All Life Is Problem Solving

1. KM and Enterprise 2.0: As defined by McAfee, E2.0 synthesizes Web 2.0, social software, and social media. Social Software tools focused on Web 2.0 technology that can be useful inside the organizational firewall, emergence and self-organization, egalitarianism in software applications, these draw the primary features of all three components into E2.0. We’ve already seen that the binary relationships of the previous three categories to KM involve loose couplings, all of which are very dependent on context for producing enhanced knowledge processing, and that their relationship to KM is purely instrumental. I think the situation is no different with E2.0 as defined by McAfee. E2.0 tools can be useful to KM, given the proper contextual application, and should be an important element in KM’s toolkit. But this instrumental relationship is conditional on the context and the pattern of KM intervention including its E2.0 aspects.

Tom Davenport, in contrast, has taken the position that Enterprise 2.0 is “the new, new Knowledge Management.” To support this view, he quotes McAfee’s statement that “the ultimate value of E2.0 initiatives consists of greater responsiveness, better ‘knowledge capture and sharing,’ and more effective ‘collective intelligence,’” but this can easily be interpreted as a claim that using E2.0 software leads to enhanced knowledge processing in organizations, a basic rationale for KM. Even if this claim were true, in general, however, it doesn’t equate E2.0 with KM, but only states that KM interventions implementing E 2.0 tools will prove effective in leading to enhanced knowledge processing.

However, does the probability that E2.0 tools, alone, or combined with earlier generation tools (perhaps the more common situation) will enhance knowledge processing suggest, as Tom Davenport opines, that E2.0 is “The New, New Knowledge Management?” I think not, and I’ll say more about why not in my discussion of the relationship between KM and KM 2.0.

2. KM and KM 2.0: KM, as a field, is divided on the issues raised by my earlier questions. The positions associated with questions 1, 3, and 6, are associated with some very well-known KM practitioners and writers. The position associated with 2 is held by some very active KM 2.0 bloggers. Positions 4 and 5 are closely related, and based on what I’ve observed in blogs and list servs seem to be the dominant positions on KM 2.0 in the field. They have in common the idea that there is no radically different “new KM” identified by the term “KM 2.0,” but that “2.0” tools may be used by KM to accomplish its purposes. The difference between these positions is that 4 is completely agnostic about KM 2.0, while 5, though not mistaking KM 2.0 for “the New KM,” nevertheless seems ready to recognize as KM 2.0. a particular style of KM, characterized by the heavily preferred introduction into the enterprise of E2.0 tools.

I favor position 4, which is to say I’m happy to consider the use of 2.0 tools for any KM purpose, as I am pre-web, 1.0 tools, and existing or projected 3.0, 4.0, and X.0 tools. I think, further, that KM practitioners ought to be agnostic about all sorts of software tools, and I don’t think there’s any place for evangelism about them. Evangelism is about faith. But Knowledge Management is about enhancing knowledge processing. For KM, that’s all that counts.

In addition to these 6 positions, there is another which I’ve never seen anyone in KM defend as their belief. It is associated with the following question:

Is KM a management discipline with a centralized command-and-control social engineering orientation, such that the use of E2.0 tools with their emphasis on creating distributed collaboration, communication, content creation, self-organization and community is never appropriate for accomplishing KM objectives?

I’ve never observed anyone in KM answering “yes” to this or a similarly posed question, and there’s a good reason for that. I don’t know anyone in KM who says they believe that it’s about centralized command-and-control, or who is afraid of encouraging self-organization and distributed knowledge processing. If such people exist, I think they’re pretty quiet about their views and constitute, at most, a KM underground, in no way representative of the field.

The identification of members of the 2.0 cluster, and particularly E2.0, with a new generation of KM, is not the first time that some have claimed that advances in Information Technology define new ages or generations of KM. But, changes in KM that warrant using the term KM 2.0, need, I think to be much more fundamental than mere changes in the IT tools that are at the disposal of KM practitioners. Such changes ought to be about the way one conceptualizes KM as a type of activity. Paradigm changes such as these occur relatively infrequently, and therefore movements from “KM 1.0,” to “KM 2.0,” to “KM 3.0” and so on would also occur rarely, as befits a field that aspires to be a discipline rather than a fad.

It is appropriate and understandable for software tools to move from versions 1.0, to 2.0 to 3.0 and so on in a very few years. But KM is not a software tool; it is a management discipline. Thus, there cannot be a “new” version of it every few years, even though many instrumental aspects of it may change frequently, as is appropriate for a dynamic, quickly changing field. No one claims that there is a Psychology 2.0 when some new tests or analytical tools are devised. No one claims that there is a Political Science 2.0 when new election predicting technology is devised and applied. So why should people claim that there is a KM 2.0 when new software instruments appear whose use is not even very strongly coupled to knowledge processing?

The simple correlation of enhancements in social interaction, collaboration, and content production produced by 2.0 tools, with enhancements in the quality of knowledge processing is not something that can be guaranteed. It is not supported by scientific research. It is not supported by good social theory. And it is not suggested by the idea that KM is about enhancing knowledge processing. So even if 2.0 tools could guarantee complete success in enhancing collaboration, content production, information sharing, and social networking, this would not establish the inevitability of improvements in knowledge processing and the quality of knowledge resulting from using 2.0 tools.

Part of the reason for this is that using 2.0 tools would still carry with it no way of telling whether we are sharing information or knowledge, or whether we are sharing what will work for us, or just sharing our errors. So, the connection between 2.0 and better KM is, in my view, no closer than the connection between it and other older tools such as portals, content management software, search technology, and databases. All such tools can be useful in KM, as can 2.0 tools. Undoubtedly E3.0 will add still more tools that can help KM and also undoubtedly, there will be many more generations of software improvements after that. But no new generation of software tools IS KM, or a new form of KM. We cannot declare a new generation of KM every time we have software changes. This is just a category error, and we need to stop making it, or we in KM will end up as an entirely conceptually confused appendage of the software industry and its marketers.

Applying my own earlier distinction between knowledge processing and KM here, and also my view of knowledge processing as including problem seeking, recognition, and formulation, knowledge production, and knowledge integration, one can see that there has been only one fundamental change in KM since its beginnings as an explicit field of study and management in the late 1980s. That change occurred when KM’s original emphasis on sharing, reusing, finding, and capturing knowledge as the activities knowledge managers were trying to enhance, was supplemented by the addition of problem seeking, recognition, and formulation, and knowledge production (creation, discovery, and making) activities, as targets for KM activity. That change occurred in the period 1995 – 2002 or so. It was a gradual change, but today, if pressed, I think the majority of KM practitioners would agree that this new area of concern, “the demand side” of knowledge processing, is, in addition to knowledge sharing, a primary target of Knowledge Management.

So, the change from KM 1.0 to KM 2.0 is not occurring now as a result of the introduction of a new generation of software tools, but has occurred both in the past, and some time ago, as a result of the realization, the fundamental conceptual change in KM’s scope, that it had more concerns than just knowledge sharing, knowledge capture, and knowledge re-use, and that, in fact, it was also, and in equal part, about learning within complex systems. This change, which brought KM much closer to organizational learning and innovation management, defines the Second Generation of KM, the real KM 2.0.