Technologies for Personal Knowledge Management
25-Jun-04
"Technology is common in the domain of knowledge distribution, but it rarely enhances the process of knowledge use. Distribution delivers knowledge to the potential user's desktop but cannot dictate what he or she does with it thereafter. It would be interesting to envision technologies that help to manage personal knowledge as it applies to decisions and actions."
(Davenport T., Prusack L. - Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know - 1997)
Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), the set of processes a knowledge worker needs to set up in order to get the best out of his knowledge during his/her daily activities, has often been considered as the missing block in most KM plans within knowledge intensive organisations, as Davenport and Prusack reckoned in their KM classic "Working Knowledge".
PKM is supported today by several different technological tools covering the whole range of knowledge processes. Almost seven years after the publication of "Working Knowledge", is the technology actually available to the knowledge workers able to fully embody Davenport and Prusack’s vision and to exploit personal knowledge within an empowered decision process?
Which processes, techniques and needs do we refer to then, when we talk about PKM?
Steve Barth, one of the main experts on the topic, has pointed out that:
"PKM involves a range of relatively simple and inexpensive techniques and tools that anyone can use to acquire, create and share knowledge, extend personal networks and collaborate with colleagues without having to rely on the technical or financial resources of the employer."
The same view is shared by many others who tend to equate PKM to PIM (Personal Information Management), so focusing on those activities that allow for a fast and effective access to information, and an efficient way to organize it.
This is of course the realm of tools, from the most innovative, often ill-supported open source projects, to the best-selling applications so common on every digital desktop.
Frand and Hixon tried to encompass techniques and tools into a general, more standardized knowledge acquisition process:
"PKM is a conceptual framework to organize and integrate information that we, as individuals, feel is important so that it becomes part of our personal knowledge base. It provides a strategy for transforming what might be random pieces of information into something that can be systematically applied and that expands our personal knowledge."
Their approach covers both the skills and technological aspects. First, one has to develop a mental map to depict the working knowledge. Second, an organisational structure needs to be created to facilitate the location of both personal and professional information. At the end, appropriate technologies are needed as organic/enabling tools to organise and extend the personal memory, as well as to synergise and process ideas for effective problem solving and decision making.
According to professor Paul A. Dorsey in fact, PKM has to be considered mainly as "a set a problem-solving skills that have both a logical or conceptual as well as physical or hands-on component."
The seven skills he identifies:
"
retrieving information
evaluating/assessing information
organizing information
analyzing information
presenting information
securing information
collaborating around information
"
entail a view totally shifted towards Information Management, only a starting point for any effective Knowledge Management practice.
This is a very limited view according to many KM experts like David Gurteen, who thinks that "like KM, the term PKM has been 'hijacked' to equate to technology and tools", or Denham Grey who sees PKM as "a paradox: knowledge [...] is socially constructed - it is not about organizing your thoughts, learning to use tools or developing individual competencies - it is about dialog, community and collaboration."
So, what is PKM really about?
In few words, we can say it is a framework designed by individuals for their own personal use. It involves skills that go beyond each individual’s technological competencies; it embraces personal habits and preferences more than any predefined and standardized activity aimed at organizing information; it goes towards social networking when thinking of the power of interactions as the main source to enrich our expertise and personal knowledge.
As Lilia Efimova (a keen KB member and SIG editor) pointed out, "personal KM is about being aware of conversations you engage in [...], relations that enable them, and ideas that you take from and bring into these conversations". PKM then "shifts responsibility for learning and knowledge sharing from the company to individuals, which is a challenge to both sides, and in this sense companies must create the conditions for PKM to emerge among knowledge workers."
Steve Barth also reckons that "the accusation that personal knowledge management is somehow antisocial or discounts the importance of collaborative learning and innovation is entirely inappropriate. The whole point is that collaborative work requires more of the individual - not less. And we are ill-equipped to handle those obligations and responsibilities."
The 'Personal' in PKM then applies to all the processes that involve the single individual as an agent, in parallel with the enhanced social-driven processes for which David Gurteen has coined the term IPKM (Inter-Personal Knowledge Management). In order to be effective both at personal and at organisational level, knowledge exploitation activities need to be supported by tools that make both the collection and the organisation and distribution of information seamless enough for the single individual to empower his/her knowledge creation, organisation and sharing activities.
In an attempt to compare the various PKM tools viewing at the classic KM processes, Eric Tsui has provided an effective map organised as a feature comparison matrix.
