THE SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE

Introducing his keynote address on the important but amorphous topic of knowledge management, Lotus Development Corp.’s Scott Cooper told the story of a woman who had a very difficult legal problem that stumped several lawyers. Finally, she found a lawyer who was able to reference a book and discover the solution in ten minutes, to her immense relief and satisfaction.

Then his bill arrived: $1,500. She called to complain, saying she didn’t think it fair to charge $1,500 for a mere 10 minutes’ work. He replied, "I didn’t charge you for the 10 minutes you were in my office, I charged you for the 20 years of experience that told me what book to reference."

In other words, he charged her for his knowledge. The moral? Knowledge can provide tremendous revenue opportunities to companies that can manage and deliver it effectively.

Cooper, who is Lotus’s vice president and general manager of knowledge-management products, defined KM as "a discipline to systematically leverage information and expertise to improve organizational performance." He cited a survey indicating KM is second on the list of top CEO priorities, trailing only increasing globalization.

The reason is simple. Companies that have a "dysfunctional knowledge environment" suffer from knowledge hoarding, information overload and slow diffusion of innovation, costing an average of $5,000 per employee, according to International Data Corp. KM combats these demons using five technologies:

o Business intelligence (data warehousing, data/text mining)

o Collaboration (groupware, synchronous messaging, e-mail)

o Knowledge transfer (computer-based training, distributed learning, live collaboration)

o Knowledge discovery and mapping (search, classification/navigation, document management), and

o Expertise (expert networks, visualization, affinity, identification).

The goal is to change the transfer of knowledge from an accidental event (i.e., getting information from a water-cooler conversation) to one that is systematic. If a worker needs to speak with an expert, that person is readily located. If the worker needs information, that, too, is found quickly and easily. In a finely tuned system, both expertise and content are eminently available in collaborative electronic communities.

How all of this relates to newspapers, Cooper did not say. However, one could almost hear the gears turning in the heads of the session’s attendees. What could we do if all of the various information silos in a typical newspaper shared their knowledge freely and easily?

Perhaps, like the lawyer in Cooper’s opening anecdote, we could each make $1,500 for ten minutes work.

-Clark Robinson