The term knowledge management has only been around since the 1980’s, it refers to companies need to improve their ability to learn and use knowledge in order to be able to innovate.

In 1988, a dutch academic argued for the creation of a “learning organisation” He believed that in times to come (like now maybe?) the only really sustainable form of competitive advantage that companies have is their ability to learn faster than their competitors.

Businesses have always managed knowledge, its pretty much impossible for a business to exist without knowledge of some sort. In our businesses knowledge must circulate to be effective. Managers and employees must know what’s expected of them, what’s going on around them, and what the shops vision and mission is….

But we also need to know what the future holds, what changes and trends are happening in the local environment, the online environment and the business world, how these might affect our businesses and most of all we need to know how to find solutions to problems, how to create, how to innovate and the shops that do this consistently are the ones who are most likely to win out in the current economy.

So what is knowledge? There’s two kinds that build on each other to form a hierarchy of knowledge:

1. Data (simple facts, figures and statistics) unused, or unprocessed data is useless, its only useful if you do something with it.
2. Information – this is enhanced data – what we learn from reading the papers or watching the tv.

Knowledge is information that has been analysed, understood and internalised.

The real question is how knowledge gets passed on in your business. Anything that you don’t have a system for, means that it will be done ad hoc (at best) or forgotten about at worst. This is just for day to day stuff, but what about the big stuff, how to grow and thrive….

Burying yourself in your business isn’t the best way, you’ve got to get out, go to other towns, see other businesses, go to museums and art galleries, retain that interest that got you started in the first place, because knowledge isn’t a single blinding flash of inspiration, or rather that’s the end result of knowledge but its built up of stepping stones, from things you saw, read, heard or discussed that disseminated in your brain until it seemed obvious what the next step was.

People in every business are always learning, the secret is to find ways of discovering, organising and exploiting the knowledge that’s already there.