INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION – KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to identify knowledge management concepts that relate to the implementation of Knowledge management Practices in education and also in collaborative arrangements.  It also discusses about the challenges facing in higher education in India and the concept of Knowledge management in education and the new trends of education.  It also explains about the Knowledge management and types of Knowledge management and their trends and new innovations of Knowledge management in current education scenario. Educational trends and tasks are towards more learner- centered materials.  In response to these trends, colleges and universities are offering new courses at a distance and forms traditional delivery.  The effort to share the most recent understandings about Knowledge management in education is the changing roles and challenges for higher education. The increased productivity required by faculty are driving forces for the development of more diverse and efficient teaching method.

INTRODUCTION:

Knowledge management in education is the collection of processes that govern the creation, dissemination and utilization of knowledge.  In one form or another, knowledge management has been around for a very long time.  Practitioners have included philosophers, priests, teachers, politicians, scribes, Liberians etc., Knowledge management is not “A technology thing” or a “Computer thing” if we accept the premise that Knowledge management is concerned with the entire process of discovery and creation of knowledge then we are strongly driven to accept that Knowledge management is much more than a “Technology thing” and that elements of it exist in each of one Jobs. Knowledge management comprises a range of practices used by organizations to identify, create, represent and distribute knowledge.  It has been an established discipline since 1995 with a body of university courses and both professional and academic journals dedicated to it. Knowledge management is frequently linked to the idea of the learning organization .Knowledge management refers to a range of practices used by organizations to identify the higher levels of innovations in education. The sharing of knowledge in industry, colleges , universities and, almost any institution in this country will make reference to the capturing of knowledge. 

DEFINITION

            “Knowledge management is the discipline of enabling individuals, team and entire organizations to collectively and systematically create, share and apply knowledge to better achieve their objectives”

 Knowledge management education is the process of constructivity using the information and knowledge that is inherent to any organisation –be it a school, university or multinational company.  In order to enhance its performance, its management and its operations.  This process of learning to know what we know is one that has brought great benefits.  Particularly to many commercial organizations.

MAARTEN SIERCHUIS: -

Knowledge analysis: In knowledge analysis we model a knowledge source in such away that we can analyse its usefulness, its weakness and its appropriateness within the organization. Knowledge analysis is a necessary step for the ability to manager knowledge. Within knowledge Analysis we can use knowledge modeling and knowledge acquisition techniques.

ROBERT TAYLOR:-

The vital importance of knowledge in business has always been recognised but, up until now, organisations haven’t felt able to manage it because they understood neither the problems and the opportunities nor the strategies and solutions. This picture is gradually changing as models, methods, tools and techniques for effective knowledge management are becoming available and as organisations realise the importance of knowledge and thinking to their capacity to adapt to the changing world.

WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT? : –

 A proposition that responsiveness and innovation can be improved through the leveraging of collective wisdom and experience.

 “Knowledge Management (KM) is an effort to increase useful knowledge within the organization. Ways to do this include encouraging communication, offering opportunities to learn, and promoting the sharing of appropriate knowledge artifacts.”

 This proposition is supported by:

• New process specific to the management of knowledge
• Organizational structures that create accountability for km
• Applications that support km processes
• Enabling technologies

THE CHALLENGES FACING HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA : –

 Expansion of Higher Education in India :

 The success stories of ‘green revolution’, ‘space technology’, ‘nuclear energy’ and ‘information technology superiority India has achieved’ -  we owe these all to  the higher education system as it evolved during 60 years of India’s independence.  It can not be denied that it is Indian higher education system that to a significant extent has contributed to India rising to become the World’s second fastest growing economy, the World’s third largest economy, fastest growing mobile phone market, owner of the largest bandwidth capacity and contributing second largest portion of scientists and engineers in the world.  

 Expansion with Equity :

 India has experienced appreciable growth in the number of institutions of higher education during last six decades and particularly since 1990.  This growth has already been because of expansion of number of State Universities and institutions deemed to be Universities.  The period since 1990 has also seen the emergence of private Universities.  The expansion of central universities has rather been slow and skewed in terms of regional distribution.    It also mentioned that a significant majority of Universities, particularly managed by the state governments ate affiliating in nature.  Given the current number of universities in the country the burden of affiliating colleges per University is unmanageably high and incongruous, in some cases the number of colleges affiliated to a University runs as high as many hundreds.  Thus despite appreciable growth in number of universities there is scope rather need for further expansion in the number of universities and also colleges.

 Inclusiveness and Equality :

The participants in the Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Inequality track represented a great deal of diversity themselves and included faculty and students from a rich variety of research institutions, private liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. While participants engaged issues and strategies in each of the three substantive area—diversity, inclusiveness, and inequality in education (DIIE)—the bulk of our conversations focused on diversity and inequality.

Quality and Excellence :

Ensuring quality education demands structural and institutional reforms in addition to committing enhanced financial resources. Imparting quality education would entail better infrastructure; greater use of ICT; teaching and learning in smaller groups; granting autonomy to the faculty, department and individual teachers. But more than that, imparting quality education requires ‘faculty development’ or what many call ‘faculty recharge programmes’ so that the faculty does not go stale, it retains its vibrancy and dynamism in doing research, in learning, and innovating and in devising new methods of teaching.

 In the modern technological world quality education has become a necessity. Governments all over the world are appointing committees and commissions to bring in excellence in education. Curricular are being revised and improved to include more and more relevant knowledge in the curricula of schools and colleges.

 Funding of Higher Education :

 The importance and need of setting up these new institutions of higher and professional education can hardly be ignored, but investing in existing facilities and institutions should be no less a priority.

Fee hike suggested by many can hardly bring the required resources.  We by no means are suggesting that fee need not be rationalized.  In addition it is suggested that there is need for building a robust and strong private – public partnership for funding and improving the quality of higher education.  We have no hesitation in endorsing the suggestion as we see the practical and mutual advantages to private houses, industries on one hand and the higher education institutions and recipients of higher education on the other.  For example, the Universities and research institutions can do the research and innovations which may provide competitive edge to Indian industry and industry may provide on the site based experience to students. 

Academic and Administrative Reforms :

Unlike expansion, equity/inclusiveness and quality/excellence, where efforts are in making, the policies concerning reforms in the arena of academics, administration and governance are already well formulated and publicity announced. 

While these recommendations about credit system, semester system, more of international assessment and less written examination component, teachers evaluation by students, inter-institutional mobility etc have been generally accepted, quite a few of them have not been implemented and operationalised as yet.  Some of these have been tried and failed while some others have been implemented on selective basis.  As a result there is a lot of institutional variations in admission, examination, faculty and governance related practices.

Role of Private Education :

The spread of higher education was achieved through active state support whereby public funding was considered necessary in order to provide equitable opportunities of higher education to all.  It has, however, been a proclaimed policy of the country to also encourage private investment in higher education so long as they are driven by charitable and non-profit motives.  While universities have largely been in the public domain, India has had a history of having large number of colleges established and maintained by private management.  In recent times, the private self-financing institutions colleges and other degree awarding institutions have gained prominence.  At the same time, there has also been witnessed a tendency among the public funded institutions to start and run courses on self-financing basis.   More recently, the private universities, either under state legislature or through the deemed university mode have also come to be established.

Internationalization of Education :

The issues concerning internationalization of higher education can be discussed into two broad heads, which represent two broad dimensions of the issue. The first aspect deals with the demand for opening Indian higher education for international service providers while the second aspect deal with the internationalization of Indian higher education. Going abroad for higher education has long been the most cherished goal for students of underdeveloped and developing countries.  While most foreign students were known for their diligence and dedication and were often a source of pride for their universities, they were seldom seen as a source of revenue. But things have changed a great deal in the post WTO/GATS regime.

 Developing countries are now seen as a market for higher education and foreign universities from other countries are competing each other to increase their market share.  As the demand for opening the higher education sector in India for international service providers is increasing, the issue of providing appropriate regulatory framework for international education providers is under consideration of the government.  Effective regulatory mechanism is required to ensure quality higher education with equity and accountability. It was also felt that Indian universities and colleges should be permitted to form strategic alliances with international universities and other institutions of repute and that universities in India should be permitted to take up collaborative research with foreign universities but the arrangements should be such where Indian counter parts share Pattern Rights  and copyrights.

 CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN EDUCATION: –

• Education for Knowledge
• Education for Information
• Education for Skills
• Education for Employment
• Education for Livelihood
• Education for Empowerment
• Education for Social and National Development

 KEY TASKS INVOLVED IN EDUCATION FOR:

 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

 A. MICRO-LEVEL MANAGEMENT OF TASKS:

• Course structuring and study material preparation
• Distribution and presentation of study materials
• Communication between educational actors (student-faculty, student-student)
• Performing instructional assignments, either alone or group-based
• Performance assessment

B. MACRO-LEVEL MANAGEMENT OF TASKS:

• Organisation of the whole educational process
• Organising and managing information and knowledge flows within the educational organisation
• Keeping track of performance of students, faculty, courses, curriculum, and of the (allocation of) available knowledge resources
• Monitoring results in terms of goals and standards
• Dynamic changing of the educational program as feedback to discrepancies between goals and standards and obtained performance results.

 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOCUS :

“The focus on knowledge management is on ‘doing the right thing’ instead of doing things right’. It provides a framework within which the organization views all its processes as knowledge processes and all business processes involve creation, dissemination and application of knowledge towards organizational sustenance and survival”. 

 KNOWLEDGE TYPES:

 It contains two types they are ;

• Explicit knowledge
• Tacit knowledge

EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE

• Objective, rational, technical
• Easily documented
• Easily transferred / taught / learned

TACIT KNOWLEDGE

• Subjective, cognitive, experiential learning
• Hard to document
• Hard to transfer / teach / learn
• Involves a lot of human interpretation

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS : -

The process of Knowledge Management applicable to schools, colleges and universities. Some would argue that sharing knowledge is their reason of being. If that is the case, then the higher education sector should be replete with examples of institutions that leverage knowledge to spur innovation, improve services, or achieve operational excellence. However, although some examples exist, they are the exception rather than the rule. Knowledge Management is not a new field, and experiments are beginning to mature in higher education.

I believe there is tremendous value to higher education institutions that develop initiatives to share knowledge to achieve business or organizational objectives. What are the basic concepts of knowledge management, how the trends, and how it might be applied in higher education and whether higher education is ready to embrace it or not, we will know through this article.

NEW TRENDS IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: -

Several trends will shape the field of knowledge management in the not-too distant future (even now):

• Emerging technology solutions
• The convergence of knowledge management with e-business
• The movement from limited knowledge management projects to more enterprise wide projects
• Increasing use of knowledge management to enhance innovation
• Increasing use of tacit knowledge (rather than explicit knowledge)

INNOVATIVE SKILLS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN CURRENT EDUCATION SCENARIO: -

Using knowledge management techniques and technologies in higher education is as vital as it is in the corporate sector. If done effectively, it can lead to better decision-making capabilities, reduced “product” development cycle time (for example, curriculum development and research), improved academic and administrative services, and reduced costs. Consider the number of faculty and staff who possess institutional knowledge. For example, what institution does not have a faculty member who has led successful curriculum revision task forces? Or a departmental secretary who knows how to navigate the complex proposal development or procurement processes? Or a researcher who has informal connections to the National Science Foundation? Or a special assistant to the president who has uncovered (or generated) useful reports that individual deans or department chairs could use to develop their own strategic plans?

Relying on the institutional knowledge of unique individuals can hamper the flexibility and responsiveness of any organization. The challenge is to convert the information that currently resides in those individuals and make it widely and easily available to any faculty member, staff person, or other constituent. An institution wide approach to knowledge management can lead to exponential improvements in sharing knowledge—both explicit and tacit—and the subsequent surge benefits.

Is higher education ready to embrace knowledge management? A key ingredient in an institution’s readiness to embrace knowledge management is its culture—the beliefs, values, norms, and behaviors that are unique to an organization. Informally, it is the unwritten rules or “how things really get done.” Higher education is moving from the old culture that considers, What’s in it for me?” to a new culture that says, “What’s in it for our peoples?” And it is developing a culture that is ready to embrace knowledge management.

CONCLUSION: -

Innovations in knowledge management will improve the standards of all the institutions, develop the performance of students in all faculties and by which the progress of a nation can be viewed nakedly.  Knowledge management refers to a range of practices used by organizations to identify the higher levels of innovations in education. The sharing of knowledge in industry, colleges, universities and, almost any institution in this country will make reference to the capturing of knowledge.  By developing the knowledge management, the nation’s economy increases and can compete in the global scenario.

Article by:

X.Queen Shanthana Mary

M. Phil Scholar,

Department of management studies & research,

Karpagam University,

Watch the video related to Knowledge Management

Google Tech Talks June 4, 2008 ABSTRACT Successful knowledge management results in a competitive advantage in today’s information- and knowledge-rich industries. The elaboration and integration of emerging web-based tools and services has proven suitable for collecting and organizing intellectual property. Due to an increasing information overload, information and knowledge visualization have become an effective method for representing complex bodies of knowledge in an alternative fashion by …

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What are the problems in knowledge management other than people not sharing their knowledge?
some problems are people not sharing knowledge, not getting the right information at right time, what other problems are their that needs to be looked into? any ideas plss

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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Innovations in Education – Knowledge Management

It is quite difficult to define the knowledge management unless we don’t have a strong idea of what is the knowledge is. Before defining the knowledge management needs to effectively define the term knowledge first, that we will discuss later. But first we can define knowledge management as an activity which has two basic objectives in a business. The first objective is to collect the knowledge that is important for the business and has direct concerns with the business strategy, policy and practice of an organization at all levels. The second objective of the knowledge management s to map the intellectual assets of the organization, making these vast amounts of corporate information accessible and sharing the best practices through the technology that enables above function including intranet and groupware.

Role of knowledge management in the business

Knowledge management has an important role in maintaining a successful business process. If you study you will observe that there is a sound connection between management strategies, practices and business issues with the knowledge management. Knowledge management also affects the different areas of a business including; Change management, Best practices, Risk management, Benchmarking Most of the experts in business class and corporate level view knowledge management as business process reengineering. In the most of the researches in the recent past about business strategies has acknowledged that that information and knowledge are business assets, and that businesses need policies and tools to manage those assets.

Need for the Knowledge Management

There is a lot of debate on the issue that why an organization needs knowledge management. There are plenty of opinions about the methods, paths and objectives of knowledge management systems. Most of the time, need for knowledge management is focused on enhancing creativity and creating new knowledge value — while other programs emphasize leveraging existing knowledge.

There is an increasing understanding that intellectual capital is important for the growth of the organizations and discussion about intellectual capital has proliferated all over the world but few businesses has acted on this understanding. Where companies have take action — and a growing number are doing so — implementations of “knowledge management” may range from technology-driven methods of accessing, controlling, and delivering information to massive efforts to change corporate culture.

What is the real knowledge?

Most of the time the terms information and knowledge are often used interchangeably by business writers. Let’s choose a simple definition and get on with it: Knowledge has two basic definitions of interest. The first pertains to a defined body of information. Depending on the definition, the body of information might consist of facts, opinions, ideas, theories, principles, and models (or other frameworks). Clearly, other categories are possible, too. Subject matter (e.g., chemistry, mathematics, etc.) is just one possibility. Knowledge also refers to a person’s state of being with respect to some body of information. These states include ignorance, awareness, familiarity, understanding, facility, and so on. In traditional perceptions of the role of knowledge in business organizations, tacit knowledge is often viewed as the real key to getting things done and creating new value. Not explicit knowledge. Thus we often encounter an emphasis on the “learning organization” and other approaches that stress internalization of information (through experience and action) and generation of new knowledge through managed interaction.

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Nick Milton, of www.knoco.com, explains what the standard “people, process, technology” really means in knowledge management terms. Blog at http

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what does knowledge management process mean?
i have an essay title – explain the “knowledge management process” in a company and explain its salient characteristics?

But I don't really know what knowledge management process means? Can any one describe it so its easy to understand??

