Dave Pollard has been thinking about personal knowledge management for a while. This article from last week is a nice summary of where his thinking has come from and where he stands today. Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) -- an Update
PKM, therefore, has four components, which can be represented in this equation:
Know-Who Canvassing & Connection +
Know-How Harvesting +
Personal Content Management +
Personal Productivity Improvement =
Personal Knowledge Management
I particularly like Dave's description of how he got to this point in his understanding. When he was in the corporate world, he was in charge of a large "corporate KM" effort and struggled to understand why people resisted taking full advantage of the tools he offered. The old model he refers to as being focused on "content and collection" with a just-in-case mentality. This is all about security and collection from the corporate point of view and doesn't have a lot of draw for the individual.
The new model focuses on "context and connection" with a just-in-time mentality. This tends to be very much about the individual, and corporations have difficulty seeing where this gives them the ability to "know what they know." Companies need to create an environment where people have access to the right people, information and tools they need. The challenge is to move away from creating those repositories to towards supporting people doing work. More accurately: the challenge is to balance the repositories and the support.