While companies search the world over to benchmark best practices, vast treasure troves of knowledge and know-how remain hidden right under their noses: in the minds of their own employees, in the often unique structure of their operations, and in the written history of their organizations. Now, acclaimed productivity and quality experts Carla O'Dell and Jack Grayson explain for the first time how applying the ideas of Knowledge Management can help employers identify their own internal best practices and share this intellectual capital throughout their organizations.

Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O'Day's thesis on how the average citizen has become distanced from the process of designing technology, resulting in technology that doesn't adequately serve the user's needs. Using the plot of the film Metropolis as their primary example, the authors explain how those who are creating technology are pouring their hearts into it, but aren't using their heads enough to anticipate whether "our creations can betray us.".

Thomas Davenport proposes a revolutionary new way to look at information management which takes into account the total information environment within an organization. Citing examples drawn from his own extensive research and consulting, including such major firms as AT&T, American Express, and IBM, Davenport illuminates the critical components of information ecology, providing a quick assessment survey for managers to see how their operations measure up.

Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. A Bold Awakening
2. Kaleidoscopic Dynamics
3. Wellsprings Timelines
4. The Emerging "Community of Knowledge Practice"
5. Innovation as a Value System
6. An Innovation Management Architecture
7. Knowledge Innovation Assessment - Internal Capabilities
8. Knowledge Innovation Assessment - External Integration
9. Customers as a Source of Knowledge
10. Prospectus for the Future
Select Bibliography

The Knowledge Evolution offers a unique and powerful road map for understanding knowledge creation, learning, and performance in everyday work. Packed with the best practices from leading edge companies, essential guidelines, design principles, analogies, and conceptual frameworks, The Knowledge Evolution serves as a practical guidebook for mastering "the knowledge era". Highly recommended reading for anyone charged with managerial responsibilities and successfully competing in the business climates of the 21st century.

Knowledge Management Tools is a unique collection of articles that provides answers to questions such as: What are the tools of the Knowledge Era?; How can technology help knowledge generation, codification, and transfer?; What are key considerations as such tools are implements? What might the future hold for the augmentation an automation of knowledge work? The selections in Knowledge Management Tools were carefully chosen to represent the strengths and weaknesses, and pros and cons of using technology to support knowledge-based activities. They acknowledge that, although tools alone are not the answer to the difficult questions surround knowledge management, if utilized effectively tools can open up new realms of innovation and efficiency for today's knowledge-driven businesses. Knowledge Management Tools is critically useful reading for anyone with management responsibilities in today's information driven business world.

Table of Contents
Introduction to the Resources for the Knowledge-Based Economy Series
Introduction to Knowledge in Organizations
1. Knowledge as Strategy,By Michael Earl
2. Knowledge of the Firm: Combinative Capabilities, and the Replication of Technology, By Bruce Kogut, Udo Zander
3. Informal Networks: The Company Behind the Chart, By David Krackhardt, Jeffrey R. Hanson
4. Top Management, Strategy and Organizational Knowledge Structures, By Marjorie Lyles, Charles R. Schwenk
5. EPRINET: Leveraging Knowledge in the Electric Utility Industry, By Mariana M. Mann, et al.
6. A New Organizational Structure, By Ikujiro Nonaka
7. Tacit Knowledge, By Michael Polanyi
8. Learning by Knowledge-Intensive Firms, By William H. Starbuck
9. Organizational Memory, By James P. Walsh, Gerardo Rivera Ungson
10. Cosmos vs. Chaos: Sense and Nonsense in Electronic Contexts, By Karl E. Weick
11. Financial Risk and the Need for Superior Knowledge Management, By Chris Marshall, Larry Prusak, David Shpillberg
Index

This book is unique in addressing both important issues for the improvement of schooling as well as issues facing the business world with the increased globalization of business. Throughout the book, effective management is shown to be dependent upon the same factors as effective teaching.Because it offers a new foundation for corporate and school collaboration to enhance the effectiveness of learners and workers, this volume is a valuable resource to educators at all levels and corporate managers who seek to enhance the productivity of their workers.

Table of Contents
List of Figures
Foreword, By Kenneth R. Slocum
1. Devising a Concept of Organizational Knowledge
2. Conventional Organizational Epistemologies
3. Autopoietic Systems
4. Organizational Knowledge, Individualized (and Socialized)
5. Unbracketing (Socialized Organizational Knowledge) by a Theory of Scaling
6. Organizational Knowledge and Languaging
7. Languaging and Beyond
8. Impediments to Organizational Knowledge
9. Opening Up
10. The New Epistemology in Use: The SENCORP Management Model
Postscript: A Final Self-Reference
References
Index

This book has a very academic tone but it has some powerful implications for anyone in business. The book makes a number of points that are not intuitive but that are very powerful. For example, he talks about the advantages of speed, confidence, and plausibility in problem solving and why they may be more important than accuracy.
Index

Up until now, most books on Knowledge Management have focused on ways to gather and manage the ever-growing information stream flooding businesses today. Value-Based Knowledge Management goes further by identifying the changes companies will need to make in order to thrive in the Knowledge Economy...The victors in the "virtual" market "space" will have one thing in common: value-adding knowledge. The "triple value package" includes a visual book and two CD-ROMs. The book is filled with colorful graphics that come to life through straight talk between the authors.

Drawing on the candid reflections of managers at leading technology-based companies, this book shows that the successful innovators are companies that build and manage knowledge effectively. The book reveals lessons for creating, nurturing, and growing the experience and accumulated knowledge of the organization into renewable assets and competitive advantage. What qualities make companies successful innovators? The author examines basic lessons in nurturing and building innovation sources, considering company structure and the mechanics of shared problem solving and technological trends. The result's an excellent analysis of the qualities which lend to successful company innovation strategies.

The definitive primer on knowledge management, this book serves as the hands-on resource of choice for fast companies that recognize knowledge as the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. Drawing from their work with more than 30 firms, the authors examine how all types of companies can effectively understand, analyze, measure, and manage their intellectual assets, turning corporate knowledge into market value. $10,000 marketing.
Working Knowledge considers such key questions as:
--What key cultural and behavioral issues must managers address to use knowledge? --What are the best ways to incorporate technology into knowledge work? --What are specific knowledge skills? --What does a successful knowledge project look like--and how do you know whether it has succeeded? --What measures and milestones can managers use to evaluate knowledge?
In the end, say the authors, the human qualities of knowledge--experience, intuition, and beliefs--are precisely the most valuable and most difficult to manage and maximize. Applying the insights and practices of Working Knowledge is every manager's first step on that rewarding road to long-term success.