Customer Reviews

Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management

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Of four books purchased on Knowledge Management - this one is least valuable. Its title is a current "hot topic" but the text is ten years old and doesn't impart much knowledge.

Having recently moved into the KM area I thought this book would be a 'must read'....but as anither reviewer pointed out if you have been keeping in touch with KM from the beginning (or whatever , from '96) would not find anything earth-shattering (that's the tacit selling job of the HBR logo, right?) in the compilation.

We all have heard about Drucker's "knowledge workers" and Nonaka's "Creation of Knowledge" and Argyris and his "teaching smart people" and Dorothy Leonard's "whole organisation brain" theory ad nauseum ad infinitum!

Guess HBR should have added more value (or retros or something ) instead of just taking photcopies of their old articles and printing them together!

Knowledge Management, published by Harvard Business School Press, is a compilation of articles excerpted from the Harvard Business Review covering a period from 1988-1997. The articles in general focus on the way organizations can acquire, use, and maintain knowledge in order to remain on the cutting edge of their fields. The underlying message of this book, expressed by Peter F. Drucker in "The Coming of the New Organization (page 1)," is that future organizations must take advantage of technology to collect and track data so that data can be translated into useful information.

The manner in which companies acquire knowledge from data can vary. Ikujiro Nonaka in his article "The Knowledge Creating Company (page 21)" provides a general approach. Nonaka suggests that creating new knowledge requires, in addition to the processing of objective information, tapping into the intuitions insights and hunches of individual employees and then making it available for use in the whole organization. Within this framework is an understanding of two types of knowledge: tacit and explicit. Both of these have to exist in an organization and exchange between and within each type is needed for creation of new knowledge. Another point in Nonaka's article is that the creation of new knowledge is not limited to one department or group but can occur at any level. It requires a system that encourages frequent dialogue and communication. Similar but more defined ideas are presented in David Garvin's "Building a Learning Organization (page 47)."

Garvin's approach focuses on the importance of having an organization that learns. Garvin defines a learning organization as one that is "skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights (page 51)." He describes five activities/skills that are the foundation for learning organizations. These are systematic problem solving, experimentation, and review of past experiences, learning from others, and transferring knowledge.

"Teaching Smart People How to Learn (page 81)" by Chris Argyris, deals with the way individuals within an organization can block the acquisition of new knowledge because of the way they reason about their behavior. In order to foster learning behavior in all employees, an organization must encourage productive reasoning. One caution is that use of productive reasoning can be threatening and actually hampers the process of learning if not implemented throughout the whole organization.

Leonard and Straus in "Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to Work (page 109)," address another way in which knowledge can be acquired. They identify two broad categories: left brained and right brained individuals, with different approaches to the same concept based on cognitive differences. Within these categories, there is great potential for conflict, which can stifle the creative process. However these different perspectives are important for full development of a new concept. Innovative companies should keep a balance of these different personality types to avoid stagnation and to encourage development of new ideas. The management of the cognitive types in a way that is productive for the company occurs through the process of creative abrasion.

One can surmise from the articles in general that data and information are valuable if they can be used to maintain the knowledge base or provide the basis for acquiring new knowledge. The organization that creates new knowledge encourages the following in its employees: creativity, a commitment to the goals of the organization, self-discipline, self-motivation, and individual exploration and identification of behaviors that may be barriers to learning. Cognitive preferences should be recognized and used to the companies' advantage. Finally, companies can learn from the best practices of others and from their customers. After knowledge is acquired, it can be disseminated for use throughout the organization and maintained in different ways.

One key method to maintain knowledge repeated in several articles is the importance of an environment that fosters innovation. Quinn et al, in "Managing Professional Intellect: Making the Most of the Best (page 181)," describe this as creating a culture of self-motivated creativity within an organization. There are several ways to do this: recruitment of the best for that field, forcing intensive early development (exposing new employees early to complex problems they have to solve), increasing professional challenges and rigorous evaluations.

Another way to maintain and use knowledge is through pioneering research, described by Brown in "Research that reinvents the Corporation (page 153)." In this process companies can combine basic research practices, with its new and fresh solutions, and applied research to the company's most pressing problems. Dissemination of new knowledge can occur by letting the employees experience the new innovation and so own it. As mentioned in the article by Nonaka, creation of a model that represents the new information is a way for transfer to the rest of the organization. Also the knowledge from the professional intellect within an organization can be transferred into the organization's systems, databases and operating technologies and so made available to others within the organization. An example of this is Merryl Lynch, which uses a database of regularly updated information to link its 18,000 agents.

Yet another tool for disseminating information within an organization is the learning history, described by Kleiner and Roth in "How to Make Experience Your Company's Best Teacher (page 137)." This makes use of the ages old community practice of storytelling to pass on lessons and traditions. The learning history collects data from a previous experience with insight from different levels of employees involved and puts it together in the form of a story that can be used in discussion groups within the organization. In companies where this has been used, it builds trust, provides an opportunity for collective reflection, and can be an effective way to transfer knowledge from one part of the company to another. In addition, incentives in the form of a report in response to the new innovation and achievement awards encourages employees to learn and helps with the dissemination of information.

