Disciplines of KM

There's a fantastic post by Tim Wieringa over at Green Chameleon which tries to Explain Knowledge Management in Five Disciplines. The disciplines listed are:

  • Information Management & Search
  • Collaboration
  • Workflow Definitions
  • Networking
  • Training & Learning

The way Tim presents each discipline is excellent -- a brief description of the discipline with two or three concrete examples of activities within the scope of the discipline. The big takeaway message from Tim, though, is that:

[P]rofessionals in Knowledge Management should define a limited number of disciplines, that are concrete, easy to grasp, specific, and well-understood by people inside and outside the field of KM ...

[The common factors binding these KM disciplines together are that they:]

  • enable and cultivate conversations between people
  • streamline the flow of information in a structured and informal way
  • [allow] efficient sharing of written knowledge and knowledge in the heads of people
  • save time in accessing a large amount of knowledge
  • avoid re-inventing the wheel

Overall, Knowledge Management supports smarter decisions making and innovation.

I'll comment on Tim's disciplines in separate posts, but first I want to emphasize how much I think this is a great direction to take. KM is such a broad term that dividing it into multiple disciplines is probably the best way to avoid endless debates on scope.

(One of the better but less-acknowledged reasons is to allow "fringe" disciplines to exist without necessarily being embraced by the core of the profession. Some will migrate into the mainstream of KM thinking over time, others won't.)

I very much hope to see more discussion on this area by the KM profession in the future.

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