CIO Magazine's Essential Technology column for by Scott Spanbauer is titled Knowledge Management 2.0 this month.
New, focused, lightweight applications rewrite the rules about KM. The best part? People will actually use them.
Why have "corporate KM" projects been unsuccessful? "Users and IT administrators hate them." Ouch.
The article provides examples of companies using web2.0 ideas and application, instead of the mother-of-all, heavily-customized, internally-managed applications. The examples include a company that is using blogging for internal communications, another using an interesting combination of desktop search and expertise location, and a document sharing system that is more focused on collaborative work than on managing the work flow.
The lesson that CIO Magazine is trying to teach? There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all in the world of knowledge management. The big applications have their place, but so do the applications that serve a specific niche and do not get in the way of the real work of the company.