Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics: Principled Organizational Knowing & Learning

These are three (my favorites) of the 30 knowledge-flow principles that frame Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics, a book by Mark E. Nissen (of course, if you want to know what the other 27 are, you will have to read the book). The premise of the book is that knowledge management (KM) isn’t just about classifying knowledge and building IT-focused systems in order to store, search, retrieve, and visualize it. Rather, KM is more about identifying tacit knowledge and knowledge users and matching them to work processes so that knowledge is directed to those who need to apply it with the result that value is added to the organization. In this view, a knowledge flow is the movement of knowledge from repositories; for tacit knowledge, this is usually people, to those who need to use the knowledge to accomplish some task. To me, these principles reflect the key issues in KM. The first reflects that tacit knowledge is “sticky,” meaning that it is difficult to pass from a knower to someone who needs to learn but doesn’t necessarily possess the context of understanding needed to assimilate the knowledge. The second reflects that knowers can apply knowledge to solving problems and performing tasks that are of value to the organization; it illustrates that knowledge has value. The third reflects the process needed to flow knowledge from a knower to a knowledge user. So what is a knowledge flow? The book defines this as the dynamic movement of knowledge between coordinates Book Review