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There is a common saying in Knowledge Management
that 'none of us is as smart as all of us.' Leo Platt, the
CEO of Hewlett-Packard, once famously remarked that 'if
only HP know what HP knows, we'd be three times as profitable.'
Responding to this challenge is what Knowledge
Management is all about. It offers ways that organisations
can identify, activate, and apply the knowledge available
to them. It is about those processes by which useful knowledge
is made available to others in an organisation -- to enable
everyone to carry out business processes faster, better,
and at lower costs.
You can tell if your own organisation needs
to manage knowledge more effectively if:
- decisions are regularly made without
the benefit of the best knowledge available to the organisation;
- knowledge is not re-used or shared, meaning
staff either continually 're-invent the wheel' or duplicate
the efforts of others elsewhere in the organisation;
- people are overwhelmed with information
that detracts from, rather than adds to, their ability
to do their job.
The good news is that organisations with
strong knowledge management practices are more likely to
be profitable, have a greater market share, perform better
than before they introduced knowledge management, be more
flexible in dealing with change (and especially in dealing
with crises), have better workplace morale, and develop
innovative products than organisations without such practices.
Drawing on the authors' extensive experience, this book
identifies the secret to successful knowledge management
and how to get started.
Carl Davidson and Dr. Philip Voss are
the co-founders and directors of No Doubt Research, a research
strategy and knowledge management consulting company based
at Massey University's e-centre, Auckland, New Zealand.
Carl and Philip have been involved in the knowledge economy
all their professional lives, mixing careers as researchers,
consultants, academics and authors. They teach about knowledge
management in Executive Education and MBA courses and present
at a range of conferences and seminars.
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