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For the last two hundred years, neo-classical economics has recognised only two factors of production: labour and capital. This is now changing. Information and knowledge are replacing capital and energy as the primary wealth-creating assets, just as the latter two replaced land and labor 200 years ago. In addition, technological developments in the 20th century have transformed the majority of wealth-creating work from physically-based to “knowledge-based.” Technology and knowledge are now the key factors of production. With increased mobility of information and the global work force, knowledge and expertise can be transported instantaneously around the world, and any advantage gained by one company can be eliminated by competitive improvements overnight. The only comparative advantage a company will enjoy will be its process of innovation–combining market and technology know-how with the creative talents of knowledge workers to solve a constant stream of competitive problems–and its ability to derive value from information. We are now an information society in a knowledge economy where knowledge management is essential. This page lists and rates Internet resources related to the field of knowledge based economy and knowledge management in the new information society.

Prof. Loveleen Chawla

KNOWLEDGE BASED ECONOMY

(with special reference to India)

“We are living through a period of profound change and transformation of the shape of society and its underlying economic base … The nature of production, trade, employment and work in the coming decades will be very different from what it is today.”

In an agricultural economy land is the key resource. In an industrial economy natural resources, such as coal and iron ore, and labour are the main resources. A knowledge economy is one in which knowledge is the key resource. It is not a new idea that knowledge plays an important role in the economy, nor is it a new fact. All economies, however simple, are based on knowledge about how, for example, to farm, to mine and to build; and this use of knowledge has been increasing since the Industrial Revolution. But the degree of incorporation of knowledge and information into economic activity is now so great that it is inducing quite profound structural and qualitative changes in the operation of the economy and transforming the basis of competitive advantage. The rising knowledge intensity of the world economy and our increasing ability to distribute that knowledge have increased its value to all participants in the economic system. The implications of this are profound, not only for the strategies of firms and for the policies of government but also for the institutions and systems used to regulate economic behaviour.

What Is Knowledge Economy?

“Capitalism is undergoing an epochal transformation from a mass production system where the principal source of value was human labour to a new era of ‘innovation mediated production’ where the principal component of value creation, productivity and economic growth is knowledge.”

Definitions:

Defining the knowledge economy is challenging precisely because the commodity it rests on “knowledge” is itself hard to pin down with any precision. Perhaps for this reason there are few definitions that go much beyond the general and hardly any that describe the knowledge economy in ways that might allow it to be measured and quantified.
# The knowledge economy is a vague term that refers either to an economy of knowledge focused on the production and management of knowledge, or a knowledge-based economy. In the second meaning, more frequently used, it refers to the use of knowledge to produce economic benefits.

# The knowledge economy is the story of how new technologies have combined with intellectual and knowledge assets – the “intangibles” of research, design, development, creativity, education, brand equity and human capital – to transform our economy.
The Knowledge Economy is emerging from two defining forces: the rise in knowledge intensity of economic activities, and the increasing globalisation of economic affairs.

The rise in knowledge intensity is being driven by the combined forces of the information technology revolution and the increasing pace of technological change. Globalisation is being driven by national and international deregulation, and by the IT related communications revolution.

However, it is important to note that the term ‘Knowledge Economy’ refers to the overall economic structure that is emerging, not to any one, or combination of these phenomena. Various observers describe today’s global economy as one in transition to a “knowledge economy”, as an extension of “information society”. The transition requires that the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy need rewriting in an interconnected, globalised economy where knowledge resources such as know-how, expertise, and intellectual property are more critical than other economic resources such as land, natural resources, or even manpower.

According to analysts of the “knowledge economy,” these rules need to be rewritten at the levels of firms and industries in terms of knowledge management and at the level of public policy as knowledge policy or knowledge-related policy.

Concepts:

A key concept of this sector of economic activity is that knowledge and education (often referred to as “human capital”) can be treated as:
• A business product, as educational and innovative intellectual products and services can be exported for a high value return.
• A productive asset.

The initial foundation for the Knowledge Economy was first introduced in 1966 in a book by Peter Drucker. The Effective Executive described the difference between the Manual worker and the knowledge worker. A manual worker works with his hands and produces “stuff”. A knowledge worker works with his or her head not hands, and produces ideas, knowledge, and information.

Knowledge Economy Vs. Traditional Economy:

It can be argued that the knowledge economy differs from the traditional economy in several key respects:

• The economics is not of scarcity, but rather of abundance. Unlike most resources that deplete when used, information and knowledge can be shared, and actually grow through application.

•The effect of location is either diminished, in some economic activities: using appropriate technology and methods, virtual marketplaces and virtual organizations that offer benefits of speed, agility, round the clock operation and global reach can be created . or, on the contrary, reinforced in some other economic fields, by the creation of business clusters around centres of knowledge, such as universities and research centres having reached world-wide excellence.

• Laws, barriers and taxes are difficult to apply on solely a national basis. Knowledge and information “leak” to where demand is highest and the barriers are lowest.

• Knowledge enhanced products or services can command price premiums over comparable products with low embedded knowledge or knowledge intensity.

• Pricing and value depends heavily on context. Thus the same information or knowledge can have vastly different value to different people, or even to the same person at different times.

• Knowledge when locked into systems or processes has higher inherent value than when it can “walk out of the door” in people’s heads.

• Human capital — competencies — are a key component of value in a knowledge-based company, yet few companies report competency levels in annual reports. In contrast, downsizing is often seen as a positive “cost cutting” measure.

• Communication is increasingly being seen as fundamental to knowledge flows. Social structures, cultural context and other factors influencing social relations are therefore of fundamental importance to knowledge economies.
These characteristics require new ideas and approaches from policy makers, managers and knowledge workers.

Driving Forces:

Commentators suggest that at least three interlocking driving forces are changing the rules of business and national competitiveness:

• Globalization — markets and products are more global.

• Information/Knowledge Intensity — efficient production relies on information and know-how; over 70 per cent of workers in developed economies are information workers; many factory workers use their heads more than their hands.

• Computer networking and Connectivity developments such as the Internet bring the “global village” ever nearer.

As concerns the applications of any new technology, it depends how it meets economic demand. It can stay dormant or get a commercial breakthrough.

Globalization

The other main driver of the emerging knowledge economy is the rapid globalisation of economic activities. While there have been other periods of relative openness in the world economy, the pace and extent of the current phase of globalisation is without precedent.
The global communications revolution has been accompanied by a widespread movement to economic deregulation, including

# the reduction of tariff and non-tariff barriers on trade in both goods and services; the floating of currencies and deregulation of financial markets more generally;

# the reduction of barriers to foreign direct investment and other international capital flows, and of barriers to technology transfers; and

# the deregulation of product markets in many countries, particularly in terms of the reduction in the power of national monopolies in areas such as telecommunications, air transport and the finance and insurance industries.
Together these changes have led to rapid globalisation. As a result, goods and services can be developed, bought, sold, and in many cases even delivered over electronic networks.

Increasing knowledge intensity

The last twenty years have seen an explosion in the application of computing and communications technologies in all areas of business and community life. This explosion has been driven by sharp falls in the cost of computing and communications per unit of performance, and by the rapid development of applications relevant to the needs of users. Digitalization, open systems standards, and the development software and supporting technologies for the application of new computing and communications systems – including scanning and imaging technologies, memory and storage technologies, display systems and copying technologies – are now helping users realise the potential of the IT revolution. It is in the Internet that these technologies come together, and it is the Internet phenomenon that exemplifies the IT revolution. Over the first decade of its development the Internet remained a specialist research network. By 1989 there were 159,000 Internet hosts worldwide. Now, just 10 years later, there are more than 43 million.

In economic terms, the central feature of the IT revolution is the ability to manipulate, store and transmit large quantities of information at very low cost. An equally important feature of these technologies is their pervasiveness. While earlier episodes of technical change have centered on particular products or industrial sectors, information technology is generic. It impacts on every element of the economy, on both goods and services; and on every element of the business chain, from research and development to production, marketing and distribution.

Because the marginal cost of manipulating, storing and transmitting information is virtually zero, the application of knowledge to all aspects of the economy is being greatly facilitated, and the knowledge intensity of economic activities greatly increased. This increasing knowledge intensity involves both the increasing knowledge intensity of individual goods and services, and the growing importance of those goods and services in the economy.

