TITLE : KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: ENABLING BUSINESS GROWTH.

What really propelled us to write this book? As incredible as it may sound, it has quite simply been the irresistible urge to share knowledge. In the last year or so, one has been virtually inundated with the talk of knowledge management. The Internet has innumerable sites on the subject. Major consultancy houses and software solutions providers are re-orienting their products and services the knowledge way. Global corporations are appointing CKOs (Chief Knowledge Officers) and evaluating methods to derive competitive advantage through knowledge management. Industry researchers are assigning multi-billion dollar values to the knowledge management opportunity and of course the print media is on a blitzkrieg as far as knowledge management goes. We wondered whether we would actually be doing a disservice to humanity by adding to this burgeoning mass of KM literature.

On the other hand, we realized that having been early voyagers on the KM trail, we had learnt significantly by trial and error; not only through our own experience but also through close interactions with others working in this area-something that our jobs have enabled us to do. The journey so far, though unarguably exciting, has been none too easy. It was thus that we felt the need to compile our learning and perhaps give a leg-up to those who have begun on this journey So, who are we targeting this book at? Through our discussions, we hope to be able to provide some specific answers and inputs to different cross-sections of people.

To the CEOs of various companies who might wish to know whether KM is merely a lot of hype. Haven't they been intelligently managing their businesses till now, after all? Is it something that will go the BPR way and die a natural death? Is it the consultants' latest master-stroke to make more money? On the other hand would it be suicidal to completely ignore these developments? If it is really a business imperative, is there any fool-proof way of going about it?

To the Business Heads. For them it is a matter of survival. If there is someone else who is doing the job better than they are, their future is at stake. But how do they identify what it is that is going to give them the business advantage? How do they know which of their problems it can solve? Surely the IT team is not going to be able to provide the answers - they might be the technology experts, but they are not tuned to the market. Who do they turn to?

To the HR Managers. How does one make a learning organization a reality in an era of knowledge enablement? What is the best that technology has to offer? How does one find the right mix of structured and unstructured learning to arrive at the perfect alloy? Should learning be synchronous or asynchronous? With over 500 vendors promising to deliver the same results, how does one make a choice? Does one necessarily have to make significant investments on intranets and affiliated technologies or are there others who can provide the necessary infrastructure to take care of learning needs?

To the CKO. Our heart goes out to this person! For he is bound to face almost every problem that we have encountered. He will be at the receiving end of a whole lot of product literature, demonstrations, mailers on the one hand and the whole organization expecting him to produce some magical results on the other. What are the organizational realities he should take into account, before making any commitments? What areas should he target first? What are the implementation pre-requisites? How does he take care of the cultural issues? How indeed should he take care of the technological issues? What inputs should he seek from the CIO? What are the technologies involved? Which are the technologies most relevant to what he is attempting to do? What tools should he use? (And believe us, this is no mean decision-the number of 'KM tools' in the market today is quite simply mind-boggling.) Should this be influenced by the current IT investments in the organization? How does the KM initiative tie-up with all the other IT initiatives in the organization. Does it really need to?

To the departmental heads of government organizations and large public-sector undertakings. Does KM have a different hue in their context? What are the technological considerations for dealing with mammoth set-ups such as these? Can this be leveraged to actually produce the dramatic effect of revitalizing these organizations and increasing the efficiency levels manifold?

And last but not the least, to the educationists. Knowledge has the utmost significance to those who have the best potential to assimilate and use it - the children at schools and the youngsters in universities. What are the mechanisms to enable knowledge sharing and enhancement to this most important segment of our society?

Do we have all the answers? Perhaps not. But in our endeavor to understand the amazing possibilities in this area, we believe we have been able to put together specific inputs in some areas and useful pointers to certain others. If this can help somebody to take a step forward towards their KM goal or somebody else to tell us that there is a better or an easier way out, we believe our effort in having compiled this work would have been worth it.

How should this book be read? From cover to cover, if you are a CIO or CKO of an organization that is planning to succeed or even survive, in the new millennium. We recommend that CEOs and head of consultancy organizations should read through the first four chapters which provide different perspectives of knowledge and knowledge management and spend time in absorbing the knowledge corporation discussion followed by the chapter that gives a clear implementation methodology. HR managers may want to focus on the learning perspectives of knowledge management, while government bureaucrats, academicians and even Information technology savvy politicians, a whole legion of whom are emerging these days, would find the application of knowledge management to the development of smart schools, virtual universities and even electronic governance of special interest.

We find that one often gets into philosophical arguments on the inability of mere mortals to comprehend and harness knowledge and wisdom. We have stayed away from going too deep into these highly subjective arguments but would welcome criticism and arguments from our learned philosopher friends if they read this tome.

Knowledge management is still an emerging management discipline and we can claim' at best to be ardent followers and students. Our effort at writing this book comes from a sense of duty to abstract some additions to the growing body of knowledge from our efforts in providing consulting in this area to global corporations. We hope our readers will derive at least half the joy from reading our work as we have derived through writing it.

August 15, 2000 GANESH NATARAJAN SANDHYA SHEKHAR