The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business

by Carla O'dell

The best thinking and actions in the fast-moving arena of collaboration and knowledge management The New Edge in Knowledge captures the most practical and innovative practices to ensure organizations have the knowledge they need in the future and, more importantly, the ability to connect the dots and use knowledge to succeed today. Straightforward and easy-to-follow, this is the resource you'll turn to again and again to get-and stay-in the know. Plus, the book is filled with real-world examples – the case studies and snapshots of how best practice companies are achieving success with knowledge management. Praise for The New Edge in How Knowledge Management is Changing the Way We Do Business “You may think you know knowledge management, but this is new―how knowledge initiatives can incorporate social media, mobile technologies, and learning, for example. This book integrates the new knowledge management with the best of the old, such as communities of practice and measurement. KM still matters, and this book tells you why.”
― Thomas H. Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of IT and Management, Babson College "Over the last decade, knowledge management has emerged as a key success factor for the modern corporation, driven by tremendous advances in business analytics. This book studies the best practices in knowledge management and how leadership companies are applying them today."
― Virginia M. Rometty, Senior Vice President and Group Executive Sales, Marketing and Strategy, IBM “APQC has been on the leading edge of knowledge management for almost two decades. O’Dell and Hubert have captured those best practices and created a road map to transform the way people work. Reap the benefits of their experience.”
― C. Jackson Grayson, Chairman and Founder, APQC and co-author of If Only We Knew What We Know “ The New Edge in Knowledge is a useful how-to manual that takes best practice sharing and organizational capability building to the next Web 2.0, social networking, mobility, and communities of practice. National and international examples show how companies can create strategic alignment and systematic management to transfer knowledge rapidly and effectively.”
― Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and author of How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good "What has made our KM program strong is sticking to the fundamentals-- that's exactly what this book outlines. It provides trusted advisor guidance on how any company or organization can take the concrete steps to create and implement a world class KM strategy."
― Dan Ranta, Director of Knowledge Sharing, ConocoPhillips “Carla O'Dell and Cindy Hubert have written an amazingly down to earth, useful and practical book on knowledge management and its importance to modern business. Starting with the distinction between information and knowledge, they provide a viewpoint that leaves IT in the dust. Read it to prepare for tomorrow's world!”
― A. Gary Shilling, President, A. Gary Shilling & Co., Inc. “A practical business approach to knowledge management, this book covers KM's value proposition for any organization, provides proven strategies and approaches to make it work, shares how to measure KM's impact, and illustrates high level knowledge sharing with wonderful case studies. Well done!”
― Jane Dysart, Conference Chair, KMWorld & Partner, Dysart & Jones Associates “This book is a tour de force in the field of knowledge management. Read every single page and learn about best practices from the leading firms around the world. All of this and more from the company that leads the way in the APQC. I highly recommend it for your bookshelf.”
― Dr. Nick Bontis, Director, Institute for Intellectual Capital Research “Food for thought from two of the pioneers. Carla O’Dell and Cindy Hubert have been in the trenches with many of the organizations that have succeeded in leveraging KM for business benefit. They recognized early the symbiotic relationship between knowledge flow and work flow and have guided practitioners in the quest to optimize and streamline both.”
― Reid Smith, Enterprise Content Management Director, Marathon Oil Company “Carla O’Dell and Cindy Hubert take knowledge management from vague idea to strategic enabler. In so doing, they clear up the not only the whats, but the whys and the hows. This book establishes knowledge management as an organizational discipline. The authors offer a straightforward set of execution steps, coaching readers on how to launch their own knowledge management programs in a deliberate and rigorous way.”
― Jill Dyché, Partner and Co-Founder, Baseline Consulting; Author of Customer Data Reaching a Single Version of the Truth “The authors and APQC have put together an excellent ‘how to’ manual for Knowledge Management (KM) that can benefit any organization, from those experienced in KM to those just starting. ...

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Management

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2011

Reviews

[Prahalathan KK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is on Organisational Knowledge Management. This book is primarily written for very large organisations with significant budgets. Read this only if you can want inspiration for starting or improving an Organisational Knowledge Management programme

[Roy Van Den Brande · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too vague to be actionable. And a topic that gets outdated fast.

[Henri Hämäläinen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business. This was a book I purchased to understand knowledge management possibilities in our client companies. So it was purely out of professional interest about the subject.

After reading the book, knowledge management feels more of a bureaucratic nonsense than it did before the book. It introduced knowledge management to require lot of efforts and big organization to get it working. I just have to disagree with that.

Big part of the book was explaining the obvious of knowledge management. There wasn't really anything innovative presented for knowledge management, tools and processes were common and common sense.

Examples presented in the book was from big companies, I don't consider really leading edge of any sort. Those were big successful companies, which I believe have all the methodologies of the world in use and succeed despite those. I didn't find any actual proof, that knowledge management would have really made these companies special.

I do believe knowledge management and learning organizations are important. I disagree the bureaucratic, comprehensive programs build to increase knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing comes from open atmosphere and good enough tools for it.

As a final touch, style of the book couldn't be considered as exhilarating or inspiring. It could have easily been 50 pages shorter than it was. I can't really recommend it to anyone. There must be better books for knowledge management.

This review was also posted on my blog - here

[Robert Bogue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knowledge management isn’t new. With more than two decades of history there have been knowledge management programs running with varying levels of success – and failure. The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business aims to distill some of the best practices in knowledge management. The authors have years of experience in the knowledge management space and dozens of stories to share. There are encouraging stories and useful frameworks for ensuring that your knowledge management project is successful – and a few surprises.

Click here to read the full review

[Tim Gannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It deals with the field of knowledge management - methods for finding the critical knowledge in your business - how to access it and not lose it (e.g., attrition, retirement, company structure) - reviews different approaches to obtaining your company's critical knowledge and letting it flow to the employees that need it - utilizing teaching moments that don't remove the employee from the workflow and that lead to improved productivity and quicker time to problem solution - finding solutions for how to give an employee the knowledge they need when they need it in the amount that they need - various technologies are also suggested to enhance this capability. Quite a fascinating subject.

[Ozzie Gooen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book on Audible, which meant that the bullet point lists and obviously the charts were much less effective.

I'm quite new to Knowledge Management but this information wasn't very new to me. All of it seemed quite obvious for what the name sounds like.

While it's interesting to understand what companies use, it's a bit difficult to get a really thorough understanding from this book which comes at them from a 10,000-foot level. It makes a good case that it's important to keep learning internal to an organization, to be there exactly when people need it. It gives very brief overviews of different KM systems.

[Jeffrey Keefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really useful for initial work to develop the foundation for an organizational knowledge management strategy, something I am doing at this time for my work. I wish it would have helped to outline it more, though it made a number of references to other materials that would have been more beneficial had they been included in this text.

[Jack Vinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

My blog post on this book. http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2...

[Ariadna73 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good for academics and people that are curious of the subject.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read bits and pieces for work as needed.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simple intro to KM

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, seriously, I did. Admittedly a prof dev book, but a quick read and decent into to basic KM principles.