Computer Networking and Connectivity

It is virtually impossible to separate technology from the act of living in today¹s world. We are all connected to our work, to our product and service providers, and to each other in myriad ways that could never have been predicted just ten years ago. Out of this vast degree of interconnectivity spring networks – and nodes of contact within networks – that add momentum to the pace of still more technological opportunities and developments. It is an undeniable fact that ICTs play a very important role in the development of every nation these days. This is because growth is induced by the flow of information and this realization has led most economies into knowledge based ones. Developing countries have realized this and are rigorously pursuing the use of ICTs as a platform for socio-economic development.

Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is a rapidly growing segment of the economy, which is expected to increase yet more rapidly over the next few years. Current internet commercial transactions are estimated at hundreds of millions and are projected for billions within the decade. The growth of net transacted revenues will be energized with Visa and MasterCard’s release of secure software standards for their card members’ internet transactions, and the acceptance of standards for micropricing. All in all, it is reasonable to project that, in a decade’s time, the vast majority of economic transactions will involve a significant electronic component. Business is experiencing a significant transition. This transition is based on the fact that we are now in a networked environment. ICT can bring business transformation, changing work environments and global economy. Advent of the “new economy”, embodied by the expansion of the internet, would be the signal of the end of geography and space. Distances are reportedly abolished as markets are from now on at a click away.

Growing Interest

Various management writers have for several years highlighted the role of knowledge or intellectual capital in business. The value of high-tech companies such as software and biotechnology companies, is not in physical assets as measured by accountants, but in their intangibles such as knowledge and patents. The last few years have a growing recognition by accounting bodies and international agencies that knowledge is a crucial factor of production. For example, the OECD has groups investigating ‘human capital’ and also the role of knowledge in international competitiveness.

Policy Implications

The evolving knowledge economy has important implications for policy makers of local, regional and national government as well as international agencies and institutions e.g.:
• Traditional measures of economic success must be supplemented by new ones
• Economic Development policy should focus not on ‘jobs created’ but rather on infrastructure for sustainable ‘knowledge enhancement’ that acts as a magnet for knowledge-based companies.
• Develop regulation and taxation for information and knowledge trading at international level, looking to future knowledge-based industries rather than traditional industries.
• Stimulate market development through new forms of collaboration.

Issues And Challenges:

The main challenges facing policy makers and business leaders are the following:
• It is difficult to ‘go it alone’. Stakeholders, especially employees and business partners must share similar views for your own initiatives to succeed
• alone recognition and reward systems usually do not sufficiently recognise recognizee contributions. They are linked to performance measures of the traditional economy.
• Measures of return on investment are done using traditional accounting methods, thus investments in knowledge enhancing activities need strong advocates at senior levels.

Emergence Of The Knowledge

The emergence of the knowledge economy can be characterised in terms of the increasing role of knowledge as a factor of production and its impact on skills, learning, organisation and innovation.
• There is an enormous increase in the codification of knowledge, which together with networks and the digitalisation of information, is leading to its increasing commodification.
• Increasing codification of knowledge is leading to a shift in the balance of the stock of knowledge – leading to a relative shortage of tacit knowledge.

• Codification is promoting a shift in the organisation and structure of production.

• Information and communication technologies increasingly favour the diffusion of information over re-invention, reducing the investment required for a given quantum of knowledge.

• The increasing rate of accumulation of knowledge stocks is positive for economic growth (raising the speed limit to growth). Knowledge is not necessarily exhausted in consumption.

• Codification is producing a convergence, bridging different areas of competence, reducing knowledge dispersion, and increasing the speed of turnover of the stock of knowledge.

• The innovation system and its ‘knowledge distribution power’ are critically important.

• The increased rate of codification and collection of information are leading to a shift in focus towards tacit (‘handling’) skills.

• Learning is increasingly central for both people and organisations.

• Learning involves both education and learning-by-doing, learning-by-using and learning-by-interacting.

• Learning organisations are increasingly networked organisations.

• Initiative, creativity, problem solving and openness to change are increasingly important skills.

• The transition to a knowledge-based system may make market failure systemic.

• A knowledge-based economy is so fundamentally different from the resource based system of the last century that conventional economic understanding must be re-examined.

What’s New About The New Economy?

“In the 21st century, comparative advantage will become much less a function of natural resource endowments and capital-labour ratios and much more a function of technology and skills. Mother nature and history will play a much smaller role, while human ingenuity will play a much bigger role.”

What makes the emergence of the knowledge economy important is that it is, in some significant respects, different from the industrial economy we have known for most of the last 200 years. Those differences include the following:

Information revolution

The IT revolution has intensified the move towards knowledge codification, and increased the share of codified knowledge in the knowledge stock of advanced economies. All knowledge that can be codified and reduced to information can now be transmitted around the world at relatively little cost. Hence, knowledge is acquiring more of the properties of a commodity. Market transactions are facilitated by codification, and the diffusion of knowledge is accelerated. Codification is also reducing the importance of additional, duplicative investments in acquiring knowledge. It is creating bridges between fields and areas of competence and reducing the ‘dispersion’ of knowledge. These developments promise an acceleration of the rate of growth of stocks of accessible knowledge, with positive implications for economic growth.

Knowledge, skills and learning

Information and communication technologies have greatly reduced the cost and increased the capacity of organisations to codify knowledge, process and communicate information. In doing so they have radically altered the ‘balance’ between codified and tacit knowledge in the overall stock of knowledge. In essence, creating a shortage of tacit knowledge. As access to information becomes easier and less expensive, the skills and competencies relating to the selection and efficient use of information become more crucial, and tacit knowledge in the form of the skills needed to handle codified knowledge becomes more important than ever.

Information and communication technology investments are complementary with investment in human resources and skills. The skills required of humans will increasingly be those that are complementary with information and communication technology; not those that are substitutes. Whereas machines replaced labour in the industrial era, information technology will be the locus of codified knowledge in the knowledge economy, and work in the knowledge economy will increasingly demand uniquely human (tacit) skills – such as conceptual and inter-personal management and communication skills.

Innovation and knowledge networks

The knowledge economy increasingly relies on the diffusion and use of knowledge, as well as its creation. Hence the success of enterprises, and of national economies as a whole, will become more reliant upon their effectiveness in gathering, absorbing and utilising knowledge, as well as in its creation.
A knowledge economy is, in effect, a hierarchy of networks, driven by the acceleration of the rate of change and the rate of learning, where the opportunity and capability to get access to and join knowledge-intensive and learning-intensive relations determines the socio-economic position of individuals and firms.13 Firms must become learning organisations, continuously adapting management, organisation and skills to accommodate new technologies and grasp new opportunities. They will be increasingly joined in networks, where interactive learning involving creators, producers and users in
experimentation and exchange of information drives innovation.

Learning organizations and innovation systems

In a knowledge economy, firms search for linkages to promote inter-firm interactive learning, and for outside partners and networks to provide complementary assets. These relationships help firms spread the costs and risks associated with innovation, gain access to new research results, acquire key technological components, and share assets in manufacturing, marketing and distribution. As they develop new products and processes, firms determine which activities they will undertake individually, which in collaboration with other firms, which in collaboration with universities or research institutions, and which with the support of government. Innovation is thus the result of numerous interactions between actors and institutions, which together form an innovation system.

Those innovation systems consist of the flows and relationships, which exist among industry, government and academia in the development of science and technology. And the interactions within these systems influence the innovative performance of firms and ultimately of the economy. The ‘knowledge distribution power’ of the system, or its capability to ensure timely access by innovators to relevant stocks of knowledge, is therefore a major determinant of prosperity.

Global competition and production.
Strategy and location.

India As A Knowledge Economy: Aspirations Versus Reality

The Indian vision of a knowledge-based economy will be realised only when it is based on the foundation of a robust industrial economy. To be truly beneficial, the rain of IT must fall at the right place, in the right quantity, at the right time and for the right purpose.

THE Indian software industry has compiled an impressive track record over the past decade. Entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and politicians are now advancing views about how India can transform itself into a knowledge-based economy by riding the information technology (IT) bandwagon. Isolated instances of villagers using e-mail are cited as examples of such transformation. Likewise, e-governance is being projected as the way of the future.

