Intranets and knowledge sharing

What is meant by a community of practice?

At the 2004 KM Challenge conference knowledge management consultant James Robertson contended that the organisational intranet “can become a dynamic and living environment for knowledge based activities”. He suggested five methods of achieving this and gave a brief overview of each.

The first, developed by Etienne Wenger, and of major interest to the knowledge management community, is the ‘communities of practice’ approach. This is the increasingly popular, informal knowledge-sharing between peers and small groups who can use their organisation’s intranet to build a ‘home page’, establish the group identity and advertise its existence. This provides a collaborative meeting place for members from different physical environments (offices, cities or states) to use for interaction and also offers a way for their intellectual product to be shared with the overall organisation. The group is responsible for capturing, sharing, storing, organising and generally looking after the ‘knowledge’ within their group. They might use content management systems, collaborative environments, wikis or specialised community of practice tools, together with the supporting intranet, to preserve their collective knowledge for the future.

How can an intranet support the activity of a community of practice?

Intranets have not yet reached their full potential in most organisations and Robertson warns that they do not stand alone. The intranet must identify and connect the people and the process issues within the organisation. He recommends conducting ‘stakeholder interviews’ to map the knowledge needs of the organisation. This mapping would include the business processes, staff information needs, cultural issues and technology requirements. From the mapping a ‘knowledge management’ strategy could be developed including an information management policy outlining the part each technology platform would play in meeting the identified needs. Then, using best practice usability, information architecture techniques and task analysis, “effective interfaces” and “efficient information structures” could be designed and developed by each 'community of practice' group. Since the research, design and development techniques are user-centred, they should lead to staff approval and early uptake of the new systems, but it would still be necessary to use change management techniques and extensive internal communications (including storytelling) to keep all staff motivated and involved. Robertson emphasizes that all this technology development is driven by the needs highlighted in the research/mapping stage.

The corporate intranet should provide a foundational platform (or vehicle) supporting knowledge management initiatives, including informal sharing by individuals. In conjunction with evolving technologies such as collaborative environments, weblogs and wikis, the developing intranet opens up a future of seamless knowledge management covering both the physical and online environments for all members of a community of practice.

Reference:
Robertson, J. (2004). “Intranets and knowledge sharing”. KM Column. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from Step Two Designs Pty Ltd Web site: http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_intranetsknowledge/index.html