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The Power of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management: An ability to be perceptive is a business asset today because it can lead to breakthrough ideas. For some reason, “knowledge management” has lately become a subject to be discussed. Go figure. How often do you hear someone say something like that? Probably rarely, or more likely, never.

By Tony Wanless /

Granville Online editor Hilary Henegar, hard at work/play at Northern Voice 2010.

Knowledge management: An ability to be perceptive is a business asset today because it can lead to breakthrough ideas.

For some reason, “knowledge management” has lately become a subject to be discussed.

Go figure. How often do you hear someone say something like that?

Probably rarely, or more likely, never.

I did, however. First someone approached me about a knowledge management consultation in the US. Then I recently took part in a fairly spirited discussion online about KM, as it’s often called.  

It got pretty granular because most of us were trying to define what it means. However, it became an exercise in futility, kind of like the story of the blind men trying to identify an elephant by feel.
 
KM, is an esoteric subject. Most technology people think of it as technological system to accumulate and store data. They would, of course, because to them data is the Holy Grail.

But data isn’t knowledge. It’s not even information, which is data studied for patterns. Information, when examined further, leads to knowledge, which is deeper and wider understanding of a subject.

So why should you care?

Because for anybody who is innovating – and isn’t that just about everybody today? – knowledge management is important.

You see, when knowledge is further examined, it leads to perceptive insights. Perception leads to ideas, which lead to innovative thinking.

Further, some of those ideas might eventually result in an innovation an entire business can be built around.

The ability to innovate products or business models is the great competitive differentiator today.

In a competitive setting, without it, you’re just going to be an imitator riding some other company’s coattails and hoping to pick up the scraps.

if you’re a young company casting around for a sustainable business or an established one looking to refresh yourself, you might want to gain some more knowledge with an eye to how you can do it differently.

They used to say back when information was more guarded, that knowledge was power.

In today’s more open but ever more competitive world, I’d say perception is power.