Knowledge Management in Practice

Chapter 1

Introduction

Have you ever wondered about all the fuss concerning knowledge management (KM)? What is KM anyway? At its core, KM is about sharing and collaborating what you know, capturing what you know, and reusing that knowledge so as to not reinvent the wheel and/or to combine with other ideas to foster innovation. A KM meeting that I attended, conducted by the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) (APQC’s January 2011 KM Community Call), included representatives from Conoco Phillips, Fluor, IBM, GE, and Schlumberger; I returned from this meeting understanding that it is necessary to have KM part of an organization’s culture. I believe that this is important because we do not want KM to be “another task to complete on the ...