Knowledge management has changed so much over the last decade, it would be handy to know what to expect in coming months to help develop the most effective strategies. Louise Druce asks Larry Prusak, founder of the Institute for Knowledge Management, for his thoughts on what the future holds for KM.

One of the major achievements of KM in recent years has been getting knowledge into the discourse and discussions of organisations, according to seasoned expert Larry Prusak. But it’s only half the battle – simply holding on to it is not enough if firms want to survive in the future.

Prusak is probably most well-known as the founder of the Institute for Knowledge Management, a global consortium of member organisations self-tasked with advancing KM through action research. He currently co-directs a knowledge research program at Babson College, where he is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence, but extensive work as a researcher and consultant has also meant he has seen a fair few changes to KM in his time.

"Global searches for knowledge and knowledgeable people will intensify."

He credits the fact that at least most people in many organisations today recognise KM is so multi-faceted, they need to take different approaches to it. It’s far removed from the scenario pre-1990s when knowledge was treated in the same way as information or data, with huge amounts of money wasted on systems that failed to manage all three components disparately.

But grey areas still exist when it comes to really getting under KM’s skin. One that concerns Prusak is the unit of analysis issue. In other words, what do we focus on when working with knowledge? Should it be the individual, the group, the enterprise? And what specifically can we do with knowledge within one of these units in terms of measurement and specificity? "Since knowledge is intangible, the whole question becomes murky," he says. "Many people revert to managing information and technology because it’s tangible and easier to work with."

Prusak doesn’t envisage any role for training in working with knowledge as he believes most of it is an "industrial-age activity" that will eventually disappear. Where he does see potential is in teaching people how to work with knowledge, to develop meta-knowledge and for mentoring for learning purposes.

Different directions

He also sees some clear trends emerging that could greatly impact the future of knowledge. The first concerns what Prusak sees as a loss on the monopoly of 'practical' or 'useful' knowledge that was held by the US, Western Europe and Japan since at least the 1880s. "The global absorption of knowledge and knowledge production means, in brief, there are so many new players in the global knowledge arena that one has to take account of them to understand a subject," he explains. "Global searches for knowledge and knowledgeable people will intensify."

He also believes there is a growing democratisation of knowledge movement. "Both within firms and societies, there is an erosion of traditional cognitive authority, accompanied by a growth of knowledge populism," he continues, adding that it is enabled by an incredible growth in personal technologies.

The result, says Prusak, is many double-edged swords. "More people having more opinions and the means to broadcast them can be very beneficial in many ways but can also just add immense amounts of junk to everyone's lives. This is a big issue that organisations will have to face," he continues. "Some are making real gains by instituting what I call representative knowledge democratisation." For example, this could be wikis intermediated by people with some knowledge of a subject.

A third major development, and potential problem, Prusak cites is that modern firms are poorly structured to deal with knowledge as a productive economic factor. "The modern organisation evolved in the 19th century to deal with land, labour and capital, not with knowledge, which was assumed to reside only in the heads of the owners and managers," he says. "This led us to the modern organisation built on command and control mechanisms, run as hierarchical bureaucracies. This won’t do when knowledge is the major source of value, as it is for most large organisations today."

He sees many firms looking for new models better equipped to manage knowledge, rather other sources of wealth. "This will be an increasingly important issue in the coming decades, especially as organisations enter the marketplace without the 19th century baggage that we carry," he adds.

For those that manage to evolve, Prusak believes they will be more efficient, effective and innovative in working with knowledge; dominating their markets. For those organisations determined to stick to their guns, however, Prusak delivers a bleaker prediction for the future: "Many firms will just try and work harder and harder in the same ways," he says. "They will go under and never know why they died."