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446 Chapter 13

• Metadata: Hype or help? Does the use of metadata actually improve information
fi nding?
As Schulz & Jobe (2001) point out, empirical research in the corporate knowledge
management world is limited. Many opportunities exist for further detailed empirical
research.

A Postmodern KM

Weinberger (2001) introduced the term “ postmodern KM ” to distinguish from tradi-
tional KM which he views as having traditionally suffered from the belief that we can
discover ultimate truths and organize the world according to rational principles using
clever code. The idea was that we should capture and organize bits of knowledge in
central databases. The people involved were relevant only as donors to the common
ontology or as empty vessels into which knowledge could be poured. Postmodernism
holds that the lenses of individual subjectivity and group power dynamics always warp
our concept of reality. Therefore, postmodern KM cannot be about management at
all because management implies external control of some defi nable resource. Its goal
is simpler yet deeper: leveraging people. Postmodern KM operates within and on the
basis of existing behavior patterns, mining conversation streams, and relationships
automatically to incorporate structure and context into the information human users
already manipulate. It fosters human intelligence and interaction rather than trying
to replace them.
Concretely, that means things like automatically parsing e-mail messages and other
internal content to draw out useful context and associations (an approach being
pursued by Lotus and a bevy of others including Tacit Knowledge Systems, Abridge,
EcoCap, Krypteian, and Neomeo); mining discussion content and user feedback on
intranets (Newknow); adding workfl ow directly into e-mail messages (Zaplet); and
building on weblogs as a powerful web-native tool for knowledge sharing (Onclave
and Slashdot derivatives). In other words, tools to help manage knowledge.
Miller and Morris (1999) discuss the impending transformation of R & D from its
historical, product-centric past to its emerging knowledge-centric future. In addition,
their focus on discontinuous and fusion innovation promises to lead the way for
industry, in general, whose R & D functions typically produce less than one new
product innovation per decade and whose new products, when they are produced,
tend to fail in under four years. The authors explicit embrace of knowledge manage-
ment is also welcome, as the value of most companies now tends to rest more on the