Experiential Perspective on Knowledge Management

INTRODUCTION The last few decades have seen a growing proportion of organizational wealth being represented by intangible assets, i.e., assets with value that cannot be measured in terms of any physical attribute. Management thinking, conditioned over centuries to extract the greatest value out of physical assets, has had to bring within its ambit the leveraging of these intangible assets in building the capabilities required to deliver superior products and solutions. The discipline of knowledge management (KM) was born and came to encompass the gamut of organizational processes, responsibilities, and systems directed toward the assimilation, dissemination, harvest, and reuse of knowledge. In simpler terms, KM is the answer to the question, " How can the organization update and use its knowledge more effectively? " (Kochikar, 2000). Some of the world's most successful organizations , be they corporate, academic, or government , invest considerably in KM. McKinsey & Co. spends at least 10% of revenues on managing knowledge. The World Bank's annual KM budget is $50 million. IBM has one of the oldest formal KM initiatives, dating back to 1994. Substantial benefits have been reported across industries. Johnson & Johnson has implemented KM for speeding up the FDA application process and reported savings of $30 million on one product alone (Berkman, 2001). British Petroleum has estimated savings of $400 million a year, while Chevron has discovered operational cost savings of $2.5 billion over 8 years (Infosys, 2002). Tufts University's school of medicine has used KM to 3206 Experiential Perspective on Knowledge Management integrate its curricula and has been hailed as a national model for medical education (Genusa, 2001). KM is, however, not an unmixed blessing , as Storey and Barnett (2000) noted. Each organization must fashion a KM strategy that takes cognizance of its unique competencies, aspirations, and business context. Infosys Technologies (NASDAQ: INFY) has conceived, developed, and deployed internally an elaborate architecture for KM that aims to empower every employee with the knowledge of every other employee. The company's success on the knowledge-sharing front has been affirmed by the fact that the company has been a Global MAKE (most admired knowledge enterprises) winner in 2003 (Chase, 2003) and Asia MAKE winner for 2002, 2003. Key elements of the KM architecture include the Knowledge Currency Unit scheme, a comprehensive mechanism for reward, recognition, and measurement of KM benefits; KShop, the corporate knowledge portal built in-house; and the knowledge hierarchy, a four-level taxonomy …