CONTENTS

Being Knowledge Ready

The last three years have been a roller coaster for many organisations, and if there is anything that we can take away is the need for us to be ready. Ready to bounce up when contingencies occur, ready to be move into action.

While this maybe “common knowledge” as defined by Dr Nancy Dixon the knowledge that employees learn from doing organisations task, (Dixon, 2000) the importance of recording, sharing and evolving  this know how to ensure that the organisation can continue to operate given the change that occurs is paramount to survivability. The global pandemic lockdowns of 2021-2022 created new know hows and forced change to happen. This too is not new, in the generations and challenges we have faced over the past 30 years.

Being "knowledge ready" means being prepared to learn and acquire new knowledge. It can refer to being mentally and emotionally prepared to learn, as well as having the necessary resources and support in place to facilitate the learning process. It can also refer to being open to new ideas and willing to consider different perspectives. In general, being knowledge ready means being open to learning and growth, and taking an active role in seeking out and acquiring new knowledge. It means having a strategy to becoming resilient and ensuring critical knowledge is captures, shared and revised.

Today, we have numerous articles that talk about being knowledge ready, this cover technology, education, medical and defence sectors, but what does being knowledge ready mean to an organisation? How do we evaluate it?

In the Knowledge Management Society Singapore, we have defined this looking through the lens of  the unique organisations needs. What does an organisation need to be ready with in order to ensure knowledge sustainability. Promulgated in 2015 and further refined in 2017, the Knowledge Ready Organisation (KRO)  includes the expertise of local and international experts take on facets knowledge readiness.

The KRO was created by the KM Society’s (KMS) past president Dr Karuna Ramanathan in 2014 through 2015, with the aim of developing and providing a KM framework for Organisations to better assess their readiness in order to succeed in the volatile and uncertain environment that they operate in.

KMS, first worked with Dr Madanmohan Rao and later Dr Arthur Shelley, both who were engaged as consultants. Dr Arthur was engaged to assist in developing the KRO assessment matrix and as an independent assessor. The expansion of the KRO is in the hands of the current KMS team. The KRO is not associated nor used in conjunction with any other framework or measurement. It is based on an evolving metric to guide organisations in their readiness in the current climate. The KRO is a transparent read back by professional evaluators providing a personalised report on your organisation's strengths and areas that may need further focus. Unlike other KM awards, it does not focus on competing with other organisation instead recognises the unique challenges, environment and context of each organisation and provides a platform of self analysis/self discovery.

“ Why don't our teams share knowledge and be more efficient !” says a disappointed leader of a large semiconductor factory.  I am in his office to discuss how storytelling can help reduce duplication of efforts amongst teams. We are in a boardroom where his leadership team and I are witnessing his frustration. 

 I turn to a department head and ask, “ What are the challenges of sharing knowledge with other team members? “ His response is telling, “ We capture everything in a report and send it out weekly. I am not sure what exactly we are doing wrong? Why is no one reading the reports? “  

As soon as the word “report” was mentioned, I  had a mental timelapse of several other projects I have been involved in where despite reporting knowledge, knowledge didn’t spread and led to duplication of efforts. 

In the meeting it  was also the right  time for me to share a NASA case study I had read in doctoral dissertation research by Katherine H Hansen author of Tell Me about Yourself: Storytelling to Get Jobs and Propel Your Career. 

I was confident that the team would know why no one read the reports after I told the NASA Story. 

On January 30, 2002, The United States Government Accounting Office (GAO) released a report entitled NASA: Better Mechanisms for Sharing Lessons Learned. Motivated by the costly 1999 losses of the unmanned spacecrafts Mars Polar Lander and Climate Orbiter, the report concluded that “NASA’s processes, procedures, and systems” did not “effectively capture and share lessons learned and therefore, NASA has no assurance that lessons are being applied towards future missions” . The report noted that NASA had undergone significant organizational change beginning in 1992 with a mandate to complete projects “faster, better, and cheaper” . While the GAO acknowledged that NASA had initiated systems to capture and share lessons learned, the failures of the two spacecraft in 1999 “raised concern that NASA was not learning from its past mistakes and applying lessons learned toward future mission success” . One of the GAO report’s recommendations was that NASA employ storytelling as a mechanism to ensure that lessons were learned. Exactly one year and two days after the GAO report was published, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

The notion of using storytelling to share knowledge at NASA was not entirely new. Storytelling was a component of NASA’s Knowledge Sharing Initiative founded in 2000. Just a few weeks after the 2002 GAO report was issued, a consultant, story proponent, and author of the book The Story Factor spoke at a NASA Masters’ Forum, a semi-annual program produced for NASA and other project managers by the Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL), a significant player in the space agency’s Knowledge Sharing Initiative. The author said, “We need stories because cognitive learning doesn’t always cut it ” author’s name is Annette Simmons.

