From: Into The Big Blue Yonder by Rob Lewis
IBM has a string of KM accolades to its name – so how come it’s moving away from the whole knowledge management model? Because the decentralising impact of Web 2.0 calls for a new approach, or what the big blue calls ‘knowledge sharing’.
It’s a bold move considering the firm has been working under the management model for over a decade. Chris Cooper, knowledge sharing solutions leader at IBM Global Business Services (GBS), deems it a ‘philosophical repositioning’. “Management suggests control: control of process and control of environment. The sharing tag is quite important to us,” he explains.
IBM now sees organic and unimposed sharing as the biggest agent in the circulation of knowledge. Its stated strategy is to facilitate that sharing, not through any vertically integrated structure but through the empowerment of its many communities and individuals to network as openly and efficiently as possible.
“The focus was very much on the tools and the processes,” explains Luis Suarez, a KM specialist who works alongside Cooper in GBS. “There has been this shift in that the focus should be on the people.” As a leader in IBM’s community building team, that’s precisely what Suarez is aiming to achieve.
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