There is no dearth of fascinating stories about IT-enabled changes. But, there is little discussion about whether such changes are sustainable and effective when other areas of the economy continue to lag. For example, 79 per cent of India’s population lives in villages with limited basic infrastructure. Over 60 per cent of the population is considered literate, but with literacy being defined as the ability to read and write simple words in any language, acquired with or without formal schooling. This criterion is so basic, that it is almost irrelevant in the context of a knowledge economy. Yet, Central and State governments have projected IT as a vehicle for social and economic transformation. Are we putting the cart before the horse here? Even if the focus on IT is justifiable, how must IT policy be designed so that the nation is benefited in a balanced way?

In this commentary, we discuss the implications of India’s intensive focus on the IT sector. We argue that India should aggressively pursue manufacturing- and agriculture-based industries to build a robust industrial economy that can be made more efficient with IT. IT projects can certainly be pursued within the private sector. However, government policy should not be heavily skewed in favour of the IT industry when its benefits to society are unclear and when its role within the broader framework of national development has not been adequately articulated. Further, policy-makers should moderate their obsession with IT as a panacea for India’s socio-economic problems.

India As A Knowledge Economy:

The value of IT depends greatly on the existing level of economic development. IT can make existing assets and processes more effective and efficient, but cannot compensate for the lack of a basic infrastructure. What is appropriate for a developed economy is not necessarily appropriate for India, where basic elements of infrastructure including quality education, healthcare, electricity and drinking water remain in short supply.

The impact of IT is best understood when the differences between industrial and knowledge-intensive ventures are recognised. Industrial growth derives from investments in large-scale infrastructure (such as railways, roadways, power grids and dams). Such infrastructure supports the growth of physical-asset intensive industries (such as the steel and transportation industries) that create and move physical entities (such as goods, water and people). These ventures employ numerous workers with limited education and skills, and can uplift large sections of society.

In contrast, ventures in the knowledge economy usually involve the production of knowledge-intensive goods (like software), and the large-scale capture, movement and utilization of information using sophisticated network infrastructure (such as computers, cable, fibre and routers). Beyond the physical labour required for initial construction, building and maintaining such infrastructure requires specialized knowledge.

Despite the hype of the “new economy”, the fact is that economic development is cumulative. The industrial economy made agriculture more productive. The productivity of agricultural labour skyrocketed with the use of industrial and biological innovations including tractors, irrigation systems, fertilizers, pesticides and genetically engineered seeds. Historically, industrial innovation in developed economies has created great wealth and improved living standards across societal divides. This progress has set them up in an ideal position to create and exploit knowledge as they transform into knowledge-based economies. Crucially, the greatest source of productivity and growth attributed to the knowledge economy derives not from the knowledge economy itself, but from its effects on the industrial economy. For example, IT can enable supply chains and factories to work more efficiently.

The “leapfrogging” argument, whereby India skips heavy infrastructure building and transforms directly into a knowledge economy, is therefore suspect. Proponents of leapfrogging describe how isolated villages without conventional telephones have directly adopted cellular phones. The example provides excellent symbolism. However, the underlying principle is not scalable to the level of the national economy where many complex sub-systems work together. Consider the transportation sub-system. The laws of physics do not allow IT to substitute the physical movement of goods by a “virtual” movement. A lightning-fast information network will not in itself help achieve faster and cheaper transport. Better roadways and railways will.

IT, job growth and government policy

Indian IT firms have focussed on developing and delivering IT services to advanced economies. Even if India became the world’s software factory and the most optimistic projections of IT-related jobs (including jobs in call centres and design centres) were upheld, this industry will employ at most a few million people. In a nation with over a billion people, this constitutes but a dent in the employment statistics.

Further, a social planner should be concerned not just with the creation of wealth, but also with its distribution across social divides. The IT industry holds limited potential for wealth to trickle down to the poorer sections of society. Unlike a steel plant, IT engenders few opportunities for the uneducated. Any transfer of wealth from the IT sector (for example, by taxing the IT sector to fund social spending) would be achieved through the heavy hand of government.. In fact, the rapid growth of IT will likely lead to a digital divide in the short term, where the rich and educated are empowered and enriched by IT and the poor are oblivious to its impact.
Before embracing IT, Indian policy planners must carefully evaluate whether investments in other areas would yield higher, and more equitable, returns. For example, consider the jute industry.

The country needs to be particularly careful not to give short shrift to the manufacturing sector. China is not known for its strengths in IT, although it now has some presence in the area. But, what China has accomplished in terms of its core industrial base is striking. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China was of the order of $40 billion in 2000 despite all the noise about alleged labour and human rights abuses. Chinese exports exceeded $200 billion in 2000, with the United States alone accounting for $100 billion of these exports. In fact, the value of “footwear” exported annually by China to the U.S. (worth about $9.2 billion) itself compares with or even exceeds the total value of India’s annual IT exports.

Why are these numbers relevant? Exporting footwear creates millions of jobs for citizens who lack sophisticated skills. According to some reports, a total of 34 million export-related jobs have been created in China, with exports to the U.S. alone accounting for over 20 million jobs in the last decade. These jobs have improved living standards for a substantial fraction of Chinese society. There is much we need to learn from China about how the manufacturing sector can deliver robust and equitable economic growth. Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korea have also flourished using similar approaches.

In contrast with manufacturing, the direct benefits to IT (such as employment in IT jobs) are likely to flow to the few who already have the benefits of education. The trickle-down effects of IT (such as cleaning and maintenance staff for IT firms) are likely to be modest or non-existent outside the large cities. It is also time to discard the notion that the manufacturing sector is inherently less appealing because it may involve some physical labour.

In the more advanced economies, a skilled factory floor worker is frequently paid more than a call-centre employee. Empowered with technology, the factory worker can add value at a remarkable rate. In India, the reverse often holds. Mundane call-centre jobs, often outsourced from more developed economies, absorb well-educated, English-speaking workers whose abilities could be employed much more productively elsewhere.

The actions of governments in India tend to be biased in favour of the IT sector.. The government needs a more balanced policy, one that ensures that the core industrial sector is not ignored in the rush toward IT.

IT and education

IT is fashionable to say that India’s population constitutes its greatest asset. This viewpoint is misleading. People are assets only when they participate meaningfully in the cycle of value creation and consumption by exercising buying power, or creating products and services of value, or by creating and harnessing knowledge. A large fraction of India’s population does not meet, or even come close to, this asset standard. To transform such a situation, a renewed focus is required on the two pillars that have supported the growth of every successful economy – a strong infrastructure core and widespread access to education. Now to discuss the IT-education interface.

Selling parts of used computers on a Chennai street.

Distance learning and e-learning are already being flaunted in some quarters as solutions to India’s education challenges. The argument proffered is that IT can enable the cheap and widespread delivery of education. This reasoning ignores the key challenge – how can the children of the poor and the uneducated be provided with the incentives to come to school, stay in school, and progress to higher institutions of learning? The answer lies in understanding physiology, psychology and economics, rather than in implementing technology. For all its drawbacks and implementation problems, the mid-day meal programme launched by the late Chief Minister M.G. Ramachandran in Tamil Nadu addressed this challenge head on. The programme recognised a simple, but fundamental, fact – the brain cannot feed when the stomach itself is unfed. It provided parents with the incentive to send their children to schools, rather than to the fields. For the children to whom the benefits of education seemed like a distant, hazy mirage, it provided an immediate, tangible reason to stay in school.

There is little reason to believe that IT-based learning will advance meaningfully the cause of Indian education. Problems that are enmeshed in the social and economic fabric of Indian society need to be addressed primarily with solutions that are of a social and economic nature. Throwing technology at these problems will not make them go away.

In addition, creating the infrastructure and content to support effective e-learning is very expensive. A rush into e-learning at this stage will only lead to squandered resources.

IT and culture

A Knowledge Economy is characterised by a culture of innovation. For such a culture to take root, innovation must be rewarded and intellectual property must be protected.

A culture that truly enhances innovation supports the view that to try hard and fail is perfectly fine. Yet, the Indian psyche has historically been averse to blessing the risky venture. This attitude transcends into the corporate arena. Consider how static the Indian automobile industry was for three decades before the refreshing winds of competition brought about rapid change. Competition breeds innovation.

While one side of the cultural coin pertains to the incentives for innovation, the flip side pertains to its protection. Ideas, unlike property, cannot be protected by building a fence around them. Intellectual property protection is not a purely economic issue; it also has important cultural dimensions. The economic angle can be addressed with stronger patent laws and punitive procedures. However, the cultural angle will decide whether such protection can be enforced meaningfully. Addressing the cultural angle is a challenge.

