Knowledge Management Critical for Start-ups (realkm.blog-city.com)
It might sound strange, but I think a knowledge management initiative is as important in a small and growing organization as it is in a mature global company. It's tempting to say that it is "just a couple of people" who can communicate directly everyday. However, what people forget is that this communication exchange is lost forever by not being captured. If the start-up is successful, in the long run, it will struggle to grow. On the flip side, if a start-up has to lay-off people, which is not uncommon these days, the employee's "knowledge" walks out the door because that knowledge was not stored in context in a knowledge base.
The author is connected to Entopia, and the story he tells is still good. Organizations of all sizes can use good strategy around how they use, create, exchange, store, and find knowledge.
This entry is a nice pairing with a recent Management by Baseball article on the Off Topic: The Diseconomies of Scale Proved(Indisputably) by the 2004 Olympics. Jeff Angus talks about the problems that appear as companies grow "too large" and start losing any benefit that being large buys them. Jeff doesn't focus on knowledge sharing, but in combination with the above, my brain starts popping with nice connections.
Just imagine what happens when a small company starts with knowledge sharing as a core value and continues to foster that value as the company grows and changes.
[Update]
Jeff Angus contacted me directly to say that his entry was "all about KM" and that he has been thinking and writing about this for a while: Portals and Pink Flamingos from Sept 01, 1999 in Destination KM. Knowledge Management: Choosing the Right Flavor from the Lotus Developer Network Archives with Stowe Boyd.