5.
	Cost of Knowledge

Establish reducing the cost of knowledge sharing as an important enterprise goal. Put the infrastructures, policies, processes, and mechanisms in place to achieve that goal.

e-Knowledge has the potential to significantly reduce the unit cost of knowledge and to create new, knowledge-rich learning experiences. Moreover, linking perpetual learning and performance support to enterprise processes can dramatically reduce the cost of activities associated with those processes. Government agencies and corporations have been leading the way in applying activity-based-costing to learning, knowledge management, and performance support. However, this issue will be so important in the Knowledge Economy that no enterprise can pass on becoming reflective practitioners of knowledge costing.

The integration of enterprise processes, knowledge management, and cost accounting is a very new practice. Consequently, even those enterprises attempting this integration are using a patchwork of systems that do one or the other well, with significant gaps. Some companies, like KMI, are providing first-generation products that enable enterprises to align their processes and activities, then associating processes with knowledge. This leads to activity-based costing (ABC) that can be used to create metrics for process cost effectiveness.

Many colleges and universities have not considered the issue of the cost of knowledge, interactivity, certification, and the other elements that are bundled together in courses and degrees. However, most for-profit learning enterprises, the open universities, and corporate learning and performance support practices have been dealing with such cost issues for years. To jump-start their knowledge on these practices, most colleges and universities, associations, and other NGOs should learn from more advanced practitioners.

Exemplary Resources:
Reducing the Cost of Knowledge Sharing

• Army Corps of Engineers CRMS project. www.usace.army.mil/
• Course on economic analysis issues. www.knowledge-media.com/saba/ menu/menu.cfm?curr_id=25& student_id=25

Organizational Infrastructures, Processes, Capabilities and Cultures.

Changing enterprise infrastructures and knowledge ecologies will be a strategic priority over the next decade, as reflected in the following three actions.

	6.
	Value on Investment

Take a “value on investment” (VOI) perspective to planning for your organization’s ICT infrastructure and knowledge ecology. Develop visions, plans, and strategies for your Enterprise Applications Infrastructure and Solutions (EAIS), shaped by VOI and guided by perspectives on potential e-knowledge jump shifts.

VOI forces organizations to focus on both the tangible and intangible results of technology investment, including the following five actions that are critical to sustaining e-knowledge development:

• support process reinvention and innovation,
• formalize the management of knowledge assets and intellectual capital,
• enable collaboration that increases the capacity to learn through sharing knowledge and expertise,
• increase individual and organizational capabilities, and
• implement new leadership methods and capabilities.