The road to technology

A society that is deeply divided by social and economic fissures must think carefully about how it achieves economic and technological advance. The path, in some ways, is more important than the outcome itself.

In the Indian context, particular attention needs to be paid to when, where, and in what form IT and other technological advances are encouraged. There are, indeed, many low-hanging fruits to be harvested. For example, a recent article in The New York Times described how a fisherman working off the coasts of Kerala used a cellphone on the seas to obtain information about spot market prices for fish at Kochi and Kollam. The fisherman netted the equivalent of an additional $1,000 in annual income merely by deciding to deliver his catch to the more remunerative market each time his boat came in. This striking example of how simple information flows can enhance market efficiency can be replicated in many ways, and in many markets. However, the stakes are quite different when it comes to the formulation of a national IT policy. Any national policy requires some trade-offs between the benefits to industrial sectors, regions and classes of people. In formulating a national IT policy, the quest for superior technology must be moderated by an understanding of its implications at the social level – what might be good for a private company or an entrepreneur may not always be good for society and vice-versa

Successful technology adoption will move in measured steps, at a pace and in a direction that are in harmony with changes in the socio-economic fabric. The role of the government in ensuring such harmony should not be underestimated. This is especially true in India where the government remains responsible for a significant fraction of the economic output, and where it is actively reshaping rules and regulations as the country integrates into the global economy.

Information technology can change the way a society communicates, collaborates, lives, works and plays. The growth of the IT sector in India symbolises the potential of Indian industry to perform at world-class standards. This success demonstrates much of what can go right when the spirit of human enterprise is given free rein.

However, the success of IT at the corporate level in India cannot solve its myriad economic and social challenges. Just as copious rainfall can lead to dramatic floods, an obsession with IT and the knowledge economy is not useful. To be truly beneficial, the rain of IT must fall at the right place in the right quantity, at the right time and for the right purpose. Neither does the aggressive pursuit of IT represent the sole, or even an obvious, pathway to a first class economy despite the glowing success of high-profile IT companies.

Conclusion:

For the last two hundred years, neo-classical economics has recognised only two factors of production: labour and capital. This is now changing. Information and knowledge are replacing capital and energy as the primary wealth-creating assets, just as the latter two replaced land and labor 200 years ago. In addition, technological developments in the 20th century have transformed the majority of wealth-creating work from physically-based to “knowledge-based.” Technology and knowledge are now the key factors of production. With increased mobility of information and the global work force, knowledge and expertise can be transported instantaneously around the world, and any advantage gained by one company can be eliminated by competitive improvements overnight. The only comparative advantage a company will enjoy will be its process of innovation–combining market and technology know-how with the creative talents of knowledge workers to solve a constant stream of competitive problems–and its ability to derive value from information. We are now an information society in a knowledge economy where knowledge management is essential. This page lists and rates Internet resources related to the field of knowledge based economy and knowledge management in the new information society.

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Management Information Systems

About Author

Prof. Loveleen Kaur Chawla(MBA/NET)

http://www.artifactmanager.com/papers/ArtifactManager_Organize-n-Search.pdf

WHITE PAPER
Organize-n-Search
State-of-the-art Low-budget Document Management Solutions

“We are living in the information age… The information explosion…” We have heard it so many times that have stopped paying any attention to it. However, information penetrates into every aspect of our lives. We are constantly trying to acquire new knowledge and looking for opportunities to benefit from it.

Users who actively work with documents and information, frequently face the problems related to search, organization and efficient use of documents. Copyeditors, writers, journalists, researchers, analysts, consultants, lawyers, medical workers, students, all run into the same challenges at home and at work.

This paper is intended for a wide range of people, who, for personal or business need, work with a large number of documents and other information. We take a close look at the problems of information management, benefits of using advanced technologies in the low-budget personal information management system, as well as system selection criteria to meet personal and professional needs of information workers.

Challenges of Document Management

Nowadays big part of information is stored in a form of text: books, articles, reports, memo, notes, specifications, descriptions, whitepapers, and manuals, not to mention a huge amount of time sensitive information, such as invoices, bank statements, schedules, contracts, and tax returns.

Yesterday, papers, photo albums, music disks, and video tapes were kept in drawers, boxes, and cabinets. But the development of personal computers and Internet has started the era of digital information.

Development of electronic formats has significantly increased system storage capacity and allowed accumulation of large information volumes. However, recent developments in the fields of computer systems and data storage have led to a new question: how can we effectively manage digital information?

Recent studies by IDC (Susan Feldman, Joshua Duhl, Julie Rahal Marobella, Alison Crawford. The Hidden Costs of Information Work. March 2005) revealed that on average 13 hours of every 40-hour work week are spent on creating documents. 9.5 hours per week are spent on searching for information, while almost 9.6 hours on analyzing the information. 6.5 hours are wasted on searching for information that is never found leading to the need to recreate the content. Formatting of information between different applications takes about 3.8 hours per week, whereas version control related issues take 2.2 hours.

Issues, effects and implications of information management are summarized in the following Figure.

Issues

Slow search
Search without desired results
Redundant search
Recreation of documents
Difficulty of use of the found information

Effects

Employer
Unplanned for wasted time
Work slowdown
Decrease in productivity
Decline in quality

Employee
Increased workload
Negative attitude towards work
Decline in the level of satisfaction from the job

Implications

Missed deadlines
Project failure
Lost revenue
Loss of employee

Figure 1: Issues, effects and implications of information management

* What is the best way to organize the information to find it faster in the future?
* How to easily find information inside of large volume of materials?
* How to find documents that are related?
* How to save the search results and view them in the future?
* How to share found information with colleagues and friends?
* How to effectively use found information?

Importance and significance of those problems are major factors that stimulate the development of new solutions and information management systems. Information Retrieval, Data and Knowledge Bases, Document & Content Management, to name a few, are the branches of information technologies that deal with the problems of information management.

Solutions to Document Management Problems

Solutions to document management problems are tightly linked to the following challenges: improving the efficiency of information access, improving quality and speed of search, improving the efficiency of information processing, improving reliability and safety of storage.

Efficient Access to Information

It is necessary to quickly and easily extract the text documents which meet certain criteria from an array of available information. These requirements are diverse and constantly changing. For example, original sources for articles, data for reports, textbooks to prepare for the exam, patient’s medical records, or precedents for court case – all have high, but temporary value to resolve the pressing challenges.

After finding the required documents, working through them, and creating a number of versions, the user will need to consolidate and store the results. For example, one may need to save a set of documents, or add comments to a set of documents for future use. One possible solution to meet the changing needs is to place a document in several groups. A group could consist of documents on certain topic, papers of the same author, articles of the same journal issue, previous versions of the article, or materials used to write an article.

Searching and organizing information in a meaningful way takes up a lot of time. To shorten the cycle and make a process more enjoyable, a number of solutions have been proposed.

Quality and Speed of Search

In some cases users can find the documents they need by using a query – a word or combination of words that might be in those documents.

In the past, search required scanning of all files on the computer drives and going through their content comparing the key words with words in the document. This called for the sequential scanning of all files for each request. But increased size and number of files have dramatically slowed down the search process. In addition, morphology was neglected and multiple queries were needed to find the document.

Best solutions for effective search of information are based on search engines and information retrieval technologies. The entire collection of files is pre-processed and the information about the documents and key words is stored in the index files. Indexing works for various file formats and takes into account all possible forms of the same word. This “smart” pre-processing mechanism significantly accelerates the search and improves its quality.

Organization

In many cases the user is unaware of the words contained in the document of interest. It’s also possible that the user is not able to generate a query that returns desired outcomes, or the number of documents is too large, or some documents may not contain the right words. In these scenarios the user has no choice but manually look for a desired document. To save the results of manual search, many use the systems designed specifically for organizing the information.

Simplified versions of organization systems use fields and registration cards to link the documents and accompanying information (date, author, title, a brief description, etc.) However, field sets are fixed and limited, and often do not allow grouping of the documents to accommodate changing needs of the users.

