Smart minds: Knowledge managers enable information sharing

Knowledge management is the process through which organisations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves sharing them among employees, departments and even with other companies, in an effort to devise the best practices. Knowledge management is often facilitated by IT.

A knowledge manager takes on the key responsibility of facilitating the process of knowledge sharing and knowledge renewal. This may need an understanding of the balance between reinforcing structures for efficiency-based optimisation and allowing relatively loose structures for facilitating innovative thinking and creativity.

Human skills, intuition and wisdom are fast becoming the most precious corporate resources. Knowledge managers seek to disperse those assets throughout the company and spin them into innovations.

As we make the transition from an era of information scarcity to one of information glut, there is a need for re-focussing on how the human psyche makes decisions and choices. In this new paradigm, dynamically evolving performance outcomes are the key drivers of how smart minds use smart technologies to leverage strategic opportunities and challenges. Today, economies that efficiently exploit knowledge resources are doing better than those that have abundant natural resources but lack such skills.

What do I have to do?

Knowledge management provides a framework within which an organisation views all its processes as knowledge processes. An organisation should develop a powerful capacity to collect, store and transfer knowledge and thus, continuously transform itself for corporate success.

Increasing the value of intellectual capital, distributing and avoiding “reinventing the wheel”, providing access to relevant information and knowledge to all employees, optimising research studies, turning the intellectual capital of the company into a source of revenue, and merging various corporate initiatives — such as content and document management — are the duties of a knowledge officer.

Knowledge management has always existed in one form or another — on-the-job peer discussions, formal apprenticeship, libraries, professional training and mentoring programmes. The advent of the latest generation of computers and the Internet has brought with it new technologies, including e-learning, web conferencing, collaborative software, content management systems, corporate “yellow pages” directories, e-mail lists and blogs.

What should I study?

A course in knowledge management can provide students with the skills required to apply knowledge management techniques to organisational functions such as strategic planning, decision-making and forecasting.

What next?

In a knowledge-based society, effective and efficient communication and information services are vital. These can only be provided if there is an adequate supply of personnel who are appropriately educated and adequately trained. They must also be able to continually update their skills. Knowledge management skills, including knowledge sharing, capturing and mapping, are required in many different types of organisations both in the public and private sectors.

At present, knowledge management has been most successfully implemented in the financial and business service sectors. It is expected that these job opportunities will continue to grow. Large companies like Mahindra and Mahindra, Godrej, ITC Limited, Hindustan Lever Limited, Proctor and Gamble, the Tata Group and Larsen and Toubro have knowledge management systems.

Knowledge management is becoming increasingly relevant in the legal profession. Regardless of whether you work in a large law firm or as a solo practitioner, an in-house counsel or a lawyer in the public sector, knowledge management shows you how you can leverage that knowledge to achieve your business objectives.

where to study

• Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.
• Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.
• Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
• Kesavan Institute of Information and Knowledge Management, Secunderabad.
• Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode.