KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT is it KM or km?

Written by Ron Young on . Posted in Blog

KM or km? blog pic

Today I was asked by an upcoming practitioner in Boston, USA, ‘In my organisation, should I promote ‘KM’ ( in capital letters), as a major initiative and an important issue, or should I promote ‘km’ (in small letters), to signify and stress that it is embedded in the daily work?’

I have had this question raised quite a few times over the past 15 years especially, amongst colleagues and workshop delegates, and I try to summarise my view on this by saying:

For me, KM in big letters, is when you make a very valuable  ‘big difference‘ in helping the organisation achieve its vision, mission, and objectives through a strategic to approach KM. This is best achieved by identifying, developing and applying your key, or critical, knowledge assets wisely. It is transformational!

For me, km in small letters, is when you make valuable ‘small incremental improvements‘ in helping the organisation leverage its knowledge and knowledge assets wisely in its business networks, processes and projects. It is an operational approach to km.

Both approaches are vital for extraordinary KM as we strive for business excellence.

Would you agree? What does KM and km mean to you?

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Ron Young

Ron Young is the founder of Knowledge Associates International, a knowledge management consulting and solutions group based at St Johns Innovation Centre, Cambridge U.K. He is acknowledged as a leading international expert and thought leader in strategic knowledge asset management and innovation. He specializes in knowledge driven results for organizations. He advised and assisted the UK DTI Innovation Unit in 1999 in the production of the UK Government White Paper ‘UK Competitiveness in the Knowledge Driven Economy’. He regularly provides keynote presentations and workshops at leading knowledge management & innovation conferences around the world. He has chaired for several years both the British Standards Institute (BSI) Knowledge Management Standards Committee and the European Knowledge Management Standards Committee. He is a visiting lecturer for international business administration and global knowledge economy programs. He runs regular Knowledge Asset Management master classes at King’s College Cambridge University, UK. He is a consultant for the World Bank, Washington, USA, and for the European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Brussels. He is currently developing knowledge management strategies and systems, and advising and assisting major multi-national corporations, international UN agencies, National governments, military, security, and professional institutions around the world. He was a lead consultant for the European Commission 2 Million euro ‘Know-Net’ project. He is joint author of the books ‘Knowledge Asset Management’ (Springer 2003), ‘Upside Down Management’ (McGraw Hill Europe 1996), Knowledge Management: Facilitators Guide (Asian Productivity Organization, Tokyo, 2009), Knowledge Management: Case Studies for SME’s (APO, Tokyo, 2009), Knowledge Management Tools and Techniques (APO, Tokyo, 2010), Knowledge Management for the Public Sector (APO, Tokyo 2013) and APO Demonstration Projects (APO Tokyo, 2014

Comments (3)

  • W.J. Pels

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    Hello Ron,
    For business excellence KM (I use capitals because it is an abbreviation) needs to align with the primary process; the reason why / ‘raison d’etre’ that business is on earth.
    Big bang differences and incremental improvements are strategies with consequences beyond KM or km; rather I would look at learning loops (1:doing things right – managers -; 2:doing the right things – leadership -;3: transform business – visionair) where 1 might be km and 2 KM and 3 is definitively about learning.
    The ‘kicking in an open door answer’ would be you need both. And next you need overt plus guerrilla KM, PersonalKM (or pkm) and focus on KS for learning.
    Wording like ‘key knowledge assets’ is too tangible to me, too much of ‘KM stock thinking’; key knowledge assets are people! When they walk out the office, so does the knowledge, so does the excellence 🙂 Extraordinary KM thus focuses on management of the circumstances for people / staff to share their knowledge (KS) and for information (IM) to be found (the use of information is another issue :-)).
    All the best, Jaap

    Reply

  • Dion Lindsay

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    I tend to think of KM as the academic discipline and km as what we do in practice. I seem to remember there was serious and long argument in the “talk” page behind the Wikipedia article on Knowledge Management about KM or km but it’s not there now.

    As a practitioner I have given it capital letters if I’ve been trying to give it a big launch.

    Have used KM as a superscript above km words in strategy papers when trying to publicise KM in an enterprise eg “In Q4 we introduced Communities of Practice (superscript KM) with widespread take-up among the scientists”
    Dion

    Reply

  • Ron Young

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    Thanks Dion, your interpretation makes much sense to me too.

    Reply

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