2. • Describe how valuable individual, group, and organizational
knowledge is captured, created, codified, shared, accessed, applied,
and reused throughout the knowledge management cycle.
• Compare and contrast major KM life-cycle models, including the
Zack, Bukowitz and Williams, McElroy, and Wiig life-cycle models.
• Define the key steps in each process of the KM cycle and provide
concrete examples of each.
• Identify the major challenges and benefits of each phase of the KM
cycle.
• Describe how the integrated KM cycle combines the advantages of
other KM life-cycle models.
3. Effective knowledge management requires an
organization to:
Identify
Generate
Acquire
Diffuse
Capture
the benefits of
knowledge that
provide a strategic
advantage to that
organization
5. • KM processes aims at identifying and locating
knowledge and knowledge sources within the
organization
Valuable knowledge
translated into explicit form
codification of knowledge
to facilitate more
widespread
dissemination
6. The Zack KM Cycle
• The Zack KM cycle is derived from work on the
design and development of information
products (Meyer and Zack, 1996).
Research and knowledge about the design
of physical products can be extended into
the intellectual realm to serve as the basis
for a knowledge management cycle.
10. • issues of raw materials
– scope, breadth, depth, credibility, accuracy,
timelines, relevance, cost, control and exclusivity
• “garbage in, garbage out”
– data has to be in highest quality
11. Refinement
• primary source of added value
• physical refinement
– moving between mediums
• logical refinement
– restructuring, (re)labeling, indexing and integrating
– cleaning up / sanitizing content
12. Storage and Retrieval
• bridge from acquisition and refinement to
product generation
• physical
– folders, printed information
• digital
– database
– knowledge management software
13. • how information is delivered to end users
– fax, print, email, publication on a web page
• timing, frequency, form, language,...
Distribution
14. Presentation
• context plays important role
• users have to have enough context to be able
to make use of a content
15. THE BUKOWITZ AND WILLIAMS KM
CYCLE
Bukowitz and Williams (2000) describe a knowledge management process
framework that outlines “how organizations generate, maintain and
deploy a strategically correct stock of knowledge to create value” .
16. • In this framework, knowledge consists of :
– knowledge repositories
– Relationships
– information technologies
– communications infrastructure
– functional skill sets
– process know-how
– environmental responsiveness
– organizational intelligence, and
– external sources.
17.
18. GET
• seek out needed
information
– for decision making, problem
solving or innovation
• think of information
overload
• user needs must be well
understood
• know where knowledge
resources exist
• how to combine
information
– in new and interesting ways
to foster organizational
innovation
• focus on individuals and
then on groups
USE
19. Learn
• learning from experiences
– means of creating
competitive advantage
• creation of organizational
memory
– best practices and lessons
learned
• transition between
application and
generation
• getting employees to post
– what they have learned
• making knowledge visible
and available
• sharing
Contribute
20. Assess
• evaluation of intellectual
capital
• definition of mission-critical
knowledge
• map of current intellectual
capital
– against future knowledge
needs
• requirements for new set of
processes
• allocation of resources
– to growth and maintenance
of knowledge
• creation of new knowledge
• reinforcement of existing
knowledge
Build/Sustain
21. Divest
• identification of obsolete
knowledge
– knowledge that gives no
value any further
• examination of resources
required
– to maintain knowledge
• redeploying, outsourcing
or terminating
24. Knowledge use
• matched expectations
– reinforcement of existing knowledge
– leads to reuse
– double-loop learning
• failed to match expectations
– adjustments in business processing behavior
– single-loop learning
in business-processing environment
28. Validation
• Validation of knowledge is a step that clearly
• distinguishes knowledge management from
document management.
The KM cycle focuses on processes to identify
knowledge content that is of value to the
organization and its employees.
30. Wiig
Conditions • organization must have ...
business and customers
• products and services
Resources
• people, capital and facilities
ability to act
31.
32. There are four major steps in this cycle
Building knowledge.
Holding knowledge.
Pooling knowledge.
Applying knowledge.
34. Knowledge analysis consists of:
• Extracting what appears to be knowledge from obtained material
(e.g., analyze transcripts and identify themes, listen to an
explanation, and select concepts for further consideration).
• Abstracting extracted materials (e.g., form a model or a theory).
• Identifying patterns extracted (e.g., trend analysis).
• Explaining relations between knowledge fragments (e.g., compare
and contrast, causal relations).
• Verifying that extracted materials correspond to the meaning of
original sources (e.g., meaning has not been corrupted through
summarizing, collating, and so on).
