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Future Challenges for KM 447

weight of their intellectual assets than on so-called “ hard ” assets. The focus is on
distributed, enterprise-wide innovation that signals the tearing down of R & D ’ s overly
centralized and compartmentalized profi le in most fi rms and offers strong support for
the view that innovation should be structured as a distributed, whole-fi rm social
process, not an administrative one.
Critical KM issues are often the reason why applications of KM fail. A KM strategy
enables an organization to act proactively (acting before the problem occurs) than
reactively (acting after a crisis has arisen). This means trying to anticipate potential
problems, potential areas of resistance to organizational change, the lack of incentives
for knowledge sharing, and the very thorny ethical issues that are associated with KM
applications. Some good practices and lessons learned from organization ’ s experiences
with KM to date could help guide us in being proactive. Some recommendations would
include:
• Improving access to information and knowledge — covering the availability, acces-
sibility and affordability of information (especially of scientifi c information in devel-
oping countries)
• Promoting knowledge sharing through learning circles and vertical/horizontal
coalitions, peer-to-peer technology, communities of practice, infomediaries, help
desks, e-learning, and better interaction/mutual learning with target groups (the poor)
• Networking international and regional cooperation — covering networking models,
digital solidarity, collaboration tools like portals and common terminology (thesau-
rus), network effectiveness, strengthening existing structures and resource centers
• Other issues include the development of local content in local languages and
dissemination channels besides Internet, capacity building, and quality control/
standards
• Avoid weak incentives. A weak incentive is an incentive that does not encourage
maximization of an objective because it is ambiguous. For example, payment of weekly
wages is a weak incentive since by construction it does not encourage maximum
production, but rather the minimal performance of showing up every workday. This
can be the best kind of incentive in a contract if the buyer does not know exactly
what he wants or if output is not straightforwardly measurable.

Concluding Thought

The Gartner Group (1998) has stated that knowledge management “ will be the stan-
dard way of running a business. ” In a short-term perspective, knowledge management