1.4.2 THE FOREST
AND THE TREES
KM-TheNew
Business Potpourri or not Seeing the Forest for theTrees
The
late 20th century was full of business enthusiasms, hot topics, and fads, but
KM,as demonstrated has become quite different from any of the rest in terms of
its sustained growth and staying power. It is quite literally unique among
those topics and enthusiasms.
What is that fundamentally
important difference?
Think
of all the management fads and enthusiasms of the late 20th century, 1975 –
2000.What is striking is how many of those management fads, enthusiasms, and
topics are highly related with the management of information, knowledge flow in
organizations or the management of information technology (IT).
Information
/ Knowledge related business enthusiasms and hot topics of the last quarter
century
(Listed
in approximate chronological order with the most recent first; note that these
are topics, not specific dated events)
|
No
|
List
|
No
|
List
|
|
1
|
Enterprise Content
Management (ECM)
|
13
|
Total Quality
Management (TQM) and Benchmarking
|
|
2
|
Supply Chain
Management (SCM)
|
14
|
Information
Technology (IT) and Organizational Structure
|
|
3
|
Customer
Relationship Management (CRM)
|
15
|
Information
Resource Management (IRM)
|
|
4
|
Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP)
|
16
|
Enterprise-Wide
Information Analysis (IBM Inc.)
|
|
5
|
Knowledge
Management (KM)
|
17
|
Management
Information Systems (MIS) to (Decision Support Systems (DSS) and the
importance of External Information
|
|
6
|
Intellectual
Capital (IC)
|
18
|
I.T. as
Competitive Advantage
|
|
7
|
E-business
|
19
|
Managing the
Archipelago (of Information Services)
|
|
8
|
DataWarehousing
/ Data Mining
|
20
|
Information
Systems Stage Hypotheses (Nolan, Rockart, Gibson & Jackson, March
and,Koenig, &Zachman)
|
|
9
|
Core Competencies
|
21
|
Decision
Analysis
|
|
10
|
Business
Process Re-Engineering
|
22
|
Data Driven
Systems Design (the fundamental basis of Structured Programming)
|
|
11
|
The shift from
Hierarchies to Markets, both economic and political
|
23
|
I.T. and
Productivity
|
|
12
|
Competitive
Intelligence (CI)
|
24
|
Minimization
of Unallocated Cost
|
(Note, there is not sufficient
room in this text to elaborate on these topics, but they are defined and
discussed in some detail in Koenig,M. [2000a].)
The
conclusion that one can draw is that the topics above are the trees in a
forest, a forest of information and knowledge
management, whose scope and importance we are still coming to recognize.
The
more likely explanation is that of the forests and the trees, the forest being
that community of trees listed above that all deal significantly with
information and knowledge management. The forest is certainly not going away,
nor will it remain static, new trees will emerge, butKMis morphing and
expanding in scope to be the name of that forest. always had trouble defining
KM, and now we have another definition, or more exactly a new metaphor, KM
is the name for that newly recognized forest of all the trees of
information and knowledge (small ‘k’) management.
