Bill Ives points to one of his articles in Intelligent KM IntelligentPortals: Getting Full Value from KM
Knowledge management comes primarily out of two disciplines, each with its own mental model: human resources and learning knowledge on one hand, and information systems and storing knowledge on the other. It appears that the people specialists think in terms of getting people to understand and use the knowledge, while the technologists focus on the Ã’stuff" (the bits and bytes, the knowledge itself). The business units they serve have their own mental models and think in terms of the bottom-line impact of any initiatives.
This will sound familiar to people have been reading and writing about the big picutre of knowledge management. I fancy my own consultancy as bridging the gap between technology interests and business interests. I know enough about the technology to get me into trouble with the IT guys, and I have been doing a fair job of understanding and describing what I hear the business describing as their vision. It's gratifying to see the light of understanding in my own mind as well as that in the eyes of my cleints.