Since many companies have embarked on the road towards knowledge and learning it is important to take a moment and imagine what may lie ahead. There are many views on this but one comprehensive forecast is presented by Wiig (1999). He sug- gests a number of developments in knowledge development in coming years:
1 There will be a strong push away from ‘knowledge is action- able information’ to a ‘knowledge is understanding’ perspec- tive. Other traditional and narrow perspectives will also be displaced by richer cognitively based paradigms. Insights from emerging cognitive research appear to be very helpful in expounding what and how people can handle complex chal- lenges competently.
2 Future knowledge management practices and methods will be systematic, explicit and relatively dependent upon
advanced technology in several areas. However, there will be a move towards more people-centric knowledge management.
This will occur as a result of growing recognition that it is net- working and collaboration that forms the basis for the knowl- edge-sharing behaviours.
3 By building upon the knowledge management experiences of other companies, the manner in which knowledge manage- ment is organized, supported and facilitated will change:
(a) Obvious structural changes will be associated with who leads the knowledge management programmes. Two polarities are likely to emerge: either a high-level chief knowledge officer (CKO) or distributed effort at mid- organization level.
(b) Changes that deal with reorganization of work and the abolishing of whole departments that are integrated into other operations will be less apparent but prevalent.
4 Management and operating practices will change to facilitate knowledge management in many ways:
(a) Incentives will be introduced to promote innovation, effective knowledge exchange (sharing), learning and application of best practices in all work situations (b) Cultural drivers such as management emphasis and per-
sonal behaviours will be changed to create environments of trust, and focus will be on finding root causes of prob- lems without assigning blame.
5 Knowledge management perspectives will become deeply embedded within regular activities throughout the corpora- tion.
6 New practices will focus on desired combinations of under- standing, knowledge, skills and attitudes when assembling work teams or analysing requirements for performing work.
The emphasis on complementary work teams will coincide with the movement towards virtual organizations, where many participants will be external workers who are brought in for limited periods to complement in-house competencies for specific tasks.
7 Most organizations will create effective approaches to transfer personal knowledge to structural intellectual capital (SIC).
Increased transfer will allow better utilization and leveraging of the SICs. This will also have a positive side effect for exter- nal subject-matter experts who may be able to provide, i.e.
sell, their expertise to many enterprises for continued use.
This can already be observed in isolated instances, e.g. with refinery operations experts.
8 More comprehensive and broader approaches to knowledge management practice will become the norm. For example,
designing and implementing comprehensive multimode knowledge transfer programmes will be common. Such pro- grammes will take systematic approaches to integrate all pri- mary knowledge-related functions including:
(a) major internal and external knowledge sources
(b) major knowledge transformation functions and reposito- ries such as capture and codification functions and com- puter-based knowledge bases
(c) major knowledge deployment functions such as training and educational programs, expert networks, knowledge- based systems, etc.
(d) different knowledge applications or value-realization functions where work is performed or knowledge assets are sold, leased, or licensed.
9 Education and knowledge support capabilities such as expert networks or performance support systems will be matched to cognitive and learning styles, and to dominant intelligences.
This will facilitate workers, particularly full-time employees, in all areas to perform more effectively. In addition, new, powerful, and highly effective approaches to elicitation and transfer of deep knowledge will be introduced. Such capabil- ities will allow experts to communicate understandings and concepts and will facilitate building corresponding concepts, associations and mental models by other practitioners.
10 One area of considerable value will be the development of comprehensive and integrated processes for knowledge development, capture, transformation, transfer and applica- tion.
11 Knowledge management will be supported by many artificial intelligence developments, some of which are:
(a) intelligent agents
(b) natural language understanding and natural language processing
(c) reasoning strategies
(d) new knowledge representations and new forms of ontol- ogy.
12 Information technology will continue to progress and will bring considerable change to many knowledge management areas. These will include:
(a) ‘portable offices’ that roam anywhere with their owners (b) communication-handling systems that organize, abstract,
prioritize, make sense of and, in many instances, answer incoming communications
(c) intelligent agents that not only will acquire desired and relevant information and knowledge, but will reason with in relation to the situation at hand.
In order to create broad and integrated capabilities, most of the changes introduced by these developments will not be able to stand alone, but will be partly combined with other changes, many of which are likely to have focuses other than knowledge management.
Organizational gains from futuristic advances and developments There are many expectations for strategic, tactical and opera- tional improvements from the pursuit of knowledge manage- ment. Practical experiences of leading-edge companies indicate that benefits can be substantial. However, thus far, most direct benefits have been operational. Strategic benefits by nature are much more indirect and take longer to realize. Nevertheless, it is because companies hope they will obtain strategic benefits that they actively follow knowledge management programmes. In the future, the scenario will exhibit more strongly many of the reflexes that are already taking shape – namely, an increasing trend to pursue strategically oriented revenue enhancement instead of the early search for ‘low-hanging fruits’ of operational improvements. Wiig (1999) provides illustrative examples of strategic, tactical and operational benefits.
Strategic benefits
1 Increasing competence to provide improved value-added delivery of products and services, encapsulated with higher knowledge content than previously possible. This may be achieved by:
(a) having knowledge workers who possess and have access to better applicable knowledge
(b) organizing work to facilitate application of best knowl- edge.
