In the third generation, we grow beyond managing knowledge as a thing to also managing knowledge as a flow. To do this, we will need to focus more on context and narrative than on content.

Dave Snowden, 2002

Knowledge Management
Through Five Lenses

There can be many lenses through which to discern knowledge and its management. These different lenses incorporate a range of perspectives and differentiate between the purposes and motivations shaping knowledge management at various levels. A broad classification scheme would distinguish between:

• Personal knowledge management (individual dispositions and behaviors);
• Organizational knowledge management (multi-national corporations, small-to-medium enterprises, governments, non-government organizations, educational institutions);
• Sectoral knowledge management
  (economic sectors such as information technology, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, indigenous culture, etc.);
• National knowledge management
  (national policies for stimulating innovative cultures within industry); and
• Cultural knowledge management
  (transcends and spans organizational, sectoral, and national boundaries).

In terms of outcomes, knowledge management could further be classified into outcomes that improve efficiencies and outcomes that stimulate innovation.

An International Standards
Movement Has Developed

Perhaps the most visible activity in the e-knowledge world involves a comprehensive process of international collaboration in the development of standards and specifications for systems to manage and exchange learning content, process organizational knowledge, and support e-business transactions. Standards developments in applications interoperability have also advanced the growth of so-called “Web services” which will facilitate the development of seamlessly and easily integrated applications infrastructures.

The standards movement has been facilitating the birth of durable and transactable e-knowledge. The complex work of these standards groups has been far too arcane to engage the detailed attention of most professionals who are responsible in their organizations for knowledge management and learning. But the strategic implications of standards for implementing processes, networks, and marketplaces for e-knowledge are clear: such standards assist in building and maturing e-knowledge marketplaces while also stimulating innovation in the use of transactable e-knowledge. These issues should feature prominently in the planning of every enterprise for which knowledge is essential to competitive advantage.