5 key KM papers

Which are the 5 KM articles that have made the most impression on you?

Here are my suggestions:

• Ikujiro Nonaka & Noboru Konno, 1999 "The concept of 'Ba': building a foundation for knowledge creation", California Management Review 40 (3) 40-54. article. 'Ba' is a subtle affordance, a knowledge space, where relationships are built, trust is established and collaboration happens.

• David Oliver and Johan Roos, 1999. "from fitness landscapes to knowledge landscapes" Systemic Practice and Action Research, Vol. 12.3 article. Connects the emergence of knowledge with chaos and complexity theory, illustrating the key role of metaphor in knowledge work.

• Tacit knowledge - it's perhaps the most fundamental unique KM concept. Sveiby's web site

• Morten T. Hansen, Nitin Nohira and Thomas Tierney, 1999, "What's Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge?". e-doc A key choice in knowledge strategies and one of the dichotomies that most KM folk just do not appreciate.

• Demarest, Marc. "Understanding Knowledge Management." Long Range Planning 30.03 (June 1997): 374-384. This is the clearest articulation of KM that I have found. The goal of commercial knowledge is not truth, but effective performance, not what is right, but what works or even better 'what works better', where better is defined in competitive and financial contexts.

Your thoughts - feedback??

See: my 5 best KM books, and 5 KM books to pitch

Comments

[John Morrison]

Enjoyed your insights. Here are a few of my own. I hated Wenger's book. It is too theoretical for me. Reification and the like. And that is the main problem I am having with many of the KM thinkers out there even though I just finished a KM MA program at Royal Roads University. It is just too darn theoretical. Not practical enough for me. I have not seen any concrete evidence as yet that KM can be implemented in the practical sense of the term, except perhaps as a resource - although I have been slammed for even suggesting Knowledge Management be viewed as a corporate resource to be managed and exploited, yes exploited. But, I'll stuck to my guns here. All too often the KM proponents are pushing a knowledge initiative that turns out to be information management related. Case in point is the US Navy's "Knowledge Wall." An electronic stateboard that displays information, not knowledge. The problem with Knowledge Theory (although I do enjoy its potential and premise) is that it's just not practical enough. I enjoyed Stewart's "Intellectual Capital" and Baird and Henderson's "The Knowledge Engine" Interestingly enough I have been able to personally and somewhat subliminally equate Baird and Henderson's analogy of a knowledge two stroke engine proferring a knowledge to performance to knowledge continuum quite readily in my own area of project management.