KM 2.0?

I was looking for some research to support my argument in a comment I made on a recent blog post by Stephen, “Burstworking storm discussion“, when I stumbled across an article by Allen Bonde on The (New) Age of Knowledge Management. I got very excited when I read:

KM is back and is even returning to the spotlight as more lightweight, more focused “KM 2.0” tools make it easier to use and justify new investments

Allen makes lots of references to knowledge being everywhere – and rightly so! As Anne suggests in her post on Busy versus Burst workers, many employees (note that I don’t use the term web-worker though) increasingly using email, text messaging and even blogs and wikis as a way to communicate and share knowledge and information on a daily basis.

Allen then goes on to discuss the role of the CKO – the Chief Knowledge Officer – but it was then that I started to cry. I saw references to “new KM solutions” with the ability to “deal with both highly unstructured as well as structured information”.

While at a technology level Allen is right I think he’s off the mark somewhat, particularly given he refers to it as KM 2.0.

The fundamental principles of knowledge management (which Allen eventually gets to with his reference to the sorts of skills a CKO needs) are actually about supporting social environments that stimulate informal sharing of knowledge through developing processes that encourage more formal knowledge creation and exchange. Now that we’re seeing the social web evolve and we’re moving onto Web 2.0 I think it’s off the mark to suggest that these sort of tools equate to KM 2.0. This sort of think is the systems view of knowledge management that failed years ago. KM is not about the systems, but about the people and processes.

So has KM evolved to KM 2.0? No, not at all. KM is still about people and sharing knowledge. It’s always been about ensuring a supporting environment in which this can be best achieved. It’s never been about the technology because good KM can exist without it! It can even be about drinks with your IA colleagues once a month.

Yes, we’re currently seeing, through blogs and wikis, an environment in which knowledge management can be supported through technology. My message is, just don’t get confused between the two of them.

M