Originally answered Apr 27, 2017
2 min readJan 19, 2021
KM Hot Topics
- Digital workplace — new platforms to help people work more effectively
- Digital transformation — the change management required to get people to adopt digital workplace tools and use them routinely
- Working Out Loud (WOL) — a growing movement that encourages employees to narrate their work and broadcast what they’re doing so others can interact, respond, learn, and apply that knowledge to their own work
- Community management — an emerging formal discipline where community managers are formally trained, developed, and assigned to full-time roles to oversee both internal communities of practice and external brand and marketing-oriented communities
- Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence (AI) — used to automate certain KM tasks and augment knowledge-related decision making
- Analytics and business intelligence — help KM use data to derive insights and inform actions and decisions
- Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs), especially Microsoft and Workplace by Facebook — an improved user interface for online threaded discussions that allows KM to take advantage of the fact that almost everyone is using social media outside of work to drive adoption of similar behaviors inside the enterprise
- Chat tools such as Slack — used predominately for team interaction and encourage collaboration, but can prove confusing for users alongside an organization’s ESN
- Gamification and digital badging — new ways of framing incentives to recognize people for performing desired knowledge-sharing and collaborative behaviors; see also the SIKM Topic
- Agile methodology — originated in software development but is now being applied more broadly across the enterprise; a way to think about engaging users in the process of developing systems for them and incorporating iterative feedback into designs
- Mobile apps and bring your own device (BYOD) — more people are using smart phones and tablets for work, so KM must ensure that knowledge systems are optimized for mobile so that knowledge is accessible through these devices
- Knowledge retention — the aging workforce will soon retire, and to take advantage of their knowledge and experience, we need creative approaches like keeping them connected to their former communities
- Aggregation — using tags, activity streams, and API calls to deliver relevant information feeds through multiple channels.
- Customization — allowing individuals to interact with potentially overwhelming flows of information in an optimal way, filtering out the noise and delivering just what is most needed.
- The ISO 30401 Standard for Knowledge management systems — does not mandate how to implement KM: sets out principles for guidance, describes requirements but not how to get there, attempts to ensure that KM is managed with a degree of consistency, and is an an aid for self-audit; see also the SIKM Topic
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