Setting up an Efficient Knowledge Sharing System - Thesis Example

Knowledge refers to “know that” and “know-how”, which are quite different from each other. “Know that,” means the knowledge that could be easily come under the description in words. For example, I could say, “I know which module Mary has this week”. “Know-how” represents the virtual knowledge that could not be easily expressed in words. For example, someone claims that he is good at swimming and he definitely knows how to move in the water to prevent sinking.

However, if it is mandatory to describe how he did it, the instruction might not work for others. Nobody can say the person does not know how to swim.Nowadays, many enterprises are facing a fundamental problem: how to maintain and share the knowledge they own to keep their competitive strength in the fast-paced business world. “Knowledge assets are the knowledge regarding markets, products, technologies and organizations, that a business owns or needs to own and which enable its business processes to generate profits, add value, etc” (Macintosh, 1999).

Knowledge Management, thus, is an increasingly hot topic at present. Knowledge Management is a combination of managing knowledge and the processes of developing, preserving, using and sharing knowledge. There are many computer applications today to realize the whole process including knowledge sharing.In reality, business knowledge always belongs to the “know-how” category or the people may not be motivated to tell others what he knows or how he does it. Therefore, encouraging knowledge sharing becomes an essential difficulty in a knowledge management system.

People are quite familiar with telephones today. Telephones are everywhere in daily life. The business world has benefited from this invention for more than 100 years. Business communications could be finished within several minutes with the support of telecommunications.