesses in this century would be how well they are able to manage what is almost impossible to manage, i.e. that tacit knowledge I mentioned earlier on. I feel that with the introduction of Personal Knowledge Management, next to the already existing KM strategies could certainly help address the need of allow those companies to capture an amount of knowledge that could well go beyond whatever expectations and more than anything else because of the much closer involvement from the knowledge workers themselves. Actually, if you have probably seen it already you will see how these knowledge workers are getting move involved and committed towards sharing what they know and apart from the different Web 2.0 tools that allow this new wave of knowledge sharing I think that Communities of Practice will play an important and crucial role in making it all click together; that is, mixing successfully the traditional global KM and the more localised, motivated, involved PKM that we are starting to see emerging stronger than ever.

Whichever company is able to first implement such KM strategies would probably be the first one to lead the way and the rest of the pack. And somehow I must say that it will not happen too long into the distance future. It is already here ! Thus we better shape up !

Thanks again for dropping by and for the great feedback comments !

I tried to link to you in the original post, but for some reason your site was not loading that evening. Good to see you are back up and posting, and I have now added the link.

You do a great job laying out the case that the successful companies will be the ones that can to a better job of aggregating and implementing knowledge from workers that goes beyond a company’s existing knowledge base. You also hit on the idea that these web 2.0 tools allow individuals to get more personally involved in building knowledge in organizations.

Thanks for the great thoughts and keep them coming.

Cheers,
Jeffrey