What stuck for me is, “We need stories because cognitive learning doesn’t always cut it“ . Now, this statement was made in 2002.. Cut to 2023, our challenges have grown with overwhelming information and noise inundation but there has been minimal growth in many parts of the world when it comes to understanding the importance of Storytelling for knowledge sharing. 

Till today, it is not unusual for me to find myself in a meeting and be told, “ Just don’t use the word story or storytelling. We will lose credibility. “ 

I am surprised, baffled, confused and sometimes a little bit disappointed that Storytelling is still associated with being kiddish, not true, fluff, plots and all things negative. I mean, if NASA can, you also can use the power of the Storytelling discipline for better business outcomes.

As expected the team understood the challenge and started a year long storytelling project in the organisation with a clear short term objective of reducing duplication of efforts and eventually, eliminating it. 

During the project, I had to keep using stories to overcome the objections raised by the team and ensure that the team didn’t lose motivation to do the arduous work required to turn reporting into storytelling for better business outcomes. 

One question I was asked by a  team member was, “ What is the ROI of Storytelling?”  

I responded to it with the story of Marty Davis and how it lead to a saving of half a million dollars. 

NASA has a few knowledge sharing platforms, one of which is ASK Magazine. There are many  knowledge sharing stories you can find in the magazine but I wanted to share one that is special ?

Why is it special ? Soon after this story was published in ASK Magazine. Marty Davis ( The author ) got a call from a lady who applied all the learnings from the story and saved half a million dollars. Now, isn’t that the purpose of knowledge sharing !

Additionally, what is  insightful about this story is that the only reason the reader picked up on the story as something valuable was because – she felt just like Marty Davis ( the author ) whilst reading the story. In other words the story had high levels of resonance for the reader.

If NASA had used Marty’s experience and created a process ( the normal corporate way)  She would have never connected with the process but the story has the power to build resonance, create connection and lead to a desired action. 

Marty Davis who has been a project manager at Goddard Space Flight Center for almost 30 years. He’s been in charge of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite program (GOES) . At the time the story was written Mr Davis was close to retirement. Marty Davis is a perfect example of one of those people we hear about in government agencies with a wealth of knowledge in their head and unless someone bothers to try and capture it, this knowledge will go when he does. But not at NASA because NASA will capture his story.

Here is the Story about Tangled up in reviews told by Marty Davis

As we all know, here at NASA requirements keep coming. Not surprisingly, they seldom go away. Reviews, for instance. Over the years we have seen many additional reviews laid on us. There are at least a dozen reviews in the life of a project. While I don’t mind doing a review — if I feel like I’m getting value out of it — when these things are thrown on helter skelter and there’s never a look at combining or refining them, then each new review feels like just another requirement, another hoop to jump through, which is frustrating because you’ve got to spend time and effort preparing for it.

What I wanted was something quite simple, to combine as many of the reviews as possible.

So, these are the 3 things I did

1. There is a saying, “the devil is in the details,” and as it turns out that’s where the fighting often occurs too. Many of my colleagues agreed the status quo needed to be changed, but when I began spelling out how I wanted to do it, I could see I was going to have to fight for my way.Some of our management at Goddard thought I was too involved in specifying what the composition of the review team should be. Indeed, I did specify the composition, but getting good people was the whole point as far as I was concerned. I was assigned an internal co-chair and recommended an external co-chair, and I told the internal co-chair that he could have 7 members including himself, and I said the same to the external co-chair. I also said to them, “Neither of you can duplicate the same technical specialties.” If one of them had a thermal person, the other could not. If all this sounds imperious, well, I’ve been at NASA going on close to four decades and when you’ve been here that long, you learn that to get what you want sometimes you have to get into the details.

