Over the past many years there has been an inclination of shifting focus from managing individual project to creating an environment in which a project can succeed. Part of that environment is the management of knowledge. The management of knowledge in project–based organisation is becoming a requirement to sustain a competitive advantage. This report clearly sets out the value of knowledge rather than information, to an organisation; containing examples of good practice gained through researching the competitive edge achieved by the law firms through their knowledge system.
Knowledge management is a process that helps organisations identify, select, organise, dominate, and transfer important information and expertise that are part of the organisation’s memory and that typically reside within the organisation in an unstructured manner, this structuring of knowledge enables effective and efficient problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning, and decision making. Knowledge management initiatives focus on identifying knowledge, explicating it in such a way that it can be shared in a formal manner and leveraging its value through reuse. Knowledge, as a form of capital, must be exchangeable among persons, and it must be able to grow. (Turban and Leidner)
Value of Knowledge vs. Information
Knowledge is a lot more than just information. Information is data organised into meaningful patterns, which is then transformed into knowledge when a person, reads, understands, interprets, and applies the information to a specific work function. Knowledge becomes visible when experienced persons put it into practice from lessons learnt overtime.
A person's knowledge can be another person's information. If a person cannot understand and ...