Knowledge

WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?
From Business Dictionary, knowledge is defined as “Human faculty resulting from interpreted information; understanding that germinates from combination of data, information, experience, and individual interpretation.” Knowledge is the combination of human intelligence and competence, that when being used, it enhances the productivity of an entity.
Companies that effectively use knowledge break it down into its basic components – why, what, where, how, when, who.
WHY - represents having a basic understanding of the reasons for facts WHAT – means knowing the cause of a problem or condition. WHERE - provided a spatial reference to understanding. HOW – is the main element for problem solving, the required knowledge to get things done. WHEN - provides a temporal reference and closely related to time. WHO – means the different persons involved in acquiring the knowledge.

KNOWLEDGE LIFE CYCLE
The different phases of knowledge are: Create, Store, Find, Acquire, Use, and Learn.



• The first phase is Create, the knowledge must be created within or outside the organisation. The knowledge is considered to be tacit knowledge until it is made available for people outside the group.
• The second phase is Store, the knowledge has to be stored explicitly so that it can be easily found and used by others.
• The third phase is Find, the specific knowledge must be found when it is required at the right time at the right place by the right people.
• The fourth phase is Acquire, once the knowledge is found; the user has to undergo the phase of acquiring knowledge by personal understanding from the documented sources found.
• The fifth phase is Use, the acquired knowledge can be made into practice in order to achieve some useful result.
• The last phase is Learn, after using the knowledge; the user will learn what is required for the organisation and what is not required by applying the knowledge acquired.

WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT?
There is no one single standard definition for knowledge management. Everyone has their own perceptive about the subject; each one can express their own opinion about knowledge management. There is no right or wrong definition about knowledge management.
According to BNET Business Dictionary, Knowledge Management is defined as “the coordination and exploitation of an organization's knowledge resources, in order to create benefit and competitive advantage”.
According to Business Dictionary, Knowledge Management is defined as “the discipline of enabling individuals, teams and entire organisations to collectively and systematically create, share and apply knowledge, to better achieve their objectives".
From the above definition, Knowledge Management (KM) is a strategy for delivering the correct knowledge to the appropriate people at the correct time in order to help the shared knowledge collected from different employees, customers, partners to be managed to improve the productivity and performance of the organization.
The knowledge acquired can be explicit knowledge or tacit knowledge. This knowledge allows the organisation to differentiate itself among its competitors. Hence this acquired knowledge gives a competitive advantage to the organization.
Explicit Knowledge consists of anything that can be documented or archived with the help of Information Technology.
Tacit Knowledge means the know-how contained in people’s heads. This kind of knowledge is not easily transferrable from one person to another.


Reference :

BNET Dictionary. http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/Knowledge+Management.html accessed on 14.01.2010

Business Dictionary. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/knowledge.html accessed on 15th January 2010.

Image. www.processrenewal.com/files/def-km.doc accessed on 15th January 2010.