2. Another thing that raised their hackles was that I wanted to bring outsiders into the review process right from the start. To my mind, internal reviews have only limited value. With internal reviews, you do a presentation, you answer questions, they give you requests for actions, and then they go away and you sit down and try to answer them. You mail them to somebody and they tell you whether they are unacceptable. What I wanted was something more like how External Reviews are conducted, where you give a half to a full day of presentation and then the review team identifies where they want to meet one-on-one. You’re being reviewed to a greater depth in selective areas. Something in the presentation that piques their interest is identified as something to review in more detail.

3. While all this was being vetted by management, I did something else that gave people pause. I decided to go ahead and incorporate this approach into my reviews right away. I saw no point in waiting, as we still had several more reviews ahead and there are benefits, I believe, beginning at any point in the project. I put together the review team and we tried it out. My feeling was, let someone stand up and stop me. We held the first review using this model in February. The charter for this integrated independent review team (IIRT) was to find anything that could go wrong. The review lasted for two days, one day of presentation, one day of one-on-one, and then a caucus with the review team.

KEY LESSONS FROM THE CHANGES MADE BY MARTY DAVIS 

Ensure that project reviews are for the one being reviewed and not for the reviewer. They very often come across as blame game and reviewers demonstrate authority. That is not what the review process is. The desired outcome is -a better project.

Reviews should encourage joint problem solving rather than just reporting. To do this, ensure that the review process is viewed as feedback from independent and supportive experts.

After Marty Davis’s Story got published in the Ask Magazine, a supervisor from a different centre of NASA read it and took the article to Sue Mortil who had experienced a Concept Review that had not gone well, and her entire team was in the dumps. It took months for them to stop feeling lousy about their work and themselves. Not exactly a fun place to be in for Sue, the project manager, as she headed into the next review.

After reading the article Sue met Marty and explained to him what had happened with her review. After listening to Sue, Marty said,“Well, you don’t want that. Here are the 3 areas for change”

#1 TAKE CHARGE

A project manager needs to be involved in selecting the review panel which is not the usual practice. This doesn’t mean that the panel is going to be less independent, or that you’re trying to hide a problem. It means that you’re looking for particular expertise. He encouraged me to be forceful. “This can best be handled by presenting the benefits to making this change,” Marty told me

WHAT DID SUE DO? IN HER WORDS 

My program manager identified the person who ended up being chair of the review board. I called and spoke with him to find out if he was interested in working on the board. He had more than 25 years of experience with hardware similar to my project. He understood what it took to take a flight project from concept to design and through development

#2 STREAMLINE THE REVIEW PROCESS

Quite often in a review process you get questions about very detailed information which leads to 2 problems. The review runs overtime and off purpose.

Marty explained that if he ever encountered that he would step in and say , “Let’s have a one-on-one about this tomorrow.”

WHAT DID SUE DO? IN HER WORDS

I blocked 2 weeks and had streamlined reviews for -high level stuff which was a presentation

-detailed stuff which was organised in an informal dialogue way

It was amazing how well it went

Upon reflection in Sue’s words, the difference between the two reviews she had experienced was

“I estimate that the first review which had not gone well cost the project $700,000. The second review was about $200,000. Reviews are expensive and time consuming — but they should also be beneficial. If you can refine the process and tailor it to best serve your system, your project will reap benefits.

Saving half a million dollars via knowledge sharing storytelling,  after all, is hardly something to shrug off”

#3 CONVERSATION VS PRESENTATION

We go to a review process like we are giving an exam. Reviews are a joint responsibility of the panel and project team. Most of the follow up for further action from reviews builds because of the miscommunication between the reviewers and project team.

WHAT DID SUE DO? IN HER WORDS

One on One communication can solve that. If you take the formality away a lot can be achieved. Addressing inappropriate follow up questions is a waste of my time, the engineer’s time, and the reviewer’s time. The review board did write Request For Actions, but many others were not written because of the one-on-one sessions with the technical people on the project. With every comment that the review panel made, they gave us valuable suggestions. The whole board, by the way, recommended that we go forward with the design

I purposely shared a very detailed version of this story with the team members as they come from technology and analytics background who would need more than concepts and examples. 

