dinsdag 13 oktober 2009

New tool in town: KnowledgeGenes.com

Yesterday I discovered a nice tool on the internet called "Knowledge Genes(r)".It is a form of knowledge management which can be shared with everybody or for specific persons or a specific organization. Today I started experimenting with the tool.

The definition of a knowledge gene
A knowledge gene is a structured representation of an action and its function described by its why and how. It can be extended with what and what-is information. In the code of knowledge (r) the possibilities of the knowledge genes(r) are described.



When to use Knowledge genes (r)
Knowledge genes(r) are process centric. The central element of a knowledge gene is an action, which consists of an optional subject, a verb and the object. The central element can be expanded with a why and a how element both of which are structured the same way as the action element. The what and what-is elements are plain text elements.

It is cleat that you can use it to structure and relate knowledge genes to make sure some information about your company or any social entity is documented.  The question that arises for me is what makes this tool special in comparison to the more classic process documenting tools. I haven't got the answer. In the other tools I know you have more options, but require specialists to create the documentation.
Knowledge genes(r) however can be created by anyone visually, which has an advantage. It is freely available "in the cloud" for individuals and for a monthly amount for enterprise users and it can even be installed locally. So it has advantages over the more traditional options. It is up to the decision makers if this tools will fit all your requirements. I am going to use it as an example tool for some actions.

General considerations on knowledge management overall
Knowledge Management is somewhat of a hype in my opinioin. I think it is impossible to manage knowledge. I like the DIKW-hierarchy and I consider knowledge as a product that only exists in the knower's mind in this case there is only knowledge management on person level and the information where the knowledge is built upon can be shared and managed.

I alse think there is needed more data/information to successfully make it possible to understand something like a knowledge gene. I miss the option to make good definitions for the subject or object and to interrelate these to other terms or a thesaurus or ontology. It would help a great deal for understanding if there can be added more metadata.

Conclusion
I think KnowledgeGenes.com is a good tool for documenting your business processes, but not for documenting knowledge. Even more I would like to see functionality in the tool where you can integrate the knowledge genes into a website or a tool where you can submit a document to the website and you get a result where all known genes will be incorporated.

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