“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…” (Spanky McFarland, Our Gang 1935)—and your thinking. During APQC’s latest Advanced Working Group (AWG), which ended this February, a long-time nemesis of marketing knowledge management was tackled (or at least slowed down): enumerating the value of knowledge—or more specifically, developing some measure for the value of a single knowledge asset or object. Why is this important? Because messaging the value of knowledge management depends upon one’s ability to show that knowledge itself has value in the first place.
Sure, the value of knowledge has been posited for a long, long time—think patents, goodwill, generally accepted accounting practices, and so on. Even more casually, we “know” that knowledge and expertise have “value.” So why is it so hard to convince non-KMers that KM has value? After all, if we inherently believe that knowledge has value, wouldn’t using and spreading that knowledge have value? And, consequently, wouldn’t everyone embrace that? It turns out, not so much. Somehow, the connection between the value of knowledge and the value of knowledge management is as broken as the plates or glasses after certain wedding reception traditions.
However, a breakthrough may be in the offing due to an insight and comment by Sandra Bush of Amgen (thanks Sandra!), which was later amplified by Vik Sharma of Pfizer (there’s a reason why pharmas are so interested in KM, eh?). The breakthrough is the concept that we should find a way to measure the value gained when knowledge is moved, not only when it is treated as a stock like inventory, as patents are. Sure, the idea may be simple in construction, but much harder to describe in tangible form. Help may be on the way. Remember, the need is still to connect knowledge to KM, so here goes: What we’re after is the total value of knowledge. Meaning (like inventory), an organization’s knowledge has value both when it is sitting still and when it is moving through the value stream leading to a final use.
Introducing the Total Value of Knowledge:
K(V) ≡ [ak(p) * n] + [bk(l) * n] + k(r)
Those of you who are mathematically inclined may notice a striking resemblance to our old friend the quadratic equation, where a^2 + bX + c = 0. (Though we certainly don’t want anyone to associate KM with zero!)
In our formulation,
- k(p) = the value of knowledge when it’s pushed
- k(l) = the value of knowledge when it’s pulled
- k(r) = the value of knowledge when it’s at rest (not being used)
- a = the weight (or coefficient) of knowledge when it’s pushed
- b = the weight (or coefficient) of knowledge when it’s pulled
- n = the number of times a knowledge asset is reused
I think that there may still be some conceptual problems to solve before using this, but that’s where you come in. Tear it apart, improve it, but at the very least give it your best thinking!
By the way, if you want a laugh and a reminder of the best reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that I’ve ever come across, this is worth the five minutes of your time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5IxAGxJZlc.
APQC’s 2014 Knowledge Management Conference, focusing on the theme of “Improving Business Results Through Engagement & Collaboration,” will be held April 10-11 in Houston, Texas.