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• KM practices could benefi t from the skills already held by information professionals.
These skills include the identifi cation of knowledge needs, helping to distinguish
between information and knowledge to help facilitate a broader and more inclusive
KM initiative.
One can claim that the ontological and epistemological aspects of knowledge are
still so ill defi ned and poorly understood that KM cannot be an emergent discipline.
And, indeed, although the concepts of tacit and explicit knowledge, knowledge
sharing, and knowledge technologies are often used, they are not clearly defi ned.
However, the question remains why do large private and public organizations bother
to use unclear terminologies? The reason arises from a lack of consensus or use of
standardized terms across organizations rather than a lack of clarity. The IM commu-
nity cannot continue to claim that it has addressed for years the same issues addressed
now by KM experts. Dismissing KM as simply a management fad could be a missed
opportunity to understand how knowledge is developed, gained, and used in organiza-
tions and ultimately in society. New labels can be misleading but they can also force
some refl ections. There continues to be a need to examine why there is such an inter-
est for KM in both the academic, business communities, and governments.
Researchers have also begun to study KM technologies. For example, Studt (2003)
found that drug discovery is one of a handful of technologies that create value by
transforming vast amounts of data into knowledge that is then used to create useful
products. in this case drugs for human health. Unfortunately, the creation of that data
in the drug area is growing at a faster rate than researchers are being able to manage
it. Genomics, proteomics and the biotech industry based on them have turned the
traditional, mostly linear fl ow of information, into a dynamic, iterative loop.
Along with new types of biotech data, however, information capture throughout
the development process has also become more critical. Decisions to advance and
prioritize targets and potential leads require the integration and capture of whole new
types of information using new research technologies.
The use of knowledge management tools is becoming critical to reduce develop-
ment times and costs and to improve the overall success rate of testing new com-
pounds. Understanding the different components of knowledge management and
how they interact in a drug development environment is the fi rst step in implement-
ing a workable system. A knowledge management process consists of the creation,
collection, interpretation, storage, and interaction with data. A number of pharma-
ceutical and biotechnology companies have reported signifi cantly improved
R & D productivities with the implementation of knowledge management initiatives.