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Knowledge Management Tools 295

Firestone 2003 ). Portals are a means of storing and disseminating organizational
knowledge such as business processes, policies, procedures, documents, and other
codifi ed knowledge. They will typically feature searching capabilities through content
as well as through the taxonomy (categorized content). The option to receive personal-
ized content through push technologies as well as through pull technologies (intel-
ligent agents) may exist. Communities can be accessed via the portal for communication
and collaboration purposes. There may be a number of services that users can subscribe
to as well as web-based learning modules on selected topics and professional practices.
The critical content will consist of the best practices and lessons learned that have
been accumulated over the years and to which many organizational members have
added value.
The purpose of a portal is to aggregate content from a variety of sources into a
one-stop shop for relevant content. Portals enable the organization to access internal
and external knowledge that can be consolidated, analyzed, and used as inputs to
decision making. Ideally, portals will take into account the different needs of users
and the different sorts of knowledge work they carry out in order to provide the best
fi t with both the content and the format in which the content is presented (the portal
interface). Knowledge portals link people, processes, and valuable knowledge content
and provide the organizational glue or common thread that serves to support knowl-
edge workers. First generation portals were essentially a means of broadcasting infor-
mation to all organizational members. Today, they have evolved into sophisticated
shared workspaces where knowledge workers can not only contribute content and
share content but also acquire and apply valuable organizational knowledge. Knowl-
edge portals support knowledge creation, sharing, and use by allowing a high level of
bidirectional interaction with users.
Portals serve to promote knowledge creation by providing a common virtual space
where knowledge workers can contribute their knowledge to organizational memory.
Portals promote knowledge sharing by providing links to other organizational members
through expertise location systems. Communities of practice will typically have a
dedicated space for their members on the organizational portal and their own mem-
bership location system included in the virtual workspace. The portal organizes valu-
able knowledge content using taxonomies or classifi cation schemes to store both
structured (e.g., documents) and unstructured content (e.g., stories, lessons learned,
and best practices). Finally, portals support knowledge acquisition and application by
providing access to the accumulated knowledge, know-how, experience, and expertise
of all those who have worked within that organization. An application is described in
box 8.6.