I am at it again. There's another KM student from Gwalior that wants to get submerged under KM and I am helping him drown...(did I hear you say "na...swim"?). ;)
I learned a few things as well! There is an Indian IT company that employs full-time Knowledge Hunters and Knowledge Scribes! The Knowledge hunters probe and identify knowledge and get it 'out' while the Knowledge Scribes are responsible for the flowery documentation!
There's another process called the KSP (Knowledge Strategy Process) followed by an European Conglomerate that is quite interesting! This is what they apparently do:
1. Start from the organizational goals
2. Identify the performance indicators
3. Identify the processes associated with these performance indicators
4. Study the processes (break it down), Identify the knowledge inputs and outputs in each of the processes. Identify the Proficiency, Codification and Diffusion (PCD) levels. Proficiency means the experts, Codification means the extent to which knowledge has been documented and Diffusion means the extent to which the knowledge is spread across the business unit...
5. Find out 'what is required' and 'what is now' and the gap between the two in terms of the PCD levels.
6. Do a BPR and fill in the gap! (by gathering the missing knowledge artifacts in terms of P, C and D)
Interesting and very logical, I think! I'd love to be involved in such a process! There'd be so much to learn from it!!
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This student had one of his own ideas to add to the conversation as well, he spoke about Explicit & Tacit and Structured & Unstructured knowledge. He thinks that if every process were to be exploded, and each of the knowledge artifacts therein categorized as explicit structured, explicit unstructured, tacit structured or tacit unstructured and a density graph depicting each of the quadrants be drawn, it would give the top management an idea as to what percentage of the knowledge artifacts are in the untapped area. Then one could have a KM road map to shove the untapped into the tapped! Sounds intriguing! Wonder what kind of effort this would call for...?
