Conference Review: First European conference on the subject - "Leveraging Knowledge for Sustainable Advantage

Here are some notes from the first European conference on the subject -"Leveraging Knowledge for Sustainable Advantage" organised by Business Intelligence, and held on 26th and 27th March. This is not intended to be a blow by blow session report - more some personal impressions. Proceedings are avialbe from Business Intelligence, Forum House, 1 Graham Road, Wimbledon, LONDON, SW19 3SW - Tel: +44 181 544 1830.

Overview The conference was attended by over 100 delegates with good representation from pharmaceutical companies, financial services, hi tech and consultants. Much of the programme used speakers from last year's US conference, and high profile ones at that. These included Gordon Petrash (Dow), Charles Savage (Knowledge Enterprises), Larry Prusak (Ernst & Young), Hubert St. Onge (CIBC), Leif Edvinsson (Skandia), Bipin Junnarkar (Monsanto). New ( I believe) on the circuit were Sally Anne Moore (DEC), Dr. Josef Hofer-Alfeis (Siemens) and Keith Pearse (BP) and Rob van der Speck (International KNowledge Network).

What was new? For those who have been to such conferences before, probably not a lot. There were some good case examples of the different approaches to KM by different types of company. Many speakers seemed to converge on examples and categories used by others. There seems to be a pattern and legitimacy building around the subject. For me, what was new, was the intrigue of many of the delegates, who had clearly been keen to go (or asked to go) to find out how "real" this subject was.

Key themes (for me)

• Categories of knowledge capital - the model used by several speakers of human- customer - structural
• Identification of intellectual assets, especially the work of the pharmaceutical companies to record their IPR and develop strategies e.g. through licenses to exploit it.
• Reporting of intellectual captial (of which Skandia seems to be the leader in taking it as far as a supplement to the annual shareholders report)
• Using the best avilalbe knowlege, with attention to how people know it existis and how it can be shared, which leads to
• How to create knoweldge sharing cultures
• The difference between tacit-explicit knowledge and the processes to move between one and the other. The high degree of implicit knowledge even after business processes are defined (the example of BP flying one of 12 world experts to help with and oil-well maintenance problem in Columbia - never mind the manual, it's the impicit knowledge of an expert that counts)
• The role of computers, but a heavy caution "not just another Lotus Notes database".

Other Observations

• The wide difference in approach depending on the nature of your industry -thus chemical and pharmaceutical are most concerned with recording and realising intellectual assets; service industries are concerned with incorporating best practice knowledge into process, and engineering try to encapsulate knowledge in 'hard' codified ways.
• Even in the practitioner companies, acceptance of KM was not widespread. Most had a few champions pushing the cause to the rest of the business.
• Is this another BPR? Should it be? Is there danger of it becoming? Most speakers felt KM was more fundamental, and often complemented BPR, filling in some aspects that BPR did not cover. Several of the audience were concerened about consultants making it a bandwagon, with unfulfilled promises.

Personal comment

• Several times I felt some speakers were confusing information with knowledge.
• It seems indicative that most of the presenters were from the US. Does this mean that - the US is far ahead in practice OR - US companies like to speak about it more?
• Part of my own perception is that many things that in Europe go under the label CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) could be relabelled as some aspect of Knoweldge Management, as indeed do some aspects of information management.
• I feel that the overall level of understanding of the subject is poor, exacerbated by the wide variety of situations where different tools and concepts are needed, rather than one all embracing approach.

Summary for KMF

I would welcome any feedback, or comments from other KMF members who have attended such meetings.

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David J. Skyrme                        Tel/Fax: +44 1635 551434   
David Skyrme Associates Limited         Newbury, Berks, England        
            
a member of the ENTOVATION Network          
Knowledge Innovation (sm) Strategies for the Millennium                
 http://www.hiway.co.uk/skyrme/entovatn.htm
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