Sims Learning Connections

Continuing from Sunday’s 43 knowledge management definitions. In this initial spreadsheet analysis (18 page PDF) I categorized each of the now 53 definitions by the following attributes. The numbers within [ ] are the number and percentage of definitions that mention this attribute. Within a major heading, a definition may be categorized more than once, or not at all.

What is the thing being described?

• Process, activities, efforts, method, and/or techniques [29, 55%]
• Tools and technology [2, 4%]
• Strategy [5, 9%]
• System [2, 4%]
• Framework [1, 2%]
• Concept, philosophy, or art [4, 8%]
• Discipline, Practice, or Principles [6, 11%]

What does it do? (Part-1)

• Manages or governs (and if so, what does it manage or govern? — covered in the spreadsheet) [12, 23%]
• Facilitates, helps, or promotes [4, 8%]
• Eliminate ignorance & inability [1, 4%]

What are its characteristics?

• Explicit, Deliberate, Conscious, or Active [8, 15%]
• Systematic [7, 13%]
• Comprehensive [1, 2%]
• Formal [1, 2%]
• Collaborative or Integrative [6, 11%]
• Difficult to achieve [4, 8%]

What is the scope?

• The organization [36, 68%]
• The individual [13, 25%]
• Customers [1, 2%]
• Partners [1, 2%]
• Decisions [1, 2%]
• Data [4, 8%]
• Information [14, 26%]
• Knowledge [18, 34%]
• Wisdom [1, 2%]
• Ideas [1, 2%]
• Expertise or experience [7, 13%]
• Intellectual Capital, Intellectual Assets, or Intangible Assets [6, 11%]

What does it do? (Part-2)

• Analyze, identify, locate, or define (information or knowledge) [9, 17%]
• Define communities or networks [3, 6%]
• Implement technology [3, 6%]
• Implement organizational structures [1, 2%]
• Implement processes [1, 2%]
• Create proper environment [2, 4%]
• Create context [1, 2%]
• Train, coach, and/or mentor [2, 4%]
• Create learning cycles or reflection [2, 4%]
• Create or generate (information or knowledge) [11, 21%]
• Gather, collect, accumulate, or capture (information or knowledge) [8, 15%]
• Grow, adapt, evolve, or expand (information or knowledge) [3, 6%]
• Represent, change format, codify, transform, or manipulate (information or knowledge) [7, 13%]
• Combine or Integrate (information or knowledge) [2, 4%]
• Organize (information or knowledge) [9, 17%]
• Retain, save, or store (information or knowledge) [7, 13%]
• Cultivate (information or knowledge) [1, 2%]
• Access, find, or retrieve (information or knowledge) [13, 25%]
• Distribute, deliver, or disseminate (information or knowledge) [7, 13%]
• Share, transfer, exchange, diffusion, or flow (information or knowledge) [16, 30%]
• Collaborate [1, 2%]
• Leverage or exploit (information or knowledge) [9, 17%]
• Use or apply (information or knowledge) [13, 25%]
• Improve (information or knowledge) [1, 2%]
• Influence company strategy, policy, and practice [1, 2%]
• Guard [1, 2%]

Why?

• Includes a “why” in the definition [21, 40%]

General observation: this again illustrates the definition diversity. It is not like these are 53 definitions with slightly different word choice. These are substantially different. There are only five attributes that are seen in 30% or more of the definitions: KM is a process, it is targeted at the organization (company), it deals with knowledge, sharing is part of the story, and the definition includes a “why.”

Still more exploring and digesting for me to do; however, unlike the text clouds, I’m finding this analysis immediately helpful to me to more clearly see the range of possibilities and to also facilitate forming my own opinion on what is deficient, versus just different (in a further update I might fill in the NOTES column more for this; but for now, I make little comment and am more interested in just absorbing the possibilities.) The spreadsheet more clearly illustrates distinctions, whereas the text clouds illustrate the commonality.

I’m still not interested in creating the one new proposed definition from all of this, but I can see perhaps a handful of composite definitions that illustrate different knowledge management orientations — in the spirit of what Jack Vinson suggested this morning:

Ray or another enterprising individual might want to stack these definitions into buckets about how “knowledge” is perceived by the people using the definition. Process-centric definitions would look at knowledge-as-verb. Storage-centric definitions might think of knowledge as a thing to be controlled. People-connection definitions might think of knowledge as appearing via interaction. etc.

Comment, email, or tweet if you would like the source spreadsheet for your own manipulation. I use OpenOffice.org with ods format; however, can also export to xls if desired.

[26 March Update] Now also available as HTML and CSV from Google Docs.

I’ll now likely take a break from this for at least a few days to focus on other work and do further reading to increase my understanding of some of the KM fundamentals beyond what I had in my last tour of duty in the (yes, I still call it a) discipline.

[25 March Update] For further analysis, see:

1. Matthias Melcher’s topic map from the definitions
2. Stephen Bounds‘ Critique of 43 definitions of Knowledge Management, which takes the analysis to evaluation (what is deficient, what is good) and some grouping by “type.” Stephen announced to the actKM list.

Thanks Matthias and Stephen for the nice pieces of work!