Just as knowledge management has triggered broader consideration of knowledge ecology, “customer relationship management” has evolved from a standalone software application to an integral part of the applications array enabling enterprises to sustain personalized interactions and relationships with a wide range of stakeholders. In the e-knowledge future, effective enterprises will develop indispensable relationships with their stakeholders.

Putting Knowledge Management into e-Learning. Awareness is growing of economic ways to augment today's limited kinds of information about data elements and learning objects. By adding semantic information, it becomes easier to share those assets and re-purpose them. The next big thing in learning management is the incorporation of content management tools and practices that make use of semantics. These will make it easier to infuse just-in-time knowledge into learning experiences.

Communities of Practice. Communities of practice will become an integral part of Knowledge Age enterprises. In learning enterprises, these communities will deal with learning and administrative services and will involve students, faculty, staff, alumni, suppliers, and other stakeholders. They will cut across organizational boundaries and connect to knowledge exchanges and marketplaces. Communities of practice will become much more intentional and part of active enterprise knowledge strategies.

Knowledge Resources Utility. Through the experience gateway, users will engage the enterprise’s knowledge resources. These will include internal and external sources and resources, not just databases “owned” by the enterprise. Powerful search engines and intelligent agents will be available as part of the enterprise’s solution to knowledge management. Knowledge resources will also include graphics, simulations, applications, community of practice “know-how,” and a host of other knowledge resources. Knowledge management will be a key ingredient of both formal and informal enterprise learning experiences. Users will have less reason to concern themselves with the location and original source of knowledge resources, which increasingly will function like a utility.

Network and Hardware Resources. Enterprises will deploy various levels of pervasive, ubiquitous computing environments in their own physical settings. But each enterprise’s knowledge resources will be available anywhere, anytime, through wired and wireless interactivity. Pervasive technology environments will be advanced by next generation Internet and the rise of nomadic computing and interactivity.

Services: The Tie that Binds All Applications and Solutions. The e-enterprise infrastructure of the future will depend on a broad range of services, supporting the experience gateway, applications array and solutions, knowledge resources, and network and hardware resources. These services will be provided by enterprise staff and external sourcing relationships that include both expert consultation and technical support dealing with implementation, integration, co-sourcing and shared services.

Processes, Communities of Practice, Capacities, and Culture

In addition to enterprise infrastructures, applications, and solutions, the successful e-knowledge enterprise needs to reshape the social elements of its knowledge ecology.

• Business processes should be reinvented to produce e-knowledge-based relationships that will be demanded by customers, learners, and other stakeholders;
• Communities of practice, linked to business processes, need substantial development to serve as the creators and stewards of knowledge capital;
• Individual and organizational capacities perpetually grow to assimilate and share knowledge far more effectively and efficiently than today; and
• Culture regarding knowledge should be refashioned to reflect the emerging needs of customers, learners, suppliers, and other stakeholders.