What are the three generations of knowledge management?

Originally answered Apr 16, 2018

KM 1.0 (~1995–2005): Collecting documents, storing them in repositories, and using search to find them.

KM 2.0 (~2005–2015): Connecting people through communities of practice and social business tools. Also referred to as Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0.

KM 3.0 (~2015-present): Using emerging processes and technologies to augment the capabilities of individuals and groups of people:

1. Digital workplace and digital transformation
2. Working Out Loud (WOL) and narrating your work
3. Community management
4. Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence (AI)
5. Analytics and business intelligence
6. Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs), especially Microsoft and Workplace by Facebook
7. Chat tools such as Slack
8. Gamification and digital badging
9. Agile methodology
10. Mobile apps and bring your own device (BYOD)

See also:

• The Three Eras of Knowledge Management by Nancy Dixon

1. Information Management: Leveraging Explicit Knowledge — capturing documented knowledge and building it into a collection — connecting people to content.
2. Experience Management: Leveraging Tacit Knowledge — gave rise to communities of practice and reflection processes.
3. Idea Management: Leveraging Analytic Knowledge — integrating ideas from multiple perspectives through conversation in both its virtual and face-to-face forms. The third era is about the creation or development of ideas that have not existed before. It is not the management of anything organizational members have learned through their work experience, but what they create jointly when they are brought together in an environment that supports the use of collective knowledge. That support includes convening, cognitive diversity and transparency.

• In Complex Acts of Knowing — Paradox and Descriptive Self Awareness, Dave Snowden describes three generations of knowledge management:

1. First generation focused on timely information provision for decision support and in support of business process re-engineering initiatives.
2. Second generation focused on tacit-explicit knowledge conversion.
3. Third generation requires the clear separation of context, narrative and content management.

• The unacknowledged parentage of knowledge management by Patrick Lambe
• Generations of knowledge management in the architecture, engineering and construction industry: An evolutionary perspective by Yacine Rezguia, Christina J. Hopfea, and Chalee Vorakulpipatb
• Proposing a fifth generation of knowledge management for development: investigating convergence between knowledge management for development and transdisciplinary research by Sarah Cummings, Barbara J. Regeer, Wenny W.S. Ho, and Marjolein B.M. Zweekhorst