Knowledge Management 2.0

Fred has a post on the Union Square Ventures website/blog called Taking Web Services to the Office. There he links to 1) a post by Nicholas Carr called Is Web 2.0 Enterprise Ready? and 2) an article in the MIT Sloan Management Review by Andrew McAfee titled Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. Carr’s post opens by describing the past failures of knowledge management systems and then points to McAfee’s article which describes how Web 2.0 technologies will lead to a successful revival of knowledge management.

Many of the failed knowledge management projects at financial services and professional services firms were top-down initiatives staffed by technology and information professionals. They required complex technology infrastructures and very long implementation timelines. One challenge was getting employees to share information through use of the system; another challenge was proving an acceptable ROI, given a very high level of investment and a difficult to measure return.  In many cases no amount of management evangelism could lead employees to share knowledge in a complex and often difficult to use platform.

While at some organizations there is clearly a “champion” (Euen Semple at the BBC) knowledge management progress using Web or Enterprise2.0 tools will likely be a bottom up affair. The technology is accessible and inexpensive, dramatically lowering the required investment and the level of participation once deployed should yield a significantly higher but still uncertain return. Tech-savvy early adopters can get a wiki or collaborative project management tool up and running in minutes.

Despite the lower costs and ease of use, adoption will still be an issue. Ross Mayfield has posted An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise, which comprehensively outlines how to improve or accelerate adoption. But these issues remain: 1) Enterprises are different and groups within enterprises are different. What works for a group of early adopters might not work for the enterprise as a whole. Adoption will need to be project-by-project and department-by-department. 2) Changing user behavior is hard. 3) Changing user behavior virally (required for broad adoption) is harder.