The KM 2.0 meme first appeared on October 5, 2005. Euan Semple (who may have originated the term) seemed to equate it with:
“ . . . people, connected people, empowered people, people who don’t always do what you expect or what you tell them but invariably end up taking you to exciting places you that would never have expected to get to.
And not only that, but you can do this using tools that cost peanuts!”
So, KM 2.0 is about people using inexpensive Web 2.0 tools to get connected and empowered. Specifying a bit, we might infer that this refers to a type of KM which intends to enable self-organization by introducing appropriate Web 2.0 tools into the enterprise. Jack Vinson quickly picked up on Semple’s meme and on October 8th, added this thought in his own blog:
“Anything that gets you to look at something in a new light is good. Euan is suggesting that maybe a parallel change in the view of KM from command-and-control, “I know what’s right for you,” to more distributed and a sense that “we know what is right for each other.” “
Thus, he explicitly introduced the view (which Euan Semple had merely implied) that KM had previously been focused on command-and-control approaches, while KM 2.0 was focused on self-organization and community.
Thereafter, further discussion of KM 2.0 proceeded slowly during 2005, but began to accelerate in 2006, as IBM and others became aware of the meme. By the late spring of 2008, discussions about KM 2.0 had raised a number of questions associated with issues which have proved enduring including:
1. Before the introduction of Web/Enterprise 2.0 tools, was KM characterized by a primarily command-and-control oriented approach, so that KM 2.0, defined as the introduction of such tools, introduces a discontinuous, entirely new version of KM producing enhanced distributed social interaction, collaboration, communication, content creation, self-organization and community?
2. Are KM 2.0 social software/social media tools used in the service of creating an ecology that improves connectivity, resulting in building relationships and trust, better communications and knowledge sharing, and, is the ecology itself, rather than management activity, KM 2.0?
3. Is KM 2.0 the implementation and use of new social software and/or social media tools in an enterprise? That is, is KM 2.0 either equivalent to Enterprise 2.0, or just a subset of it?
4. Or is KM a more broadly social activity or set of processes that simply uses the new 2.0 tools as an instrument, along with any other old and new tools it has occasion to use in enhancing knowledge processing so that in reality, there is no such thing as a discontinuous and distinct KM 2.0?
5. Is KM 2.0 just a name for that aspect of KM which utilizes Web/Enterprise 2.0 tools to enable greater connectivity and self organization in one’s enterprise?
6. Is KM dying and is there no KM 2.0 because 2.0 cluster tools, more generally, are removing the need for formal KM?
Since these questions deal with both the definition of KM 2.0 and its relationship to KM, I’ll give my answers to them in my next post.