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"Knowledge can only be volunteered it cannot be conscripted. You can't make someone share their knowledge, because you can never measure if they have. You can measure information transfer or process compliance, but you can't determine if a senior partner has truly passed on all their experience or knowledge of a case. We only know what we know when we need to know it. Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function. Small verbal or nonverbal clues can provide those ah-ha moments when a memory or series of memories are suddenly recalled, in context to enable us to act. When we sleep on things we are engaged in a complex organic form of knowledge recall and creation; in contrast a computer would need to be rebooted. In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge. A genuine request for help is not often refused unless there is literally no time or a previous history of distrust. On the other hand ask people to codify all that they know in advance of a contextual enquiry and it will be refused (in practice its impossible anyway). Linking and connecting people is more important than storing their artifacts. Everything is fragmented. We evolved to handle unstructured fragmented fine granularity information objects, not highly structured documents. People will spend hours on the internet, or in casual conversation without any incentive or pressure. However creating and using structured documents requires considerably more effort and time. Our brains evolved to handle fragmented patterns not information. Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success. When my young son burnt his finger on a match he learnt more about the dangers of fire than any amount of parental instruction cold provide. All human cultures have developed forms that allow stories of failure to spread without attribution of blame. Avoidance of failure has greater evolutionary advantage than imitatio

APQC's Knowledge Management (KM) Capability Assessment Tool is a diagnostic that lets KM practitioners measure every aspect of their KM programs, from strategy and business case development to specific processes and technologies, and find out how they stack up against the competition. This white paper describes the assessment tool, the 12 categories in which participating organizations are measured, and how knowledge managers can leverage the assessment results to improve their strategic decision making.

"Hans Rosling is debunking the River of Myths about the developing world. By measuring the progress in the once labeled "developing countries", preventable child mortality can be history by the year 2030."

KM Maturity models are popular as a way of self-measuring progress, but personally I think they are inappropriate and can lead you into a wrong understanding of KM, and that there are much better alternatives.

"Academic paper on measuring informal innovation. The definition is "Innovation that is not explicitly planned and budgeted by identifying innovative firms that do not conduct any R&D""

there is a tangible cost to companies when knowledge and experience walk out the door. Once that knowledge and experience are gone, no amount of TARP money will bring them back. It may be too late for some companies to prevent this now, but putting measures in place will lessen the blow in future

"Innovation is not just luck. Nor is it a simple, replicable process. Three management techniques have withstood the test of time: Define the areas you need to innovate, Measure and give people time to innovate without constraint. This article suggests technology can help."

Why and how to measure the impact of knowledge management are questions that never go away

The Right Organisational Culture: A Requirement?

I wonder what plans Warwick Business School have for expansion into China. I must find out.

Every time I go to WBS, it feels like China!

Last year, we undertook a massive overhaul of the technology and approach we use for knowledge management, moving from a centrally managed, linear, taxonomy- and repository-based system to one that leverages the best of Web 2.0, including social software, user participation, and key market-driven concepts like sponsored links. We see this as a shift from "knowledge management" to "knowledge sharing."

Strong evidence indicates that imitation and innovation have been driving the spread of Enterprise 2.0 tools. Using modeing techniques,McKinsey found that 35 percent of the companies had adopted social technologies in response to their adoption by competitors.