Google has just made available a service called trends. This service gives an overview about how popular any search query has been over time and where the requests came from. If you look for KM in Google trends you see that the number of search requests for "Knowledge management" is going down constantly during the last 2 years reaching a level which is about half of the search requests of 2004. Furthermore, Google shows that most requests come from outside Europe with several areas of India listed under the top 10 cities the requests came from.

It is difficult to draw valid conclusions from that kind of statistics. Nonetheless, I am wondering: Is KM going down? Is it attracting less people than it used to? Was KM only a short hype?

René

René,

I'm thinking KM is slowly changing. True the term is not as 'hot' or fashionable as it was, but KM has enjoyed a relatively long reign from 1994 - 2004 in terms of business attention.

Now we hear of SNA (social network analysis) complexity (theory) and perhaps web2.0, social software and other memes taking over. I do not think this reflects poorly on KM which has become embedded, moved off the corporate 'project' list and become part of business practice.

There has not been a movement away from KM's basic tenents - building relationships, sharing information, creating new ideas, increasing personal and group learning & awareness and making sense of things.

Don't think so and I actually think it is getting more attention! You can look at 'KM going down'from various perspectives. Google trends may be an indicator but you can argue that KM has done it's work in general and most people have enough understanding of the concepts. Another way of looking would be to check Amazon.Com to find out how many books are being published on KM. After the first years, late nineties, many books have been published, early 2000 less and less but since 2005 and 2006 again new books about this subject. Also an indicator might be that the EIU in a recent report (2015) among top-executives in which they have indicated that KM is their strategic priority for the years ahead. KM was ranked 5, so pretty high on the board's agenda. Another indicator might be the number of requests we receive to host students for a KM study or review their thesis on KM. Again, this number decreased substantially early 2000 but 2005 and 2006 showed an increased interest to do studies on KM again. So, I would say KM is back!

I agree with Daan Boom that the transformation is happening for the better. When we start institutionalizing KM, the quest for KM will stop.

Transformation in Learning KM:

1. People Ask, Google or Yahoo for initial learning

2. To gain insights, people look at Books, CoP and face-to-face interaction or training.

3. After initial search for knowledge, people will start to focus and their quest for learning will be shifted to narrow or specific areas (eg: Product Innovation, Project Mind).

It is possible that people are searching for “Learning Organization”, “Collaborative BI”, “Knowledge Enterprise”, “Knowledge Bank”, "Knowledge Leadership", "Knowledge Community", "Institutionalizing Knowledge", KM, PKM, EKM, ECM, "Personal KM", "Enterprise KM", "KM in Banking / Agriculture", K-Share culture and so on.

Google trend doesn't give the complete picture. It also shows that the trend for “KM” (includes kilometer as well!) goes up.

4. People will look at KM sites without going through any search engines.

5. Living KM: They start to practice, preach and change again. In the past, many people asked me "What is KM?". Now people ask me how to implement KM.

Even organizations that failed have realized that the KM system they practiced is not good enough. The usage of the word KM may fade but living KM philosophy will strengthen. People might start calling it Knowledge Leadership, Insight Management or Experiential Learning. The enriched philosophy and expanded vision will give birth to new KM.

I am agree with Daan Boom and Lakshman Pillai that KM getting momentum. Google trend is not a final criteria. Even in developing countries' managers realizing the value/role of knowledge and KM in organization. Similarly, many universities are including KM and KMS as course in their master programmes. Furhtermore, iIf we analyze addition of research articles in different research database, we can easily see the difference. Similarly, the novice person, first see the search engine for KM (not only google but other engines too). When he becomes familiar with the term, he starts looking for more indepth report/surveys and articles from the sources too. For example though I m doing PhD in KM but occasionaly visit the Google, rather prefer to visit research sites daily.

Gentlemen,

certainly knowledge is not going down because this science is creating a new world far from the industrial society.Unfortunately Knowledge is not been used correctly by people. Knowledge is not a management restricted function or something about sharing ideas and libraries.
This fact, often bring to the mind a wrong idea about this universe. I already hear thoughts from ordinary people where knowledge was a kind of marketing to foolish people.Specially, because each place in the world has a different meaning about this word.
Another point very important to them it was there wasn't a strong symbol for a new look of life.

Imagine. Knowledge must have the same meaning for Society , Technology and Management and they didn't get any good answer.
Imagine Knowledge is not information. So, Why Does it use the expression Information Society for the Knowledge world?

Wrong ideas and wrong people put everybody far from our target and don't bring good results in a short time.
But, looking for the big markets from South America and Europe and everything is being organized to the nexr 50 years ahead the ilusion will disapear and the real subject wil stay with us.

It is a long time ago that I typed "Knowledge Management" into Google. But I am working on this topic every day...

Taking Gartner's hype cycle, I would say KM has reached the plateau of productivity. So we have passed the downphase already, which was around 1998-2000.

I use Google many times every day, and find it useful to include the quoted term "knowledge management" in searches along with additional terms to provide a specific context, but it has been years since I searched for "knowledge management" on its own. The scope of the term is now much too broad to deliver any meaningfull results.

Also, I would like to believe that KM is increasingly seen as a fundamental part of organizational "management", and again, not broken out into an isolated discipline.

Good management reabsorbs all the special focus areas over time, hence Quality Management, Innovation Management, Process Management, Knowledge Management etc., all tend to contribute to the improving science (or Art) of management. Of course I have to emphasize GOOD management - which IMHO is as common as common sense (not all that common!). Even rarer is good leadership!
Being on the application side of KM, and having tested my knowledge lifecycle model here on KB last year (in the social thread) I see my clients and potential customers struggling with application of KM, they have now all read about it (the Google search trend) but still don't know how to apply a method that combines the people and KM in a non mechanistic way. I hope my new book coming out in August September may help. Han

Q1- Did any one formulate Knowledge based strategy using system dynamics/simulation tools? Is there any methedology to map it to Business strategy?

Q2- is it true if we develop KM strategy means Dynamic?