KM Overview

Exemplars

©   Fred Nickols  2000
The logical candidates for exemplar status are the large consulting firms, especially Arthur Andersen, Booz Allen & Hamilton, Ernst & Young, McKinsey and Price Waterhouse Coopers. These firms spearheaded the knowledge management movement. Ernst & Young is particularly noteworthy, having produced two leaders in the field: Tom Davenport, now at the University of Boston and, interestingly, head of Andersen's KM Research Institute.  The other E&Y alumnus is Laurence Prusak, who heads up IBM's KM Institute. The wealth of knowledge management information on E&Y’s web site reflects its KM leadership.

A casual survey of the literature and of web-based information quickly points to a number of regularly named companies: Buckman Laboratories, Dow Chemical, Hoechst, Hughes, Kaiser Permanente, Monsanto, Sequent Computer Systems, Skandia, and Texas Instruments. Even so, these firms are usually cited not as general exemplars but as having figured out some portion of the puzzle. Buckman Laboratories, for example, is noted for capturing tacit knowledge. Dow Chemical has figured out how to make money from licensing its patents. Exemplars, then, are not masters of all aspects of knowledge management but of some portion of it. In any event, these and other firms are clearly out front when it comes to experimenting with knowledge management.

Perhaps a better gauge as to exemplar status is the use of a company as a benchmark. Several benchmarking studies were flagged during the original study and portions thereof were included in the binder.  Since then studies underway have been completed and new studies are underway (see the Benchmarking page that is accessible through the Warner Lambert KM Portal). Here, too, specialization is indicated. Some companies are chosen as benchmarks for transfer of best practices, others for their use of technology to support knowledge management, and yet a third group for sharing knowledge with customers.   There is even an association of organizations dedicated to benchmarking their KM efforts.

The table below lists some regularly cited companies and the aspect of knowledge management they seem to have figured out and for which they are cited.

Company Knowledge Management Application
Buckman Laboratories Knowledge sharing
British Petroleum Expert networks
Chevron Best practices database
Dow Chemical Intellectual asset management
Ernst & Young Knowledge capture and marketing
Ford Motor Company "Lessons learned" database
General Electric Call center
GM Hughes Reuse of engineering designs
Hewlett-Packard Sales and marketing support

Note: If there is a single exemplar, it is HP. KM projects can be found in just about all areas of HP and for a wide range of purposes.

Price Waterhouse Coopers Best practices database
Sequent Computer Sales and marketing support
Skandia Measuring intellectual capital
Teltech Technical thesaurus

Despite their obvious differences, these exemplars have one thing in common: they know that KM is more about people and performance and leveraging knowledge to improve those than it is about technology.  In short, they don't equate KM with KM technologies.

Go to KM Technologies

 
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Fred Nickols may be reached by e-mail at nickols@att.net.

 
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This page last updated on September 5, 2004