2 Greater market penetration and competitiveness.
3 Broadening of the capability to create and deliver new prod- ucts and services and a greater capacity to deliver products and services to new markets.
Tactical benefits
1 Faster organizational and personal learning by better capture, retention and use of innovations, new knowledge and knowl- edge from others and from external sources, achieved by:
(a) more effective knowledge transfer methods between knowledge workers
(b) more effective discovery of knowledge through Know- ledge Development Directory (KDD) and other systematic methods
(c) easier access to intellectual capital assets
(d) more effective approaches to ascend Nonaka’s knowledge spiral by transforming tacit personal knowledge into shared knowledge.
2 Lower loss of knowledge through attrition or personnel re- assignments achieved by:
(a) effective capture of routine and operational knowledge from departing personnel
(b) assembly of harvested knowledge in corporate memories that are easy to access and navigate, and can be expected to lead to a greater ability to build on prior expertise and deep understanding.
3 More knowledge workers will have effective possession of, and access to, relevant expertise in the forms of operational knowl- edge, scripts and schemata.
4 Employees will obtain greater understanding of how their per- sonal goals coincide with the enterprise’s goals.
Operational benefits
1 Employees will have access to, and be able to apply, better knowledge at points of action. This will be achieved by, for example:
(a) educating employees in the principles of their work (via scripts, schemata and abstract mental models)
(b) providing knowledge workers with aids to complement their own knowledge
(c) training knowledge workers to operationalize abstract knowledge to match the requirements of the practical sit- uations they deal with.
These changes can be expected to lead to lower operating costs caused by fewer mistakes, faster work, less need for hand-offs, an ability to compensate for unexpected variations in the work task and improved innovation.
2 Operational areas will experience less rework and fewer oper- ational errors.
3 The enterprise will achieve greater reuse of knowledge.
To attain the above benefits, companies will have to undergo noticeable change within themselves. For instance, the develop-
ments will influence the culture to promote greater initiatives and greater job satisfaction among employees. These effects are likely to transform the workplace.
The changing workplace
As noted above, shifts emanating from knowledge-led initiatives are likely to change the workplace, both visibly and and less so.
The less visible changes will, perhaps, be more significant since many will involve the way people work with their minds. The changes that people will experience in the workplace include:
1 Greater emphasis on interdisciplinary teams, with focus on using profiles of best mix of competencies for specific projects at hand.
2 A major change in the workplace, resulting from the increas- ingly temporary nature of many employment situations. This will lead to:
(a) greater emphasis on assembling short-lived teams with requisite knowledge profiles to address specific tasks (b) people having reduced allegiances to the temporary
employer
(c) increased efforts by individuals to improve their expert- ise to maintain and enhance personal competitiveness.
3 Greater reliance on conceptual knowledge to guide the direc- tion of work.
4 Better understanding by individual knowledge workers of how they can influence implementation of company strategy by each small decision or act that is part of their daily work.
5 Greater degree of collaboration and willingness to co-ordinate and co-operate with associates and other activities.
6 Increased personal understanding by employees of how they personally benefit from delivering effective work.
7 Greater job security and less hesitation and procrastination to undertake complex tasks after they build increased meta- knowledge and professional experience or craft knowledge about the work for which they are responsible.
8 Increased reliance on automated intelligent reasoning to sup- port work.
9 Intelligent agents, deployed internally and externally, will offload ‘data detective work’ required to locate and evaluate information required in many knowledge work situations, ranging from plant operators to ad hoc strategic task forces.
10 New organization of the physical work environment will change the way people work together and allow greater rich-
ness of interaction. The new work environments will be designed to foster knowledge transfer and exchange through networking and collaboration, and will facilitate serendipi- tous innovations.
In aggregate, it can be expected that knowledge management will allow companies to expend less effort to deliver present-day out- comes or with the same effort better products, services and rev- enues.
The knowledge business and the knowledge marketplace
The impact of the developments will not be confined to organiza- tions but will have ramifications in the wider community. For instance, the developments are likely to transform the business of knowledge and its market. Already, we are witnessing such change with the advent of more companies moving from the traditional role of manufacturer or service provider into the role of advice and consultancy provider. For example, Lotus, the car maker, report- edly receives greater revenues from advising other car makers on building engines than it receives from selling its own products.
Electronic advisory or consulting services is also fast emerging.
Over time, we are likely to see single individuals with all kinds of expertise, which they sell in the marketplace. Individuals, as free agents to virtual corporations, will be able to trade their knowledge in ways that at present we can barely glimpse.
A societal impact
There will be many consequences for society – both positive and negative. Positively, knowledge discovery processes will provide powerful insights into preferences and behaviours of the con- sumers and allow companies to better meet their needs.
Negatively, there may, because of more advanced communication and connection, be a greater number of deliberate misrepresenta- tions by avaricious companies and individuals playing on the ignorance of the young and naïve.
What might all this mean?
All these developments suggest we are evolving from one stage to another. We are being carried by one grand set of challenges to another, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly, at times
deliberately and at other times by events beyond our control or the control of others. To repeat the old saying ‘the only constant is change’. We next take a peek into the future and examine the broader picture for what lies there.