35. Reconstruct/synthesize knowledge
• Consists of generalizing analyzed material to
obtain
– broader principles
– generating hypotheses to explain observations
– establishing between new and existing knowledge
(e.g., collabconformanceorating validity in light of
what is already known), and
– updating the total knowledge pool by incorporating
the new knowledge.
36. Codifying and modeling knowledge involves:
• how we represent knowledge in our minds
(mental models, for example),
• how we then assemble the knowledge into a
coherent model,
• how we document the knowledge in books and
manuals, and
• how we encode it in order to post it to a
knowledge repository.
37. • Knowledge is organized for specific uses and
according to an established organizational
framework (such as standards and categories).
• Examples: include a help desk service or a list
of frequently asked questions (FAQs) on the
company intranet.
38. Holding
Knowledge Remembering
knowledge has been internalized or
understood
Accumulating
knowledge has been encoded and
stored in a knowledge base
Embedding
knowledge becomes part of procedure
manual
Archiving
creating a library, systematically retiring
out-of-date or not relevant
40. • Use established knowledge to perform a routine
task
– for example, make standard products, provide a
standard service, or use the expert network to find
out who is knowledgeable about a particular area
• Use general knowledge to survey exceptional
situations at hand
– for example, determine what the problem is and
estimate potential consequences
Applying Knowledge
45. EXAMPLE
• A major international consulting organization wanted to capture lessons learned
from its major projects. This represented a first step toward becoming a learning
organization. From a scan of what similar companies were doing, their competitive
intelligence led them to select the implementation of an after-action review (AAR)
in the form of a project postmortem.
• The AAR was a new procedure, and it was initially piloted with a group of
experienced consultants. Project managers who became experienced with the
postmortem were subsequently asked to become resource people for those willing
to learn and try it out. A new role of knowledge journalist was created; the idea
was to appoint a neutral, objective person who had not been a member of the
original project team to facilitate the postmortem process and capture the key
learning from the project. Finally, the postmortem was added as a final step for all
project managers before they could officially and formally deem a project to be
completed.
46. STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE KM CYCLE
• Knowledge represents the decisive basis for intelligent, competent behavior
at the individual, group, and organization level. Only a conscious and
organized reflection of lessons learned and best practices discovered will
allow companies to leverage their hard-won knowledge assets.
• A knowledge architecture needs to be designed and implemented in order
to enable the staged processing and transformation of knowledge, much like
information products are processed, and to ensure that the knowledge
objects reach intended end users and are put to good use. The objective is to
retain and share knowledge with a wider audience. Information and
communication technologies such as groupware, intranets, and knowledge
bases or repositories provide the necessary infrastructure to do so.
• Business processes and cultural enablers offer the necessary incentives and
opportunities for all knowledge workers to become active participants
throughout the knowledge management cycle.
47. KEY POINTS
• There are a number of different approaches to the knowledge
management cycle such as those by McElroy, Wiig, Bukowitz and Willams,
and Meyer and Zack.
• By comparing and contrasting these approaches and by validating them
through experience gained to date with KM practice, the major stages are
identified as knowledge capture and creation, knowledge sharing and
dissemination, and knowledge acquisition and application.
• The critical processes throughout the KM cycle assess the worth of
content based on organizational goals, contextualize content in order to
better match with a variety of users, and continuously update with a focus
on updating, archiving as required, and modifying the scope of each
knowledge object.
48. Discussion
• Provide an example of how each major KM cycle stage
listed below can add value to knowledge and increase
the strategic worth of the knowledge asset:
a. Capture
b. Codify
c. Create
d. Share
e. Acquire
f. Apply
1. Describe how valuable individual, group, and organizational knowledge is captured, created, codified, shared, accessed, applied, and reused
throughout the knowledge management cycle.
2. Compare and contrast major KM life-cycle models, including the Zack, Bukowitz and Williams, McElroy, and Wiig life-cycle models.
3. Define the key steps in each process of the KM cycle and provide concrete examples of each.
4. Identify the major challenges and benefits of each phase of the KM cycle.
5. Describe how the integrated KM cycle combines the advantages of other KM life-cycle models.
the benefits of knowledge that provide a strategic advantage to that organization
A clear distinction must be made between information—which is digitalize—and true knowledge assets— which can only exist within the context of an intelligent system.
As we are still far from the creation of artificial intelligence systems, this means that knowledge assets reside within the human knowers, and not the organization per se.