Enhanced systems use a hierarchy of folders (catalogs, or directories). However, in most cases, when a document belongs to multiple topics, the user may end up facing several problems. For example, in the hierarchy of file system folders, a document can not be assigned to several folders without duplication. In this case, duplication may result in an unnecessary increase of information volume as well as inconsistencies in content after one of the documents has been modified.

Top notch tools to organize the information use multiple hierarchical categorizations which came from the domain of knowledge bases and ontologies.

Version Control

Authoring of a complex document is a long process and requires many edits, corrections and rewritings. To avoid confusion, it is necessary to maintain a history of changes in the document. The old-fashion solution was to save the changes in the separate file with a unique name, which often resulted in lost files, more storage space as well as difficulties in finding the right version of the document. These and other problems related to tracking the history of the content, storing different versions of the document, and returning to its previous versions have been addressed by the invention of the versioning systems. These systems are designed to provide access to the previous versions and history of changes.

Figure 2: Authoring a document

Effective Work with Information

Search, organization, and version control, by themselves, significantly simplify the process. But till now, most of these functions were only provided by separate software tools. The first program implements search. The second program organizes information. The third program edits it. The fourth program keeps version history. And so on.

A user has to run multiple applications, toggle between them, import and export documents, and move and copy the files. This process dramatically slows down the work, decreases productivity, increases pressure, and therefore leads to mistakes and reduces work satisfaction.

To eliminate unnecessary labor and reduce the amount of wasted time, one needs an integrated solution that combines search, editing and version control functionality.

Privacy, Security and Reliability of Storage

It goes without saying that information is a valuable resource that is expensive to produce. It is necessary to not only provide a safe storage for the entire set of documents, but also protect valuable information from computer hardware and software failures, as well as human errors. In addition, the confidentiality of information should be preserved – unauthorized users should not have access to the information without the permissions from the owner. However, if necessary, the results of the work have to be publishable to third parties.

Earlier applications stored files on the secure computers in a folder structure. Individual users had access to specific folders, which required a complex access rights management policy. Thus the information was often duplicated on the users’ computers, causing many problems related to information relevance.

To address the above mentioned problems, modern document management systems store information in centralized repositories, which make it easy to store, retrieve, manipulate and modify documents. Advanced repositories support storage and processing of multiple documents and file formats including, but not limited to: text (Word, Acrobat, Open Office, etc.), spreadsheet, fax, e-mail, audio, and images.

Documents, images and other information stored in the electronic repository are easily accessible and retrievable. The losses associated with errors in streamlining, organizing, and placing of the documents are drastically reduced and possibly even eliminated. In addition, each document keeps not only a history of who viewed it, made changes and what changes were made, but also other information about the document, such as title, contents, themes, etc.

Valuable Benefits of Document Management Systems

Thus, state-of-the-art information and document management systems
* reduce information processing time (multi-category systems allow for fast categorization of the incoming information and re-organization of existing information)
* reduce the time required to access the information (full-text search tools and category system, history and version control provide an easy and quick way to find information)
* reduce the time required to create a document (integration of search, organization, modification and version control features in a single platform allow the user to work on new and existing documents in a more effective manner)
* eliminate the cases of lost data (electronic repositories automatically capture all document changes and allow the user to restore the history of changes)

By leveraging a wide range of features provided by information management tools, one may free up the time normally spent on unnecessary tasks and focus on more important activities. As a result, the use of information management systems increases the quality of work.

Criteria for Selecting the Right Document and Information Management System

Flexible categorization: The system must support the categorization of documents to meet specific requirements of the user. To do that, the system should include the following features:
* Flexible categorization (user should be able to create any categories or topics and place the documents there)
* Hierarchical categorization (high level topics that consist of more specific topics)
* Multiple categorization (the same document might be included in several topics, categories or groups of documents)
* Ability to merge related files in a package
Flexible grouping that keeps the history of the results simplifies future access to documents inside of assigned topics, and allows one to see the relationships between documents found in one category.

Powerful search tools: The system should be able to perform a full-text search of information by query which contains individual terms or phrases. The search feature should
* be fast, which implies indexing
* support full-text search for all common formats – pdf, doc, odt, etc.
* take into an account the differences in spelling of various grammatical forms of the words
* work with individual repositories, categories and themes (topics)
The above mentioned features allow the user to effectively query the documents, provide a fast access to desirable documents, and make it possible to work on documents that have not yet been classified.

Central repository: The system should be able to store information in a centralized repository that allows:
* storing high volumes of documents
* creation of multiple personal repositories
* protection of confidential information
Documents in the system should not be viewable by other applications. Only the owner of the information should be able to grant the access to the repository. Repositories not only eliminate the need to manually create the files and directories, but they also restrict access to information, tighten security and improve reliability by providing backup, recovery and data protection tools.

Composite documents: The system should be able to work with the collection of files as a single unit, allowing the user to make changes to the set of documents. This functionality helps to improve usability and makes it easier to work with documents that consist of multiple files – for example, html documents with pictures.

Figure 3: Composite document

Document registration cards: The system should support the functionality of attaching useful information, such as name, purpose, abstract, comments, author, date of creation and modification, etc. to the document or file. This type of information helps to increase the accessibility of the documents. The information about the document should be flexible enough to adapt to the needs of the user and the information unit type.

Supported file types: The system should be able to support a wide range of common document types and formats, including Microsoft Office (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, etc.), Open Office, as well as the formats of scanned documents and images.

Versioning system: The system should be able to support multiple versions of the document, track history and changes in chronological order – who, when, why modified the document and which changes were made. If needed, this functionality enables the user to work on one of the previous versions of the document.

Navigation history: The system should record the sequence of events describing the steps the user took while working on the documents and have that information available to the user at any given time.

Easy-to-use interface: The system should provide a user-friendly interface that includes intuitive navigation as well as the panels displaying categories, history, versions, and search results. All of these will dramatically enhance user experience and therefore increase user satisfaction.

Modern technology and open architecture: The system should be built using the latest technologies. The architecture should be
* scalable – support an unlimited number of repositories, documents stored in a
* repository, categories and their levels, as well as a fast search through unlimited amount of information
* modular and expandable – provide a foundation for rapid development and fast delivery of new features requested by the users
* cross-platform – compatible with Windows, Linux, and MacOS operating systems
This allows the system to grow organically and reduce the time to deliver the new features to meet growing user needs.

Integrated solution: The user’s objective is an effective execution of her or his work. To accomplish this goal the user has to go through repetitive cycles of work with information and documents. These cycles may include:
* Gathering of the information for a document
* Analyzing information
* Creating the outline and the first draft of the document
* Placing the document to the repository
* Making changes to the document
* Preparing the document for future use
* Searching for other materials that will be used in a new version of the document
These phases are executed repeatedly to improve the quality of the document, bringing it to the desired results. A good system should be able to integrate the above mentioned features so that the user can complete the sequence of document development tasks in a single system. This implements agile document management.

Low cost of the ownership: Adoption of a document management system can save any organization millions of dollars. At the same time, the scale and broad functionality of corporate systems leads to the high cost of ownership unaffordable for personal users. It’s also important to note that a user might not need all the features available in a corporate system and therefore will only get overwhelmed by its complexity. The cost of a personal information management system should be low, but at the same time it has to provide the right set of features to match the needs of individual user. The system should be easy to install and run on any personal computer.

Artifact Manager

Artifact Manager is an advanced document and information management system. This simple, convenient, low-budget solution has all of the features of the enterprise information management system that helps to achieve higher productivity levels through a better management of personal documents and information.

Required Features Artifact Manager
* Flexible categorization Yes
* Powerful search tools Yes
* Centalized repository Yes
* Composite documents Yes
* Document metadata Yes
* Wide range of file types Yes
* Version control Yes
* History Yes
* User-friendly interface Yes
* Modern technology and architecture Yes
* Integrated soluton Yes
* Low-cost ownership Yes

Figure 4: Features of Artifact Manager

Artifact Manager is the first enterprise-class personal platform for document and information management. It combines a powerful search, flexible organization, reliable storage, and convenient interface in a single easy-to-use environment.

Download Artifact Manager now at

http://www.ArtifactManager.com/downloads.html

No obligation of buying, no cumbersome registration, no spam

http://www.artifactmanager.com/papers/ArtifactManager_Organize-n-Search.pdf

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A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge?
What is the different between -
– A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge 2000 (216 pages) and
– A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) (390 pages) 4th Edition.

