In recent years, mobile and wireless and some other areas within IT have dominated the "cool" technologies scene, but clients must have noticed the sheer number of "really cool" knowledge management (KM) technologies that are starting to emerge. New interest in KM is being fueled by several new technologies exhibiting solid emergence for personal knowledge networking (PKN) and social networks — for example, wikis, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and relationship networks. Interest is also being driven by the realization that KM can happen without a lot of explicit governance. This trend is called "grass-roots KM" as opposed to traditional, top-down enterprise KM.

With PKN technologies, employees can get to the information they need by using:

• Personal knowledge search tools instead of searching on the corporate intranet
• Instant messaging and Short Message Service (SMS) instead of the telephone or e-mail
• Peer-to-peer file sharing instead of enterprise file servers
• A wiki instead of a team collaboration space
• "Blogging" instead of the enterprise's Web content management

PKN expands through grass-roots adoption within virtual teams and communities, and as a result, the tools in which an enterprise may invest for enterprise KM may not get as much usage as expected — particularly when operational support is weak for those technology solutions.

Another aspect of PKN is social networks. Using personal and enterprise tools, end users build out their online connections to other individuals, communities and teams. The resulting social networks enable a bottom-up grass-roots approach to KM. Knowledge workers are directly sharing and exchanging intellectual capital using online social networks (among other things). This means that enterprises will be challenged to benefit from the development of grass-roots KM without losing their intellectual capital investments. It's a difficult quandary.

This Knowledge Support Spotlight is an introduction to understanding the role of some PKN tools and social networks within the enterprise's overall KM efforts.

Features

"Enterprises Are Challenged to Benefit From 'Grass-Roots' KM" — KM has reached a level of maturity that shows the business value of managing intellectual assets; concurrently, however, PKN is challenging traditional KM. By French Caldwell

"Start Your SNA Efforts With Homegrown Solutions" — Before spending money on specialized products, use search, content management and taxonomy to support your social network analysis project. By Whit Andrews

"Use Social Networks to Improve Customer Service" — Using social networks to capture previously unrecognized expert knowledge can cut information maintenance costs by as much as 45 percent. By Esteban Kolsky

"RSS Is a Case Study in Unintended Consequences" — Really Simple Syndication has fueled a social and political phenomenon that has exploded in popularity and mass-media visibility; weblogs and blog reader software have transformed the way some end users experience the Web. By Ray Valdes

"Best Practices in Corporate Blogging" — Organizations that want to succeed with their corporate weblogs must first understand the ways of this new communications medium. By Ray Valdes

"Wikis Can Improve Collaborative Work and Knowledge Sharing" — Wikis address an important area of corporate IT by improving collaboration via a shared workspace. By Nikos Drakos, Alexander Linden, Martin Reynolds and Mark Raskino

"Apply the Knowledge Gained From Building a 'Wiki'" — Wikis are informal collaboration tools that can be useful to companies, as demonstrated by the lessons we learned from developing one to support Gartner's research work. By Betsy Burton, Rita Knox and Nikos Drakos