A knowledge information cycle can be envisaged as the route information follows in order to become transformed into a valuable strategic asset for the
organization via a knowledge management cycle.
Networks, practices, and incentives are instituted to facilitate person-to-person knowledge transfer as well as person–knowledge content connections in order to solve problems, make decisions, or otherwise act based on the best possible knowledge foundation
Meyer and Zack echoed other authors in stressing “the importance of managing the evolution and renewal of product architecture for sustained
competitive success. . . . different architectures result in different product functionality, cost, quality and performance. Architectures are . . . a basis for
product innovation” (p. 44).
Research and knowledge about the design of physical information products can inform the design of a KM cycle. In Meyer
and Zack’s approach, the interfaces between each stage are designed to be seamless and standardized. Experience suggests the critical importance of specifying internal and external user interfaces in order to do so.
Acquisition of data or information addresses the issues regarding sources of “raw” materials such as scope, breadth, depth, credibility, accuracy, timeliness,
relevance, cost, control, and exclusivity. The guiding principle is the well known adage of “garbage in, garbage out.” That is, source data must be of
the highest quality; otherwise the intellectual products produced downstream will be inferior.
Refining also refers to cleaning up (e.g., “sanitizing” content so as to ensure complete anonymity of sources and key players
involved) or standardizing (e.g., conforming to templates of a best practice or lessons learned as used within that particular organization).
Statistical analyses can be performed on content at this stage to conduct a meta-analysis (highlevel summary of key themes and patterns found in a collection of knowledge objects).
This stage of the Meyer and Zack cycle adds value by creating more readily usable knowledge objects and by storing the content more flexibly for
future use.
Storage/retrieval forms a bridge between the upstream acquisition and refinement stages that feed the repository and downstream stages of product generation.
Storage may be physical (file folders, printed information) or digital (database, knowledge management software).
It is at this stage that context plays an important role. The effectiveness of each of the preceding value-added steps is
evaluated here: does the user have enough context to be able to make use of this content? If not, the KM cycle has failed to deliver value to the individual
and ultimately to the organization.
The first stage, get, consists of seeking out information needed in order to make decisions, solve problems, or innovate.
In knowledge production, the key processes are individual and group learning;
knowledge claim formulation; information acquisition; codified knowledge
claim; and knowledge claim evaluation.
Knowledge creation may occur through R&D projects, innovations by individuals
to improve the way they perform their tasks, experimentation, reasoning
with existing knowledge, and hiring of new people. Knowledge may
also be created through knowledge importing (e.g., elicit knowledge from
experts and from procedure manuals, engage in joint ventures to obtain technology,
or transfer people between departments). Finally, knowledge may be
created through observing the real world (e.g., making site visits, observing
processes after the introduction of a change).
Knowledge creation may occur through R&D projects, innovations by individuals
to improve the way they perform their tasks, experimentation, reasoning
with existing knowledge, and hiring of new people. Knowledge may
also be created through knowledge importing (e.g., elicit knowledge from
experts and from procedure manuals, engage in joint ventures to obtain technology,
or transfer people between departments). Finally, knowledge may be
created through observing the real world (e.g., making site visits, observing
processes after the introduction of a change).
Use knowledge to describe the situation and scope of the problem—for
example, identify the problem and show generally how to handle it.
Select relevant special knowledge to handle the situation—for example,
identify who you need to consult with or want to address the problem.
Observe and characterize the situation with special knowledge—for
example, make a comparison with known patterns, take a history, and
collect and organize required information to act.
Analyze the situation with knowledge—for example, judge whether it can
be handled internally or whether outside help will be required.
Synthesize alternative solutions with knowledge—for example, identify
options and outline possible approaches.
Evaluate potential alternatives using special knowledge—for example, determine
the risks and benefits of each possible approach.
Use knowledge to decide what to do—for example, rank alternatives, select
one, and do a reality check.
Implement the selected alternative—for example, execute the task and
authorize the team to proceed.
In the transition from knowledge capture/creation to knowledge sharing and
dissemination, knowledge content is assessed. Knowledge is then contextualized
in order to be understood (“acquisition”) and used (“application”). This
stage then feeds back into the first one in order to update the knowledge
content.
Knowledge capture refers to the identification and subsequent codification
of existing (usually previously unnoticed) internal knowledge and know-how
within the organization and/or external knowledge from the environment.
Knowledge creation is the development of new knowledge and know-how—
innovations that did not have a previous existence within the company. When
knowledge is inventoried in this manner, the next critical step is to present an
assessment against selection criteria that will follow closely the organizational
goals.
