Knowledge Management: Silenced by Poor Economics

  Business Intelligence   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Strategy  

Back in the late 1990s, when corporate earnings were high and the economy soared, companies invested in many strategic initiatives. These initiatives were designed to drive efficiencies and provide numerous "soft benefits" in the long term.

Executives knew that they were the right things to do as they focused on the key pillars of corporate strategy: customer relationship building, supply chain optimization and driving value through re-use and standardization. However, none of these strategic initiatives were easy and often required strong executive support and coordination between several groups in an organization.

Inevitably--without senior support and proper program management--these initiatives would sink large sums of money and fail. As the economy began to degrade, more and more strategic projects have been dissolved in order to conserve cash or have been re-allocated into projects with immediate payoff. A high return on investment has become mandatory, and soft benefits and cost avoidance alone is not enough to support a project.

A casualty of this paradigm is knowledge management. In the 1990s, terms such as Chief Knowledge Office and the Knowledge Corporation were "in vogue," but today, these concepts are dismissed as not delivering to the bottom line. My belief is even though times are tough and pocketbooks are tight, companies …

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