Knowledge Management Summit:
A Category in Search of a Market

Y'all know the cliche about the seven blind men examining the elephant. Well, the Knowledge Management Summit in Camden, Maine (October 3-4) was a lot like that ... except the seven blind men weren't just casual observers ... they were each planning on opening up competing Elephant 'n Brews within the next two weeks.

And it wasn't seven blind people. It was more like 50.

And they weren't all groping the same elephant.

And the ones who are really going to get to carve up the elephant didn't show up.

But the schooner ride was fun. And dinner was great if you weren't a lobster (or, as I prefer to think of them, "Cockroaches of the Sea" -- bon appetit!).

It actually was a great place to get a sense of the state of the industry, such as it is.

The KM Summit was put on by Knowledge Asset Media, publishers of IW Magazine, which used to be Imaging World until they realized that people had stopped caring about imaging. IW broadened to cover document management until they realized that people were falling out of love with document management. So, IW is now KM World. I admire their flexibility and willingness to roll the dice. (For real.)

The attendees included heavy representation from the imaging market (not the natural KM providers, perhaps, but the industry IW has served), a search company (Excalibur), several non-Big-6 systems integrators, and application companies (PC DOCS and Open Text -- for whom I am a part-time VP). The strongest representation was from the only group certain to make money off of KM, the industry analysts (CAPV, Delphi, Doculabs, IDC and META). Not attending were any of the Big Boy systems integrators nor any of the infrastructure providers (Microsoft, Lotus, Netscape). Also, no customers allowed!

This cabal-wannabe couldn't agree on anything except the proper uses of drawn butter.

Cold Water

Even off the schooner there were several important splashes of cold water.

First, KM isn't a market. None of the earmarks of a market yet exist: There isn't strong customer demand for a thing called KM. The short lists that companies are likely to put together are going to be very weird and wildly inconsistent. There's no agreement about the user benefit.

Worse, some initial research by CAPV (presented by Bill Zoellick) suggests that the term KM means just about nothing to its potential market, and if it does mean anything, then the market is too small to care about. The most fun fact was that, of the 200 companies surveyed who said they had a KM system, about a third of them said they've had a KM system for more than five years. This led Stan Lepeak of META to wonder, quite sensibly, if the "market" has already spent most of its money on KM.

Second, the CAPV research -- admittedly preliminary and raw -- showed that 90% of the companies investing in KM systems this year are spending less than $250K. There are spikes at the high end ($100K-$250K) and at the low end ($10K-$15K), which Bill points out is typical of the early stage of markets. But this isn't good news for vendors who assume that KM is (or will be) a synthesizing and integrating of some of the highest end (= most expensive) types of software...with lots of services thrown in.

I don't want to make too much of this undigested data (and look forward to Bill's typically brilliant analysis of it), but it is consistent with the idea that the "KM market" is either very, very young or very, very confused. Or both.

But it also leads to the third splash of cold water, which is that as a group the vendors are also really confused and couldn't agree on what the basic business benefit of KM is. Tom Koulopoulos of Delphi maintained that the benefit is that it increases the velocity of innovation. Others maintained that it decreases the risks incurred when too much important knowledge is crammed inside too few heads. Others maintained that it increases effectiveness, if not efficiency.

Next, the Summiteers couldn't decide if KM is the integration of old stuff or requires brand spanking new software. (My view is that it better include new technology or else we'll be laughed out of the "market" as we offer up "KM scanners," etc.)

Ack! We're left not knowing what KM is, what vendors will play in it, what it does for business, and how much it should cost.

In short, to call KM a market is to confuse "market" with "vendors desiring to survive."

Wounds to Heal

The Summit certainly brought to the fore several key rifts that have to be healed (or papered over) before KM can be said to be a market at all.

First, how broad is KM? Is it simply about turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge? Is it about the discovery and creation of knowledge? Is it about the communicating of knowledge on an enterprise scale? Or does it include the process by which knowledge is created and used collaboratively across the enterprise? (I want it to be the latter, but I think I will lose. I'm starting a new movement, called Context Management. More on this later.)

In other words, is KM: information mining, a corporate "Yahoo", work process management, advanced document management, a "smart" Web site, a really good search engine or a blue-haired librarian?

Second, is it a practice, a technology, an infrastructure, a culture or an application? (Or a mix?) There was pretty broad agreement that KM systems will be delivered primarily by systems integrators, but I actually think that we'll also see out-of-the-box KM systems. (Open Text Livelink can be construed as one...pardon the commercial message.)

Third, how much of KM is going to be in the infrastructure once Microsoft and Netscape offer "knowledge servers"? (Wouldn't you if you were MS or NS?) At the point, what'll be left over for the poor application vendors? LATE FLASH: A couple of days ago Microsoft announced its interest in providing a "Knowledge Management Server," which promises to build a corporate "Yahoo!" You heard it here second at the HWJ!

Fourth, and perhaps most important: what is the user benefit?

The Truth. Maybe.

My view? Gosh, thanks for pretending to care. My bet is that KM will come to mean something like a corporate Yahoo that automatically replenishes itself (via smart spiders) and that has managed components (via document management). It will contain elements of information retrieval and push. And if it starts to contain what's really needed, it'll actually be Context Management. (Just a teaser. Watch this space.)

And the most important component of this will be one that was completely off the Summit's table: email. (But don't tell anyone. There's a billion dollars to be made turning email into a corporate asset. Shhhh!)

