What is Knowledge Management?

Data are collection of facts, measurements and statistics whereas Information is defined as organized or processed data that are timely (i.e., inference from the data are drawn within the time frame of applicability) and accurate (i.e., with reference to original data). Knowledge is information that is contextual, relevant and actionable. While data, information and knowledge can all be viewed as assets of an organization, knowledge provides a higher level of meaning about data and information and therefore tends to be more valuable. Knowledge as a resource is valuable since it focuses attention back towards what is important. Over time, information accumulates while knowledge evolves.

The management of corporate knowledge and intellectual assets that can improve a range of organizational performance characteristics and add value by enabling an enterprise to act more intelligently is known as Knowledge Management. This is a process that helps organizations identify, select, organize, disseminate and transfer important information and expertise that are a part of the organizational memory that typically resides within an organization in an unstructured manner. The value addition this provides to an organization are effective and efficient problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning and decision making.

Knowledge Management focuses on identifying knowledge, helping transition of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge so that this can be shared in a formal manner and thus creating knowledge repositories which will enable reuse. Knowledge management enables the communication of knowledge from one person to another so that it can be used by the other person. The domains in which knowledge concepts are leveraged in organization through knowledge initiatives are:

• Sharing Knowledge and Best practices
• Instilling responsibility for sharing knowledge
• Capturing and reusing best practices
• Embedding knowledge in products , services and processes
• Producing knowledge as a product
• Driving knowledge generation for innovation
• Mapping networks of experts
• Building and mining customer knowledge bases
• Understanding and measuring the value of knowledge
• Leveraging intellectual assets