Our Book of the Month September is Trends in Enterprise KM by Imed Boughzala and Jean-Louis Ermine (editors).

 ! Q&A-session from 25 to 30 September !  

Imed Boughzala has kindly agreed to be available for a one-week Q&A session; he'll be ready to answer your questions and comments till next Friday, 30 September.

Publisher's book summary

Knowledge Management (KM) encompasses a wide range of tools and methods that are at the heart of the information and communication society and provide solutions that rely as much on organization as on technology.

This title brings together contributions from authors from a range of countries who are recognized as leading figures in this field, both in an academic and a practical sense. It describes the strategic aspects of KM and defines the underlying principles in terms of management, life cycle, process, methods and tools involved in this discipline. Several approaches to the running of KM within organizations are then discussed. The influence of KM on the performance of a company is analyzed and guidelines are given on various KM approaches that can be used to achieve specific goals.

Finally, several case studies of companies that have put KM at the heart of their organizational strategy are given to demonstrate how this approach has been put into practice.

Given the practical approach taken by this book and the considerable advantages that a good handling of KM can bring to an organization, this title will be of great interest to those involved in this field.

KB review (by Liza Wohlfart, KB content scout)

In April 2003, the National Institute of Telecommunications (INT) and the Club Gestion des Connaissances (KM Club) organised a seminar on Knowledge Management that should capture the current status and the latest developments in the field of KM: 'Trois jours pour faire le point sur le KM'. The seminar included presentations of both practitioners and researchers, thus giving an overview on concepts, methods and tools, but also practical experiences. The various perspectives people presented were captured in a common book. Imed Boughzala and Jean-Louis Ermine's book 'Trends in Enterprise Knowledge Management' is the translated and augmented version of the original French book published in 2004, with additional contributions from authors of e.g. the UK and Argentina.

"Trends in Enterprise KM" is both a good intro to KM theories and a rich source of great KM ideas. You can find a good explanation in it for terms like 'intangible capital' or 'implicit/explicit knowledge'. On the other hand, the book wraps up strategies for solving key KM challenges such as mapping, measuring and preserving KM.

What I really liked about the book is the variety of different aspects and trends it covers. It talks of exotic-sounding concepts like the 'lily strategy', the 'daisy model' and 'once-upon-a-time KM'. It reflects on KM for extended enterprises and presents a three-step approach for environment scanning. It includes established techniques of the KM club, such as the CEGOS K3M approach, the MASK method and the club's Maturity Models, and shows how they've been used for different applications. And there's a strong influence of Japanese KM concepts in it, especially the work of Ikuziro Nonaka. His concept of 'Ba' is part of the Japanese 'archipelago', an approach whose focus on soft factors presents a clear antipole to the US' obsession with IT-solutions. One of the strong chapters certainly also is the one on KM and complexity theory that presents a good summary of the rise of complexity studies and puts forward their key lessons for KM.

"Trends in Enterprise KM" can certainly be an inspiration for many KM pracitioners and academics, leaving them with new ideas and new perspectives on the topic. One of the things it clearly shows is that there is still a lot to be said and done about KM, and that new trends in the field are on the verge of emerging.

About the editors

Imed Boughzala, Ph.DAssociate is professor and deputy manager of the Department of Information Systems at INT (National Institute of Telecommunications) and administrator of the French KM Club, Evry, France. Mr. Boughzala holds a MSc and a PhD in computer and Information System from Pierre et Marie Curie Paris VI university.

Before arriving to INT in September 2002, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Technology of Troyes (UTT) and before, he managed several projects of auditing, consulting and programming on behalf of several companies as France Telecom, Veritas, Société Générale Bank, etc.

His research's interests include topics and issues related to Cooperative Information Systems and Knowledge Management. He teaches Information System design, e-business, Knowledge engineering and CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work). Since September 2003, he became the program director of the Master of Science in Information Technology.

He is author of several papers published in national and international reviews and conferences. He is editor and author of two books, "Management des connaissances en entreprise" published in French by Lavoisier in 2004 and "Trends in Enterprise Knowledge Management" published by Hermes Science in 2006.

Jean-Louis Ermine is professor and director of the Département Systèmes d'Information at the Institut National des Télécommunications, and president of the Club Gestion des Connaissances, Évry, France. Mr. Ermine lectured and conducted research at the Université de Bordeaux I between 1978 and 1991, and turned his attention to research on artificial intelligence in 1985. At that time, he joined the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), where he assumed responsibility for training in respect of research devoted to information processing at the Institut national des sciences et techniques nucléaires.

In 1994, he joined the CEA scientific and technical information unit, where he was responsible for managing knowledge, first as a group leader, then as assistant to the unit manager. Between September 2000 and September 2003, he pursued his research on knowledge management at the Université de technologie de Troyes.

Since September 2003, Mr. Ermine has served as head of the information systems department at the Institut national des télécommunications in Evry, in the Paris area. In particular, he is developing there teaching, research and industrial transfers in the realm of knowledge management and cooperative information systems.

He designed the Méthode pour l'Analyse et la Structuration des Konnaissances (MASK, method to analyse and structure knowledge) that CEFRIO is using in conjunction with its project devoted to the intergenerational transfer of knowledge in the Internet age, in which a number of Québec organizations such as Hydro-Québec, RRQ and Telus are participating.

Jean-Louis Ermine is the founder and President of the Club Gestion des Connaissances de France. The United Nations, in particular the International Atomic Energy Agency, frequently consults Mr. Ermine. He is the coauthor of "Trends in Enterprise Knowledge Management" which is available in librairies since March 2006.

Further links

Imed Boughzala and Jean-Louis Ermine: "Management des connaissances en entreprise"

Ermine J-L, Boughzala I and Tounkara T (2006) “Critical Knowledge Map as a Decision Tool for Knowledge Transfer Actions” The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 4 Issue 2, pp 129-140.

Club Gestion des Connaissances (French KM Club)

Cefrio conference