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Knowledge Management Tools 293

where some people in the organization are scanning communication processes to
detect knowledge.
Davenport and Prusak (1998) divide between three types of knowledge
repositories:
• External knowledge repositories (such as competitive intelligence)
• Structured internal knowledge repositories (such as research reports, product-
oriented market material)
• Informal internal knowledge repositories (such as lessons learned)
A knowledge repository differs from a data warehouse and an information reposi-
tory primarily in the nature of the content that is stored. Knowledge content will
typically consist of contextual, subjective, and fairly pragmatic content. Content in
knowledge repositories tends to be unstructured (e.g., works in progress, draft reports,
presentations). Knowledge repositories will also tend to be more dynamic than other
types of architectures because the knowledge content will be continually updated and
splintered into varying perspectives to serve a wide variety of different users and user
contexts. To this end, repositories typically end up being a series of linked mini-portals
distributed across an organization.
Most repositories will contain the following elements (adapted from Tiwana 2000):
• Declarative knowledge (e.g., concepts, categories, defi nitions, assumptions — knowl-
edge of what)
• Procedural knowledge (e.g., processes, events, activities, actions, manuals — knowl-
edge of how or know-how)
• Causal knowledge (e.g., rationale for decisions, for rejected decisions — knowledge
of why)
• Context (e.g., circumstances of decisions, informal knowledge, what is and what is
not done, accepted, etc. — knowledge of care-why)
The knowledge repository is the one-stop-shop for all organizational users to be
able to access all historical, current, and projected valuable knowledge content. All
users should be able to connect to and annotate content, connect to others who have
come into contact with the content, as well as contributing content of their own. The
interface to the repository or repositories should be user-friendly, seamless, and
transparent.
Personalization in the form of personalized news services through push technolo-
gies in the form of mini-portals for each community of practice and so forth will help
maintain the repository in a manageable state. To this end, the use of a term such as