Essentials of Knowledge Management

6.2. Formulating a Strategy

Up to now, most of the Knowledge Management activities in the Custom Gene Factory (CGF) have been tactical and focused on specific tasks. There is a company-wide collaborative system in place, for example, that provides an electronic whiteboard and text interchange to support virtual, impromptu meetings for communities of practice. However, there is no corporate-wide strategy for indexing, archiving, and disseminating the information recorded by the system and no integration of the collaborative system with other information systems in the corporation.

Working closely with a team of senior managers, middle managers, and representatives from various communities of practice, the CKO crafts a request for proposal (RFP) that reflects a consensus on what types of technologies are needed to move KM practices in the corporation to the next level. The CKO then mails the RFP describing the ideal content management system to the top content management vendors based on published rankings and magazine advertisements. The CKO also posts notices of the RFP on the company's web site and on several of the online KM newsgroups.

About three months later, at the proposal deadline, the CKO and other team members who contributed to the RFP read the dozen proposals in hand. They create a short list of developers and vendors that seem most likely to succeed in the field, based on reputation, client base, and references. Products from the selected vendors and developers are ...