Starting from Tsui's analysis, the following tool categories are, in our opinion, those that can more appropriately be considered as supporting PKM processes:
Index/Search:
tools that help searching through gigabytes of text by indexing local and networked drives. See for example "Onespace Professional" (Enfish) or "dtSearch Desktop" (dtsearch)
Meta-Search:
tools that consolidate results of searches performed by different engines like for example CNET (Search.com) or Copernic 2000 (Copernic 2000)
Associative links:
online thesaurus, dictionaries or hyperlinks to web resources starting from any document, like for example "GuruNet One-Click" (GuruNet)
Unstructured information capturing:
tools that help supporting the re-organization and structuring of unstructured information and documents finding the hidden key within them. Examples in this category are the "Stratify Discovery System" (Stratify) or the "Decision Intelligence Platform" (APR Smart Logic)
Concept/Mind mapping:
visualization tools that help organizing and connecting different chunks of information, supporting personal and collective brainstorming. Among others "MindManager" (MindJet
) and PersonalBrain (TheBrain Technologies) are to be mentioned.
E-Mail management, analysis and Unified Messaging:
beyond simple e-mail clients, all those applications that enhance and integrate different communications systems, facing problems liking message overload or contact management.
Voice Recognition:
"voice-driven" interfaces to be applied to a wide range of PKM tools. "Dragon Naturally Speaking" and "IBM Via Voice" are the main products belonging to this category.
A bridge towards the social-driven activities can then be built through another important "Search tools" category:
People/Expert finding:
social networking tools that allow searching for experts or like-minds often enhancing the connections that stem from personal document repositories. Due to its inner nature, these are often web-based tools like the "Spoke Network" (Spoke) or the "Friendster Community" (Friendster) just to name a few.
This is an incomplete list to be considered as just a starting point for further discussions on the topic.
We do think PKM is the cornerstone for a new KM architecture, that goes "from content to connectivity, with social networking applications and expertise-finding and community-building processes taking over in priority from the populating and management of massive, just-in-case, context free repositories of documents, and from corporate content management to personal content management, with simple, intuitive tools, personalized processes and one-on-one personal effectiveness training taking over in priority from complex, one-size-fits-all intranet tools, portals, 'productivity' software, and undifferentiated training", as Dave Pollard has recently written in one of his essays.
Where to go from here:
Frand and Hixon's "Personal Knowledge Management : Who, What, Why, When, Where, How?"
Paul Dorsey's "What is PKM?"
David Gurteen's "Opening Thoughts: Defining IPKM"
Denham Grey's "PKM" weblog post
Lilia Efimova's "My personal KM" weblog post
Steve Barth's "Three thousand communities of practice"
Eric Tsui's "Technologies for Personal and Peer-to-Peer KM"
Dave Pollard's "CONFESSIONS OF A CKO: WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE" weblog post
Silverio Petruzzellis, Fulvio Iavernaro
Editors, Technology Newswire
Details
- Author:
- Ed Mitchell
- Publisher:
- KnowledgeBoard
- Date:
- 25-Jun-04
- Categories:
- Technology
This article has been read 20159 times.
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Member comments (15)
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Openess is the Key to Success Not in being Self Centered
Hi, I would like to say and openly say that PKM is something that one may say is somewhat something of selfishnees. The reason being that knowledge should be used to give and take, not to communicate to take knowledge for personal gain and forget about others. I personally believe that that knowledge if shared without any greed is the best thing. in other words one may say that knowledge shared openly brings about more for all and, everyone tends to be able to proseed with each other freely. And this in turn tends to bring out more brilliant ideas on the board and make things better and easier.
So instead of thinking for oneself only oneself should think for the community as a whole.
Some Lateral Thinking re Personal KM
Interesting article that might leave you pondering on possible ideas
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3857621.stm
Honing Your Knowledge Skills : A Route Map
One of the most interesting books I've read related to the subject of personal knowledge management is:
Honing Your Knowledge Skills : A Route Map by Mariana Funes, Nancy Johnson
What I like about their approach is that they have taken a perspective to KM that starts with the looking at the skills individuals need as knowledge workers. In other words while value comes from connectivity, knowing how to connect is an enabler. That for me is an important part of what PKM is all about. I applied this idea earlier in the year in a workshop on knowledge audits where part of the session focused on communication and interviewing skills.
I've also attempted (in a small way) to look at the issue of PKM in practice with this short paper titled "Climbing the Personal Knowledge Mountain" available at http://www.thinkingshift.com/page.php?key=22
In summary I described PKM as something that "helps you to understand how your personal goals and values relate to your network of relationships, the knowledge you have and new information you need and the technology you use."
I think it is perfectly valid to discuss the role of technology in PKM, but certainly it is only part of the picture.
Killing the Implicit Knowledge Myth
The concept or rather myth of 'implicit knowledge' is a big drag.
In my experience 'knowledge' is a value label associated to a person, place and time.
If there is no 'explicit' knowledge I wouldn't waste either your or my three seconds thinking about it.
