KM can mean so many different things to different people.

Hello everyone:

I have been meaning to join in but haven’t had the chance until now. I am Renuka Bery, the knowledge management specialist on the new USAID-funded Hygiene Improvement Project housed at the Academy for Educational Development in the US with IRC as a partner.

I have enjoyed following the discussion because it offers so many new thoughts on how to conceptualize knowledge management. I don’t like the term because it seems to have quickly become a blanket term that obscures rather than clarifies because KM can mean so many different things to different people. The distinctions people have made between information and knowledge are important. While I like the continuum concept Mustapha Malki introduced (data-information-knowledge-wisdom), I feel that KM is actually an iterative process that keeps changing as information and knowledge get exchanged.

I think that KM is more than just digested information. I generally define KM as getting the right information to the right people at the right time in a way that that can be used so that informed decisions can be made, problems solved, or actions taken. But this requires time and resources. Too often people with the knowledge do not have time to share it—or the tools to make it easy to share—or the resources to transform the knowledge into valuable communication. This then may be where the management part of KM can come into play—to help provide tools so that there can be interactive exchanges.

Another issue I struggle with is the range of available information and knowledge. In some settings a derth of information/knowledge exists; other settings reel from the vast quantity of information/knowledge that has to be reviewed to find something relevant. I see KM as offering some type of filtering process that reaches far and wide.

Finally, perhaps the KM terminology is a way to make knowledge sharing deliberate so that researchers, practitioners, governments, and donors don’t forget or dismiss the need to communicate and share knowledge with one another to support learning and wisdom—and so we do not continue to make the same mistakes.