Question Five: Case Study

Knowledge Curve vs Kraken PriceWaterhouseCoopers focused on sharing knowledge across what had been boundaries following the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. The Chief Knowledge Officer, Elen Knapp, supported this effort by putting into place the Knowledge Curve, where employees can find a repository of best practices, consulting methodologies, tax and audit rules, news services, online training, directories of experts, and more, plus links to specialized sites for various industries or skills. The site gets 18 million hits a month, mostly from workers downloading forms or checking the news, but also from employees looking things up. Yet there is a feeling that it is under-usedwhen looking for expertise, most people still go down the hall. In parallel, a British-based PWC consultant and his colleagues set up a network where they could be "more innovative." Over five months they set up a Lotus Notes e-mail list with no rules, no moderator, and no agenda other than what is set by the messages people sent. Any Page 4 of 4 employee was able to join. Kraken, as it was later called, now has 500 members, and although it still has no official status, it has become the premier forum for sharing. On a busy day, members may get 50 Kraken messages, but they are welcomed because they are relevant and useful. What are some of the reasons for this grassroots community of practice (CoP) success over corporate top-down KM systems? It is demand-driven ("does anyone know. . . ."); it gets at tacit knowledge; it allows fuzzy questions rather than structured database queries; it is part of your everyday routine; it is full of opinionspoints of views rather than dry facts. Knowledge Curve preserves explicit knowledge, whereas Kraken enables the sharing of tacit knowledge. Kraken is about learning, whereas Knowledge Curve is about teaching. You cannot have one without the other.

Questions

a) Discuss in detail three(3) main reasons why Kraken was more widely accepted compared to Knowledge Curve.

b) If you could suggest a system that is a combination of Knowledge Curve and Kraken that could overcome the weaknesses of both systems, what would be its main features and characteristics?

c) Which work environment or industry would benefit from having a knowledge management system such as Knowledge Curve? State your reasons.