My colleagues Ian MacMillan, Max Boisot and Martin Ihrig have just posted a blog about some of the fascinating work they are doing in the knowledge management area. One of the big ideas they talk about is identifying how most knowledge management systems really are useless from the point of view of creating new strategic advantages, because they treat all knowledge as the same. The piece lays out a small part of the theory that Max and the others have been development for many years.
The basic idea is learning, and its output, knowledge, progress in a systematic way – starting with concepts that are contained within one human brain and progressing to be documented and eventually supported by assets. Creating new knowledge, however, requires going through the cycle from undiffused, tacit knowledge to widely diffused and embedded knowledge. Interesting reading.