Saw that both are still current editions.

Like to know which is the correct to buy. I want to read the correct book to have a proper understanding of the world of PM.

About Author

Artifact Manager delivers an innovative solution to organize, search and keep safe and under control your documents and personal information. It combines state-of-the-art search and organization technologies to save your time and boost productivity. http://artifactmanager.com/whitepapers.html

“The basic economic resource is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labor.  It is and will be knowledge.”

–

Educational Institutions need to tackle challenges of outdated teaching techniques. Leading education organizations around the world are focused on the concept of sustainable improvement. The primary goal is to create an environment that delivers better learning. A common theme that runs through all strategies for improvement is enhanced communication and collaboration between the important stakeholders groups in the education environment – students, alumni and parents, administrators and teachers. To enable such changes it is essential they create a robust collaborative Knowledge Management system which will be the propelling force that will help them achieve their goals. KM enables timely and effective collaboration on curriculum development, sharing of teaching best practices for benefit of organization, better online tools for managing daily information sharing between students & teachers, Case studies, Research & white papers and etc

KM METHODOLOGY – Reference to Educational industry [PROCESS]

Knowledge is what I know;

Information is what we know.

Interest in knowledge creation within the institution is growing at an astounding rate. The most effective way to create knowledge sharing culture is first to start practice at individual faculty level. Faculty with appropriate knowledge sharing mindset and the appropriate knowledge sharing technology to support them, the two together, will enable the creation of knowledge effectively. Once the knowledge is created, capturing takes place where in the knowledge database is created and all necessary data is been stored in the form of documents, white papers, Research works, Case studies and in various formats to be presented in usable format and there by making use of knowledge in the broader context. Massive amounts of resources on a daily basis will be present in a institution that they must gather, categorize, interpret and disseminate efficiently.

In certain situations, it can be more than threatening for a faculty to introduce knowledge into systems and actively search out that which others have introduced. It can also require a substantial amount of time and effort. Therefore, faculty needs to be highly motivated in order to undertake such work. It is only when a knowledge manager adopts the principle of knowledge sharing for the whole institution that knowledge is shared and reused spontaneously.

Knowledge, in addition to being shared between faculties, must be distributed by an institution to its faculty and management community. The dissemination of knowledge has a massive impact on the formation of competitive advantage. It is broadly agreed that in order to ensure the proper dissemination of knowledge it is necessary both to lubricate communication and nurture the right culture in the institution.

Knowledge, in addition to being shared between faculty members, must be distributed by an institution to its entire faculty community. The dissemination of knowledge has a massive impact on the formation of competitive advantage. Dissemination also requires the transformation of highly individualized tacit knowledge into more widely shared explicit knowledge. It is not the organizations which own the best knowledge that achieve competitive advantage but, rather, those that make the best use of it. In order to make the best use of knowledge it should be fully applied to the activities of the institution and this would require that all the other knowledge processes, namely, creation, dissemination and sharing, should be taking place.

KM STRATEGY- Reference to Educational industry

“Knowledge Management is the Innovative and Effective Aid to sustain the knowledge of the faculty and students to gain an edge in the industry”

Developing a knowledge management strategy provides a unique opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the way the institution operates, and the challenges that confront it. By focusing on identifying staff needs and issues, activities and initiatives can be recommended with the confidence that these will have a clear and measurable impact upon the institution. To be successful, a KM strategy must do more than just outline high-level goals such as ‘become a knowledge-enabled institution Instead, the strategy must identify the key needs and issues within the institution, and provide a framework for addressing these.

Knowledge management strategies and drivers must be reviewed from a human resources perspective. The Faculty development cell assists the leadership of an institution in identifying the sources of the required knowledge and the best way to capture it, as well as assessing mastery of knowledge among employees and determining the benefits of that assessment to the institution. Knowledge management can be considered successful if faculty understands how knowledge adds value, how it is created, and why it needs to be managed. The role of Faculty development cell can be summarized as follows:

(a) Training and developing knowledge workers (Faculty);

(b) Developing Asst. Professor, Senior Lecturers and Lecturers as knowledge coordinators;

(c) Building a knowledge-sharing culture.

(d) Developing Professors to be as a part of Km Team

KM ARCHITECTURE IN EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRY [TECHNOLOGY]

Knowledge has become the key driving force in the present day world. It is generally believed that the only source of competitive advantage in future will be the knowledge. Therefore, in this newly emerging environment, educational industry are required to develop successful KM Architecture, to achieve sustainable competitive advantage; this is possible only through KM Portal. KM architecture is the process which explains the technology and flow of knowledge among the knowledge workers. Knowledge workers include Faculty and students.

The following prototype will predict the knowledge flow and effectiveness of knowledge sharing in educational industry.

The prototype consists of three blocks through which knowledge flows:

-          Faculty/ Student (Creation & Capture)

-          Knowledge Management Team (Organise & Verify)

-          Faculty/ Student/ Management (Access & Use)

First Block:

Faculty Shares the class/ subject resources, Cases, White Papers, Research work, Latest information about the subject and in general. The contents are stored in Documents, Presentations and etc and are stored category/ Function wise.

Second Block:

KM Team is formed and comprises of Subject matter experts based on there specialization. The experts can be Professors, Asst Professors level to review the stored documents and presentations. After verification key points are given to the faculty along with the feedback.

The verified knowledge is stored back to knowledge base for publication, paper presentations, etc and sent to third block

Third Block:

After the review process the Knowledge is available to other faculty, Students and management were the knowledge is shared and gained by others.

INDUSTRY

KM ORGANISATION [PEOPLE]

KM Organisation is the process of Creating KM Team and defining Roles & Responsibilities of the team members in Verifying the Knowledge Captured and Approval of the same.

With increasing emphasis on knowledge-based culture, management is seeking ways to get that knowledge under management remit. The goal is to manage this aspect of the enterprise in the same way as its physical and financial assets. Charged with this are the new roles of “knowledge managers” with responsibility for creating the environment and process for dealing with knowledge as a corporate asset

Central to current concerns is the issue of KM Team. Teams, ascribed as the powerhouse of the effective institution, are more intractable from a knowledge management point of view than individuals. By their very nature teams create a great deal of new knowledge, which as such is of high value to the institution. However, the knowledge of how and why they created what they created is more difficult to get at than an individual’s knowledge, since it exists in a number of different people, and also in their continuous interaction and collaboration.

Km Team comprises of SME’s (Knowledge Managers) which includes Professors, Asst. Professor and Research Associates. The Role is to verify the captured knowledge and send Feedback to the Knowledge Worker. “Key Points” (KP) are allotted to each knowledge worker based on there knowledge they have shared.

PROS OF KM IN TODAYS ECONOMY RECESSION

Economic recession has created a challenge among the students to be competent enough to gain advantage of the limited job opportunities. Thus, KM will help the students to sharpen there skill and be updated with the latest technology and insight of multidimensional concepts.

-          Competent

-          Knowledge about Latest technology

-          Research skill

-          Insight

-          Collaborative Culture

-          Team Work

-          Conceptual Knowledge

CONCLUSION

KM itself has come a long way and has a long way to go from where it is now. It is indeed a long journey and the trip has just begun. Educational Industry has to sustain the knowledge of the faculty and students to gain an edge in the industry. This is possible only through ‘Effective implementation of Knowledge Management Portal’. A Key success factor in KM is getting optimal emphasis on each of the four focal area People, Process, technology and Content right from the early stages of deployment.

“Knowledge management is necessary for Education Industry because what worked yesterday may or may not work tomorrow”

Watch the video related to Knowledge Management

by the right persons to create more knowledge and value, achieve strategic business objectives & measurably improve performance. Please note that this video was inspired by another YouTube Video “NRCan KM Vision”, where most of the inspiring words came from them and I have to give them the credit for that. The footage and music are edited from another YouTube Video about Saudi Aramco from the “Marhaba Festival” in Brisbane, Australia. … Hamid M. Rowaihy Saudi Aramco Knowledge Management Team …

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About Author

I am vanitha, working as a faculty in leading management school in chennai, india. My area of interest is human resources, system, KM.