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Innovation and Technology Set

coordinated by

Chantal Ammi

Volume 5

Knowledge Management

The Creative Loop

Jean-Louis Ermine

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Preface

Knowledge management (KM) has become a necessity in companies and all other types of public or private organizations.

More than 20 years ago, the business community clearly entered into what is known as the “knowledge economy”. Up until that point, the forces that supported the economy were production and workforce. Now, knowledge is the primary engine for growth and competitiveness. Knowledge has become economic capital, a strategic resource, a stabilizing factor, a competitive advantage and so on. It is now a matter for an organization to capitalize on its knowledge (“Know where we come from, where we are, to better know where we are going”), to share it (“Move from individual intelligence to collective intelligence”) and to constantly create new knowledge (“Create, innovate to survive”).

Today, the issue even extends beyond the economic context, because we talk about a Knowledge Society, a Knowledge City or Smart City, etc. This falls under another point of view that depends on a new development relationship between people (citizens, workers, etc.) and Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). The spread of ICTs will have major consequences on education, social expression, the nature of labor and the economy. Every society can establish institutions and organizations to allow people and information to flourish without restrictions. This fundamental and inevitable connection between knowledge and ICTs is now part of the dominant thought regarding knowledge societies, often to the point of inverting the predominance between ICTs and knowledge. International organizations (notably the United Nations), governments and local actors are now mobilized on these subjects.

For these reasons, KM is currently a rapidly growing field. It has returned in full force in companies, because it responds to real underlying issues that are only increasing with the phenomena of globalization, aging populations, knowledge societies, etc. There is an abundance of literature on the subject, and even providing an overview has become impossible. Identifying a clear issue in this movement, which includes the economic, social, and cultural spheres, is occurring relatively slowly, because the creation of such a field is fairly complex. It borrows from economics, management, social sciences, information systems, computer sciences, etc. Discerning what KM really is in an organization is not an easy thing, because it includes almost all of its components.

KM concerns strategy, because it is really a new type of management responding to a new socioeconomic environment and a new vision of the organization. It concerns the structure of the organization, because knowledge is made and unmade through complex networks connected to the environment that can challenge traditional systems. It concerns many processes that are already implemented in organizations (fortunately, human beings have always managed their knowledge!), but that need to be revised from new perspectives, optimized or developed. It concerns the personnel of the organization, who is at the heart of the issue, because it is true that knowledge is only created, shared or developed through people, who must mobilize personally and collectively for this purpose. It concerns information and communications technologies, which are powerful vectors for KM if they are used effectively.

It is important to have a well-founded and practical approach that can help companies implement their KM system. This is all the more necessary because the international standardization of KM is in progress through the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and other organizations.

That is the objective of this book.

This book is the result of more than 20 years of research and experience in the field of KM, begun even before the subject arrived on the scene. It is composed of two parts that can be read independently, although they are inextricably tied.

The first part of this book consists of the theoretical part. Based on literature that reflects the diversity and depth of the research on this subject, it sets out the main concepts on which KM must be based.

The first important concept is the knowledge value chain, which relates knowledge to other connected concepts that are often more or less confused with the notion of knowledge, such as data, information, skill and capacity.

The second concept, often poorly understood and poorly defined, is that of knowledge capital, which is intangible but precious capital that all organizations have, and that is the central element of all KM policies. In fact, we can define KM in a company as the management of this company’s knowledge capital. Although this definition may seem tautological, in actual fact, it is far from being put into practice.

Last but certainly not least, a third concept defined is knowledge itself. Most of the organizations that consider this problem propose their own definition of knowledge. There are hundreds of definitions that can be found in our information system that are all both similar and distinct, and they can generate interminable debates. However, the nature of knowledge is a subject that humanity has discussed almost since its origins, and many things have been thought and written on this topic, often in a very in-depth way. In this book, we propose a definition of knowledge based on a large corpus of reflections, an approach that is certainly not exhaustive, even reductive, but which is well founded and has led to the development of methods and operational tools for KM. We even sketch out a mathematical theory of knowledge.

The second part of this book consists of the practical part. It is based on 20 years of feedback and experience of a group of professionals from all types of companies (the French KM club), who implemented KM in their organizations and developed this experience into a KM framework, which is now nearly completed and freely available. This framework is compatible with the existing and future standards (in which it participated) and provides a practical and useful guide for companies.

This section contains an organizational part and an operational part. The organizational part concerns the implementation of a company strategy for KM and the design of a global action plan based on an analysis of the company’s knowledge capital. The operational part concerns the implementation of these processes in the goal of reaching the objectives of the action plan. These processes are divided into five categories: organizing knowledge, codifying knowledge, sharing knowledge, researching knowledge and creating knowledge. This covers the existing processes to be reinforced or created that are necessary and sufficient to manage a company’s knowledge capital.

We hope that this book will be useful for researchers who want to work on this topic and for professionals who want to implement all or part of a KM system in their organization.

This book is far from being an individual effort, and it benefitted from the results and collaboration of a large number of people with whom I worked.

In terms of theory, I had the support of numerous colleagues in different research teams where I have worked, at the Université de Bordeaux, the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission), the Université de Technologie de Troyes and the Institut Mines-Télécom (School of Management). I also shared a great deal within AGeCSO (Association pour la Gestion des Connaissances dans la Société et les Organisations, or the Association for Knowledge Management in Society and Organizations), which I have had the honor and the pleasure to create and preside over since 2008 and which organizes an annual conference on the subject. Thank you to everyone who shared in my journey.

At the practical level, I had the support of all the enthusiastic participants in the Club gestion des connaissances (French Knowledge Management Club) which I have had the honor and the pleasure of creating and presiding over since 1999. Thank you to this entire community, with whom we were able to build invaluable and useful capital based on KM.

Aware from the start that this new subject would require continuous experimentation in the field, I was the project manager or advisor for many research projects and industrial projects concerning KM in private and public organizations in France (industry, energy, transportation, defense, banks, Small to Medium-sized Enterprise (SMEs), etc.) and abroad (Algeria, Canada, United States, Brazil, Asia, United Nations, etc.). I would like to thank all of the organizations who put their trust in me and with whom I learned a great deal.

The adventure is only just beginning. I hope that this book will provide a background for everyone who wants to invest in this forward-looking field and that it will contribute to developing this domain.

Jean-Louis ERMINE
January 2018

PART 1
Theoretical Elements