A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog
I have my definition. Knowledge allows a business or organization to make a decision. Good KM systems allow you to make good decisions. Decisions require an interaction of human beings, with each other and with the environment. KM systems need to get information to people, allowing them to create knowledge which can lead to decisions. No information, no people, no knowledge and no decisions.
Somehow I missed this in my aggregator and only discovered it through an ego search via Technorati's Cosmos.
This is exactly my boss' definition, and I have taken on a lot of this for myself. If the business can't make well-educated decisions, then it is in deep trouble. Seat-of-the-pants decision making will only get you so far.
Once you have decided that you need to make good decisions, you need to describe just what it is that the business needs to make decisions. Maybe not the gory details, but more along the lines of the nature of the knowledge (or information or data). Of course, it is likely that different classes of decisions will have different classes of knowledge needs.
Further, the decision-making description above misses (or hides) the idea that KM should smooth out wrinkles for knowledge workers. Improve the knowledge workers' processes for creating, using, distributing and protecting knowledge. This is where Jim McGee expressed concern.
Update Sept 2005: Corrected archival link to Richard Gayle's site.