I read this book when it was first published in 1998 and recently re-read it, curious to see how well it has held up since then. It has done so to a remarkable extent.

Again, I am reminded of Derek Bok's observation "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

This is one in a series of several dozen volumes which comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarded experts on the given subject. All of the volumes have been carefully edited. An Executive Summary introduces each selection. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section which usually includes suggestions of other sources which some readers may wish to explore.

In this volume, we are provided with a variety of perspectives on knowledge management: Peter F. Drucker on "The Coming of the New Organization," Ikujiro Nonaka on "The Knowledge-Creating Company," David A. Garvin on "Building a Learning Organization," Chris Argyris on "Teaching Smart People How to Learn," Dorothy Leonard and Susaan Straus on "Putting Your Company's Whole Brain to work," Art Kleiner and George Roth on "How to Make Experience Your Company's Best Teacher," John Seely Brown on "Research That Reinvents the Corporation," and James Brien Quinn, Philip Anderson, and Sydney Finkelstein on "Managing Professional Intellect: Making the Most of the Best." Listing the article titles correctly indicate the nature and scope of the specific subjects offered.

Quite true, some of the material is dated and inevitably so, given the elapsed time since the articles were published in the Harvard Business Review. However, in my opinion, the principles advocated and the core strategies recommended remain relevant to the contemporary marketplace. For example, Drucker notes that "to remain competitive -- maybe even to survive -- businesses will have to convert themselves into organizations of knowledge specialists." Garvin presents an especially informative analysis of Xerox's six-step problem-solving process which addresses questions to be answered, expansion/divergence issues, contraction/convergence issues, and "next steps" after implementation. Leonard and Straus rigorously examine the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator process, including within their narrative a brilliant overview of the MBTI©. Indeed, readers are provided with rock-solid material throughout each article.

For less than the cost of breakfast in an upscale Manhattan restaurant, each volume in this series provides an intellectual feast. It remains for each reader to determine, of course, which of the volumes will be most nutritious to her or his appetite. Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Carla O'Dell's If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice, Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline and The Dance of Change, Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak's What's the Big Idea?: Creating and Capitalizing on the Best New Management Thinking and also their Working Knowledge, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton's The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action, and Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi's The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation.

While other facets of managment consulting will ultimately yield to lower-cost technology tools, or consultants, KM shall reign as the ultimate value-added analysis. That was my hypothesis before buying this book, and it has only been proven true. The essays in the book range from esoteric to the executable, and include valuable case studies to punctuate the themes. Knowledge Management means so many things, that it can come to mean nothing. This book does an excellent job of providing some metes and bounds to the topic and to stimulate thinking around important organizational and operational issues.But don't get it and expect to be an "instant expert." This is an overview, albeit an excellent one.

Having read other titles that treat this subject either partially or fully, this strikes me as the most simple and direct one in approaching the subject of knowledge management. While some authors have treated the subject as an academic exercise, the various contributors to this title have cleverly demonstrated the practicality of this subject in today's changing business environment.

An excellent summary of a wide range of topics that can be grouped under the heading 'Knowledge Management'. The content is stimulating and full of practical applications.

Looking for some informative, original and clear thinking about knowledge management? This book is a great choice! In its pages you will find an outstanding collection of articles drawn from past editions of the HBR. The eight articles cover: analysis of a knowledge-creating company; building a learning organization, using experience; teaching people how to learn; and managing professional intellect. Each article begins with an executive summary which, for the fast-forward crowd, is a big plus.

So many books are merely ONE GOOD ARTICLE embedded in a thicket of verbiage. Chopping away through such a jungle of verbosity for the gist-of-it-all often proves tedious and disappointing. (Blessed are the laconic!) This book, on the other hand, just serves up a bunch of 'gists' -the pure meat and potatoes of ideas. Happily, the HBSP has published several other collections of this sort on such topics as leadership, change, and strategies for growth. Each of these is collection of first-rate 'gists'. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and the Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.

The Harvard Business Review Series is a collection of reprints of some classic articles from the journal. There are some classic, thought provoking pieces in this book.

In light of the current Japanese recession, it is interesting to reread Nonaka's review of Japanese group methods for promoting creativity in the corporation. He argues that it is a western idea that knowledge is 'hard', or can be digested into records in a computer. He describes cycles of tacit to explicit knowledge that a learning group experiences. I enjoyed his characterization of the senior manager as a romantic pursuing ideals. In the next wave of eBusiness will the companies that thrive be able to leverage the tacit knowledge in the current operational model of the internet?

This is a good starting reference on this topic.

Ok but we found the complete idiot's guide on Knowledge Management to be a bit more useful for our needs.