Knowledge Management
The written word has for centuries served as the tool to record and distribute knowledge. Someone dedicate time to study a subject, becoming an expert, and writing it down. Others read it and benefit from that knowledge. There is no interaction between the writer and the readers.
The voice of the expert is the voice of knowledge. Collective intelligence does not have channels of expression. But the fact is that businesses need to solve complex problems that require the collaboration between individuals and teams.
What to have for dinner tonight? Which movie are we going to watch? What is the capital of Lesotho? Until recently those questions would prompt us to look up the expert column on the newspaper or the right volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Social Media has start to revolutionize how we get access to information. By enabling the participation of the community, aggregating collective knowledge, and expressing it in ways that are useful to solve specific problems, several social sites are already helping us to solve daily problems.
Yelp!, Amazon.com, Netflix, and Wikipedia are just a few examples of how Social Technologies allows us to make choices and get access to information relying on peer community knowledge rather than a subject matter experts.
Companies are waking up to that change and are starting to leverage tools such as Wiki, forums and community software to solve business problems. Information needs to be captured in each interaction and then flow to the right person, at the right time, where it can be used to solve a tangible problem.
By using some of the same social tools that first emerged in the consumer web, a Social CRM/Enterprise 2.0 system can aggregate and direct knowledge inside the company. Streams capture conversations and model relationships, so that information flows to the right person when and where it is needed to execute a business task.
