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154 Chapter 5

Table 5.2
Software to develop yellow pages or expertise location systems

Name Description Web Site
Kamoon ’ s Connect Profi les set up by analyzing http://www.kamoon.com/
unstructured repositories to identify
documented expertise
AskMe Web-based questionnaire used on a http://www.askmecorp.com/
voluntary basis; can track Q & A to
identify any knowledge gaps
Sopheon ’ s Organik Q & A format, provides answers to http://www.sopheon.com/
questions and then stores the answers
in a repository for future reference
Tacit ’ s Learns about people automatically http://www.tacit.com/
KnowledgeMail through analysis of e-mails as well as
document repositories and Lotus
Notes databases. Search results
include experts and links to content.

A wide range of software exists for the development of corporate yellow pages (see
table 5.2 for some examples). Most create an initial profi le of an individual ’ s expertise
based on an analysis of published documents, based on questionnaires or interviews,
while others focus on e-mails. These are very popular KM applications and they are
often the fi rst KM implementation a company will undertake primarily due to the fact
that they can be developed fairly quickly (on the order of one to two months) and
they can provide almost instantaneous benefi ts to individuals, communities, and the
organization itself.
Yellow pages, or expertise location systems, were among the earliest KM applica-
tions and they remain one of the best ways to initiate wider-scale knowledge
sharing in organizations. Two examples are explored here from Texaco and British
Petroleum.

Knowledge-Sharing Communities

The notion of a community is, of course, not necessarily a new concept. In fact, as
far back as 1887, writers such as the German sociologist Tonnies compared and con-
trasted the more direct, more total, and more signifi cant interactions to be found in
a community as opposed to the more formal, more abstract, and more instrument-
driven relationships to be found in a society (translated by Loomis, 1957). Tonnies