People-focused knowledge management

Promote Knowledge-Supportive
X
X
X
Mentality & Culture
Measure Intellectual Capital &
X
X
Create an Intangible Asset Monitor
Change & Facilitate Cultural Drivers
X
X
X
X
Create & Foster Collaborative
X
X
X
Work Practices
Provide Formal Education & Training
X
Foster Communities of Practice &
X
X
X
Networks of Practice
Conduct Town Meetings & Knowledge
X
X
Cafés

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310
P
eople
-F
ocused
K
no
wledge
M
ana
gement
Table B-1
(Continued)
Knowledge Management Focus
General
Intellectual
Innovation
Knowledge
Information &
KM Initiatives and Practices
Business
Asset 
& Knowledge
Sharing &
Technology-Based
Focus
Management
Building Focus
Information
Knowledge Capture
Focus
Transfer Focus
& Delivery Focus
Build & Operate Expert Networks
X
X
Capture & Transfer Expert Know-How
X
X
X
X
Transfer Expert Concepts to Other
X
X
X
Practitioners
Capture & Transfer Expertise from
X
X
X
X
Departing Personnel
Capture & Apply Decision Reasoning
X
X
X
Capture & Transfer Competitive
X
X
X
X
Knowledge
Create Lessons Learned Systems
X
X
X
X
Conduct After Action Reviews (AARs)
X
X
X
Provide Outcome Feedback
X
X
Pursue Knowledge Discovery from
X
X
X
Data (KDD)
Implement and Utilize PSS & KBS
X
X
X
Applications
Build & Deploy Knowledge Bases
X
X
X
Deploy Information Technology
X
X
X
X
X
Tools for Knowledge Management

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portals. Many have limited natural language (concept) under-
standing and indexing capabilities.
For the limited number of examples provided above, we can iden-
tify which KM initiatives and practices may be pursued by the dif-
ferent KM focus areas. Such a representation of the relationships is
presented in Table B-1. Clearly, most organizations do not show such
a clear-cut selection of initiatives and practices. Many are in the
process of expanding their KM efforts and are regularly adding new
capabilities. Others have locally supported efforts that may fall
outside the pattern and so on.
Notes
1. Corporate Memory Knowledge Bases differ from Corporate Memory
Databases in content and form. Knowledge Bases contain “knowledge”
such as “How-to Knowledge” and use knowledge representations such
as rules or “case structures” to support automated reasoning. Databases
contain descriptive data (ranging from transactional data to specific 
characterizations [as in personnel files] to natural language narratives)
and are organized according to conventional data models.
2. Transfer of cognitive skills has proven difficult. Under the best of 
circumstances, at most 10 percent of expert knowledge can be elicited
and transferred during a project period (Anderson 1981; Singley &
Anderson 1989).
3. For a description of AAR, see, for example, aar.htm> (May 22, 2000) and op-anx-f.htm> (May 22, 2000).
Examples of Knowledge Management Practices and Initiatives
311
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Appendix C
M
EMORY AND 
K
NOWLEDGE
C
ATEGORIZATIONS
Human Memory Organization
When we communicate with the world outside ourselves, we use
a system of highly complicated mental processes. Our senses provide
inputs from our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and from sensors in our skin
and other parts of our body. This information is continually fed to
working (or short-term) memories and similar faculties where we
consciously or nonconsciously sort and classify it and transfer much
of it to the longer-term memories to be remembered outright or
processed further. Before being transferred to long-term memory, the
mental objects created from received information may be retained
temporarily in “buffer memory.”
Mental objects are remembered as a result of long-term potentia-
tion (LTP), where the synapses of certain neurons are strengthened
by mental activity. It was believed that single, isolated synapses were
strengthened and that this led to a “bit-like” memory as in digital
computers. Instead, Bonhoeffer and his colleagues (1989) and others
indicate that memory is produced by spreading potentiations of many
neighboring synapses from numerous neurons. This leads to a much
more complex — and more robust — memory system.
One of the difficult operational aspects of the memory system 
is the lack of a direct, conscious access to mental objects stored in
long-term memory. Long-term memory apparently must be accessed
through working memory, which then becomes a limiting factor. This
is important when exploring what people know, since people do not
normally know what they know. They often do not have access to