Don't worry, the HWJ will be returning to consider KM with alarming frequency ...

Business Bottom Line: When a vendor says he or she is selling a KM product, forget the label for now and look at what's being offered. There's a lot of useful stuff out there. And the hype is stirring up some interesting offerings that view KM as a practice, methodology or discipline. It's definitely time to start paying attention to KM -- so long as you can ignore the "KM" label itself until the dust settles.

Realism is Pessimism

I know saying anything that doesn't taste like cheap gin and an ashtray full of Camels comes across as hopelessly naive on the Web, but, what the heck, here goes: Realism is Pessimism.

No, I don't mean this in a -- heaven forfend -- Feel Good sort of way. It's literally true.

Reality is only brought into the picture when our interlocutor thinks we're being too optimistic. "Be realistic," we're told, when what's meant is: "Be more pessimistic."

If you're being negative about some project, no one tries to cheer you up by saying, "Be realistic." No one will try to make you look like an untutored child who shouldn't be eating at the grown-ups' table.

Why does this matter to the Web? Well, the Web is the most unrealistic project since bartering was replaced by sea shells and printed rags.

The Web couldn't possible exist! And if it did -- fat chance! -- then excessive realism would kill it.

(Can the "Realism is Pessimism" t shirts and bumper stickers be far off?)

Middle World Resources
A BiWeekly Compendium of Resources
Dirty Hands People Walking the Walk You may be pleased to know that I have been personally inspired by your concept of a "hyperlinked organization" and have been touting this idea within IBM. I have in fact constructed a web of "technical competency leaders" within my immediate group who en masse cover the spectrum of converging industry areas (document management, workflow, imaging, SGML/XML, web, groupware, electronic publishing, knowledge management), technical disciplines (OO, VB, database, etc.), and specific products (Documentum, Open Text, ArborText, etc.). This sort of "thousand points of light" is on the face of it entirely unmanageable until you look at it not as a traditional hierarchy but instead as a set of hyperlinks. More concretely, it doesn't really matter who reports to whom, what matters is whether you know who to go see to chase a particular issue, and who else should be brought in since they deal with a closely related area. Simply following these natural hyperlinks turns out to be an extremely powerful way of looking at the organization. It's also a wonderful metaphor for seeing how to leverage each individual's thin bandwidth into a much more powerful whole: like the web itself, each individual site is relatively "thin" but taken as whole with all the links, the net result is awesome. Eric Severson, IBM Global Services	Links A lively forum on knowledge management can be found at http://www.brint.com. There you'll find yet more links as well as a threaded discussion area. Each message seems to devolve into fodder for Trivia You may not be fascinated to know that Amazon.com lists 77 books with the word "intranet" in their title. All but about 4 are about how to construct one, starting with Intranets for Dummies.

Jews: Year 6000 Problem Looms!

Notice to my fellow Jews. Only 242 years before we face the Y6K problem! It's not too early to begin raking in the consulting fees..

Oh, and happy new year.

 

Tell me your tales

I'll pay a pretty penny (literally) for stories from the hyperlinked front. How has the connectedness of the Web changed your business and the way people work together? I'll publish these in the HWJ as well as collect them on the HWJ home page (www.hyperorg.com).

 

Email, Comments, Suggested Lifestyles

Here's where you get to write in with responses, entries, complaints, etc. Come on! Let's pretend to be interested! For my sake!

 

Bogus Contest: First Time Fliers!

Recently I sat on an airplane next to a man in his sixties who was dressed like a neat fly fisherman. The attendant asked, "What can I get you to drink?" He thought for a moment and replied, "Buttermilk." When the attendant politely informed him they were fresh out, he said, "Ok, then I guess I'll have a milkshake."

This week's bogus contest -- bogus in that in keeping with the new democratization, we here at the HWJ adamantly support the concept that To Enter Is to Win -- is to come up with other ways in which you can tell that you're dealing with a first-time flier. For example:

 

Asks to see his parachute Takes notes during the part where the attendant explains how the seat belt works Keeps feeling under the seat, looking for the inflatable life vest Waits for the plane to come to a complete halt before unbuckling his seat belt Checks his carry-on luggage to make sure it fits in the sample space in the boarding area Actually thinks the on-board phones work Rushes to the baggage claim area to get there before his luggage does

So, send me your entries, and the best one will have the inner satisfaction of knowing you could have beaten the pants all those stupid other contributors if only anyone were actually judging. Or keeping track. Or cared.

(In any case, don't forget to write. At this early stage, I really want your frankest criticisms and suggestions. Later on, I'll only want to hear nice things, so this is your chance...)

---

Editorial Lint

The following information was found trapped at the top of my washing machine when I ran some issues of the HWJ through it.

The HWJ is written and produced by David Weinberger. He denies responsibility for any errors or problems. If you write him with corrections or criticisms, it will probably turn out to have been your fault.

Subscription information, or requests to be removed from the HWJ mailing list, should be sent to [email protected].

Dr. Weinberger is represented by a fiercely aggressive legal team who responds to any provocation with massive litigatory procedures. This notice constitutes fair warning.

Note to distributors: If you are interested in reselling the popular Hyper World Journal brand line of memorabilia, please contact our manager of HWJ Channels, Divad Regrebniew. (The HWJ corn dog attack vehicle with lifelike action figures is no longer available, and will return once we fix the eject button and pending the outcome of the lawsuit.)