The former CEO of HP, once said, “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.” Many organizations, like Hewlett-Packard, face challenges of managing information internally. Within an organization there are several information silos.
One solution is to create an internal protected community where users share and exchange knowledge. Communities within an organization are not a new concept but the strategy and approach needed is rather new. The basic principle is how to connect a knowledge seeker to a knowledge source and provide material or social incentives to encourage information sharing and growth.
One way to start is to implement a strategy that will breed contribution is seeding and subsidizing. Apple is one of the best at this. For example: Apple seeds the iPhone with most popular basic applications. But Apple figured out that they could build a platform that let the community rapidly supply features they did not think about and allow that community to grow and strive.
The idea to a successful knowledge exchange is to seed the community with valuable information addressing business questions. Then the employees help each other with unseen or emerging problems.
Every company has a vast amount of knowledge, but managing and using that knowledge across all facets of the organization is difficult and challenging. Every company wants to be increase productivity, reduce uncertainty, and foresee emerging trends and opportunities. The value of setting up your own knowledge exchange is limitless if implemented correctly.