The creation of tools to 'activate' knowledge or recombine stories into something valueable is something worthwhile to consider.
A suggestion to practitioners...don't talk about implicit knowledge, it is a poisonous construct, but rather focus on the benefits derived.
Learn or steal a valueable lesson from successful car salespeople who focus on desire rather than technical and insignifant constructs.
Knowledge is a commodity plain and simple.
It is the ability to apply it that is the art and this art can be supported with tools.
Cheers,
Telecommunities and the holistic approach
Good overview, Monica.
We are learning and developing in the same direction.
Regarding the changing workplace we now promote the concept of telecommunities, as explained at http://www.telecommunity.info
Telecommunities form an excellent environment for training and working in teams (online and offline).
Thanks to the integrated tech support and presence of peers, the digital/knowledge gaps can be quickly assessed and closed. Workshops zoom in on strategies for building knowledge and social capital.
Since the WKP-platform enables people to collaborate in flexible ways, insights can be shared, further developed and traded in trusted networks, again, online and offline.
The organization methodology is explained in the ePresentation in my first post, and can be refined and detailed by the team(s).
I also like your attention for personal development within a holistic approach. My experience is that some people are very target driven and behave in a rather 'linear' fashion, while others are more 'context' oriented, requiring an overview before they can act.
Some people are very visual, while others prefer to work with numbers.
I think it is possible to combine these and other approaches, provided we acknowledge different learning styles and worldviews, and harmonize these in a platform that is flexible, yet supports the alignment of these evolving worldviews into desired outcomes.
Blogs fall short here and also offer limited re-contextualization of content.
Our approach is that of 'store once - use in unlimited ways', which makes it easy for users to adapt themselves to specific needs of the others.
Apart from that, an 'administrator' can manage the organization's knowledge resources in many different ways, plug-in and copy WebDesks (management dashboards), organize projects etc.
Personal Knowledge Management at the ILO
In introducing a Personal Knowledge Management programme at the International Labour Organization we've discovered that the technology tools approach is only one of several ways of looking at the issue. We've come up with a categorization of the literature on the topic:
Changing workplace: the future of work and its socio-economic context
Coaching and training: methods and approaches to building capacity of individuals and small groups by way of on-the-job training through instruction, demonstration and practice
Human behavior : psychology of the working environment, including machine-human interaction and cognitive overload, user needs assessment
Information literacy: building capacity to identify information needs, and then to find, collect, organise, evaluate, and use the information
KM theory and practice: an overview of the concept of personal knowledge management, put in the context of the larger approach of knowledge management
Knowledge profiling: analysis and measurement of work competencies in the area of information and knowledge
Organizing methodologies: methodology for grouping, categorizing and retrieving information, including disciplinary approaches such as records management
Personal development: a holistic approach to development of an individual’s capabilities and career through analysis of personality and spirituality and recommendation of practices
PIM Tools: technology tools that specifically support management of information for individuals at their computer workstations.
As a library-based project, we've been stimulated by the possibilities offered by weblogs and k-logs, and have also discovered useful ideas in the knowledge base publishing approach of the Montague Institute and the University of Washington's Keeping Found things Found project.
And we’ve learned a lot about desktop tools!
For more details about the ILO Personal Knowledge Management project, contact Richelle Van Snellenberg, ILO INFORM, vansnellenberg@ilo.org.
WebAssistant Knowledge Portals for PKM
Since the title of this discussion is Technologies for Personal Knowledge Management, I think this ePresentation is still appropriate:
It uses Dorsey's overview of skills and explains step by step how one can work with our tools (WKP 1.0) to build knowledge and social capital.
Meanwhile, we're developing version 2.0 of WKP, which aims to help people forget the technology, and just focus on the creation of knowledge and social capital.
This involves a mix of a customizable information refinery, a launch and publication platform and a people and products connector.
Significant contribution - social networks/social capital
Dear Chris,
I found significant indeed the WizOz link, especially http://www.wizoz.co.uk/personal_networking/pn-chap02.pdf. As sociologist and concerned with social networks in generating knowledge, I find interesting how the theories of social networks are used in very practical manner in knowledge management, generally. In the case of personal knowledge management, I believe that the idea presented in chapter 2, a less academic and more pragmatic presentation of social capital, relates in some extent to an old idea of Granovetter: the strength of weak ties, which connect dense and not previously related social networks. The notable contribution of the text, as far as I could see, appears from the intentional aspect, the managerial perspective on the way one could control their relationships, therefore their social capital.
While the set of practical tools offered in the WizOz website is dense and worth analysing, I wonder in what extent all the intentional/managerial agenda can be practically handled?!
shared crib
Cribbing some notes from current PKM conversation at http://www.kwork.org, I like:
From: John Maloney
Subject: Re: CKM/PKM
Greetings --
Any coverage of personal knowledge management (PKM) is incomplete without closely examining WizOz:
http://www.wizoz.co.uk/indexb.html
These offerings are topical and high quality.
