Knowledge is defined as justified true belief.

The essence of an organization’s activities resides in communication; communication among its members and communication with people outside the organization.

Instilling a Knowledge Vision:

• Communicate the organization’s vision until the organization’s members begin to move to execute that vision.
• By instilling an effective knowledge vision, the organization’s members will have a better understanding of the core values or justification criteria for knowledge management.
• Knowledge vision indicates the justification criteria for knowledge creation.
• The members of the organization must have a clear and concise understanding of what knowledge must be shared and with whom specific knowledge must be shared across functions and businesses.

Managing Conversations:

• Managing conversations facilitates communication among an organization’s members.
• Determining how to facilitate communication with regard to the organization’s activities, for example:Good conversation requires the right pacing and etiquette to achieve mutual insights.
  • Common language;
  • Clarifying and avoiding any misunderstandings and misinterpretations;
  • Encouraging active communication among members;
  • Creating an appropriate context for communication.

Knowledge activism has six purposes:

1. 1. Initiating and focusing creation and sharing of knowledge;
2. 2. Reducing the time and cost necessary for creation and sharing of knowledge;
3. 3. Leveraging knowledge creation initiatives throughout the corporation;
4. 4. Improving the conditions of those engaged in creation and sharing of knowledge by relating their activities to the company’s bigger picture;
5. 5. Preparing participants in knowledge creation for new tasks in which their knowledge is needed;
6. 6. Examining whether unique corporate knowledge needs modification in different aspects and analyzing whether unique corporate knowledge has become obsolete.

Creating the Right Context:

• The strength of an organization is built on the tacit knowledge brought by the organization’s historical activities.
• Creating the right context involves organizational structures that foster solid relationships and effective collaboration.
• Organizational structures that enable conditions for knowledge creation should be those, which facilitate cross-functional, cross-business unit, cross-region activities.
• The key is to structure an organization so that creation and sharing of knowledge throughout proceeds more effectively, more efficiently, and faster, dismantling as many individual and organizational barriers as possible.
• Where knowledge creation and sharing is concerned, organizational structures should reinforce tacit-explicit knowledge interaction across many different boundaries.

Globalizing Local Knowledge:

• It is crucial for the competitive advantage of a corporation operating globally that knowledge created in a certain local unit is disseminated to other local units effectively, efficiently, and quickly.
• By globalizing local knowledge, corporations will be able to reduce time and cost for knowledge creation initiatives.
• Building enabling infrastructure is critically important to facilitate globalizing local knowledge.

Good Conversations:

• Good conversations are the cradle of social knowledge in any organization.
• The exchange of ideas, viewpoints, and beliefs that conversations entail allows for the first and most essential step to knowledge creation: Sharing tacit knowledge within a micro-community.

(Posted 20130112)