10 years ago, I was introduced to the Knowledge Management industry, and shortly thereafter signed on to run the US Office for a KM vendor....(check out the story about vendors ).
In 1998, it seemed as if anything that moved was positioned under Knowledge Management: Content Management, Storytelling, Social Networks, Digital Asset Management, Brainstorming, Communities of Practice, Intellectual Property RIghts Management, Wikis, and Search (the company I worked for had a natural language, neural-network-enhanced search engine) just to name a few.
At that time, if you had a product in one of those categories, you were a KM product.
While in 1998 a burgeoning industry was all trying to aggregate under the banner of Knowledge Management, there is now a growing segregation in process. Most recently are white papers by InQuira on (Knowledge Management System) KMS vs. CMS (Content Management System), and one by CMSWatch on CM vs KM vs DAM et al. Additionally the KNOW Network published a Social Networking vs. Knowledge Management perspective. Search - as anyone can attest - is certainly a market in and of itself.
It seems that processes and technologies that were once lining up under KM are now eclipsing KM in their own right. Of course, the processes and the technologies surrounding these sectors are all different, even if they are not positioned 'versus' one another.
The demise of Knowledge Management will not be due to any lack of need for KM processes - witness the coming brain drain and the value of things such as Social Networks (and how vendors are trying to move Social Networking into the office) - no, KM is only threatened by its lack of ability to establish a secure identity of its own.
We'll see.
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