Also concerning PKM, there will be a conversation on social tools for the enterprise on July 12 in London. http://www.kmcluster.com/lon/
For an example of PKM books authored by coordinator of wizoz, try: this book on Amazon
The social aspects of PKM
Denham, Chris,
I see really difficult and, in the long term, maybe also ineffective, to find a clear distinction between the individual and the social aspects of PKM.
I don't see collaborative environments as being part of PKM tools for example but, at the same time, some of the tools Denham mentioned, like link repositories, blogs and mindmaps for example, can be fed by multiple editors and so are somehow socially-oriented without being strictly collaborative.
The key point is that personal knowledge processes cannot be conceived without constant exchanges that enrich information processing and boost creativity at a personal level.
The playground is totally open IMO, and the tools can be a blend of searching, organizing and visualizing, and these activities can look either at digital information streams or at other people that each individual consider key to his/her personal knowledge developement. This become apparent when you include blogware in the range of PKM tools because weblogs are maybe the best example of tools born to be highly individualistic and become highly social, without being considered groupware.
I see the individual as the center of all the knowledge processes in the PKM area; part of his/her processes involve other people and can be supported by tools that help to leverage personal knowledge in a social context.
More than people *finding*
Hi Silverio, thank you for putting together this piece. It's very much along the lines I have been thinking in my KM work lately.
I would add to the "people/expert finding" part that PKM tools should also support building and sustaining the relationship to other people. It is not sufficient to find them and then continue to communicate and collaborate using the old tools (email, phone). To really improve personal knowledge work productivity you need tools that enable you to connect better with others. Dave Pollard has written about the importance of "virtual presence" tools, videoconferencing and the like a lot, personally I am very interested in using Weblogs to support relationships, networking and group forming.
PKM tools
It seems a stretch (for me) to count social networking engines (Friendster, Ryze, LinkedIn) as PKM tools. Sure these can be used to promote indivdual brand recognition, enhance personal memory and for networking but they are social rather than personal tools at the core.
My list of PKM tools:
* PC based search and indexing engines
* PIMs & outliners
* Concept and mindmaps (that do not encourage collaborative editing / design)
* Blogs
* Word processors
* Spreadsheets
* Tracking and link repositories
* E-mail clients
* Web homepages
* RSS aggregator
* Personal thinking / visualization tools
The key discrimination is then individual vs. shared spaces, personal vs. collaborative environments.
http://www.kwbsolutions.com/prt.htm
http://www.jhorman.org/wikidPad/
very important area
PKM is an extremely important flow of knowledge. I have to say I am amazed that thetre is no reference to http://www.kwork.org which I believe to be the centre of debate in this area - eg right now Steve Barth and David Snowden have been hosting a head to head with 1300 Km experts participating in the exchanges
It may also be that technology isnt the only (or first) lens with which people should look at PKM.
Wither PKM?
Greetings Silverio,
There are some interesting ideas and positions expressed at this Wiki site where you can choose sides, be a - decentralist = PKM, or centralist = social construction or commitarian or you can be a fence-sitter.
http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SmallPiecesLooselyJoined
Perhaps the core of PKM vs. other KM paradigms, answers the key question 'where do you prefer to play?' - your own space vs. a communal space or 'Ba'.
IMO the key leverage, opportunity and return from knowledge work comes from connectivity, NOT personal thought organization, tool mastery, or individual information management skills. You build social capital, network via weak links, broker relationships and enable knowledge exchanges through dialog, NOT by honing individual skills, building personal brands and acquiring tool proficiencies.
What are your thoughts?
Hmm
First of all - thanks, James for the climbing the mountain article.
Also thanks for the article about the guy who wrote down all his thoughts for 3 months, Vincent.
Interesting experiment, but what a strange conclusion. A wiki would come closest to how this could work on a computer? I don't think so. :-)
Subhan, you say that PKM is something somewhat selfish. Like most any tool or process, it can be used in such a way, but it can also be used to create insights that support communities and that enable others to build further on those insights, for the benefit of the common good.
I happen to be a PKM-software developer that does exactly that: I'm using our software to build telecommunities, setting up a local one with many stakeholders and partners, but also supporting others, and bringing telecommunities together in a global federation.
What do you think of the proverb - 'change the world, begin with yourself?'
This does not mean PKM can not be an interactive process. But you are the central actor in your PKM. It's the digital equivalent of your worldview, so to speak.
Here's a glimpse of my digital worldview.
http://garsett.webassistant.com
It's a glimpse, because it only contains the parts of it that I have published.