After a few  months we were able to change the reports into storytelling which meant knowledge naturally travelled and duplication of efforts reduced. But most importantly,  the team didn’t sit in a meeting wondering, “ Why is no one reading reports?” 

Sources: 

http://appel.nasa.gov/2001/07/01/tangled-up-in-reviews/

https://www.amazon.com/Tell-Me-About-Yourself-Storytelling/dp/1593576706

On the 16th of January 2023, Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) and Minister for Finance of Singapore, Mr Lawrence Wong, delivered a speech at the institute of policy studies Singapore on his Perspectives for 2023. 

Extracted from his speech, there are many concerns and strategies that are KM centric. “Work is a very timely theme for this year’s Singapore Perspectives. Because work is not just a source of income. It’s also about dignity and purpose in life. And it’s crucial to our social compact. It’s central to our system of meritocracy, where we want every citizen to progress and excel, regardless of their start point in life.

That’s why promoting work has been such a key part of the Government’s economic and social policies. A healthy labour market has long been the foundation for inclusive growth and shared prosperity in Singapore. But as our external environment and as the nature of work itself evolves, so will our challenges.” 

The future of work has changed , having gone through the pandemic period, we have observed the benefits of remote working, the interconnectivity of a global workforce and the refinement of organisation strategies. DPM Wong elaborated on three challenges, one being the future of work, where technological advancements are disrupting industries everywhere. While it will not render humans to a state of joblessness, it does require an element of change, embracing AI and robotics as part of the advance economy. Looking back, many jobs of just the past 30 years are almost non existent. We have grown and adapted, while we need to embark on the lifelong learning journey to seize the opportunities, and enjoy tremendous rewards. those who are unable to adjust and adapt will certainly face more challenges.

Another challenge that was highlighted in his speech was the challenge around the reward of work – how can we make rewards fairer and more equitable. within the KM community, we are aware of the need of recognitions and rewards to motivate KM involvement. 

DPM Wong, further explained that the challenges outlined can adversely impact social compact – when workers find themselves left behind, or they feel that the system is unfair, resentment sets in, and social cohesion starts to fray. 

He defined three strategies that would help mitigate these challenges .one of this being need to redouble our investments in skills and human capital. Where Singapore has drawn out the skills future plan in 2015 to strengthen adult skills training and improve pathways to better jobs, he stressed that this must form a core pillar of our refreshed social compact. Where workers must be able to access skills training to update themselves and stay relevant. It has been refined several times, the last revision being in 2022, and he mentioned that this will again be studied to ensure the Singapore workforce remain ahead of things. 

In a  2019 study involving approximately 80 organisations across 28 sectors, it was revealed that more enterprises are beginning to recognise that soft skills support their employees’ performance and business competitiveness. These skills were termed critical core skills (CCS) for the future of work (See Below) 

As we look into the 5 critical core skills for the future of work in cluster 1: These are cognitive skills needed to think broadly and creatively, in order to see connections and opportunities in the midst of change. Cognitive skills can be termed as the root of technical skill development and progression. Efficient knowledge management supports all these skills, the ability to be creative, effective decision making and problem solving, sensemaking of Data and information and transdisciplinary thinking. 

In Cluster 2, being effective at interacting with others means thinking about the needs of others, as well as being able to exchange ideas and build a shared understanding of a problem or situation. Where in todays global workforce, individuals need to be able to combine their technical skills with others to succeed, what we term as collaboration and co creation and well as the mindfulness of Diversity, Equality and Inclusivity of the team. Of the six skills listed ;building inclusivity, collaboration, communication, customer orientation, people development and influences there are linkages to KM strategies to ensure knowledge sharing and transfer as well as co-creation is optimal. 

Cluster 3, looks at managing oneself effectively, and paying close attention to trends impacting work lives, helps create strategies, direction, and motivation for technical skill development. Skillsets like adaptability, digital fluency, having a global perspective, learning agility and effective self-management are also KM skill sets 

holistically, the 16 skillsets identified as critical of the future of work, includes the all the elements of an effective knowledge manager. This is evident where in Singapore the emphasis of knowledge management as a skill had somewhat become absorbed into being secondary or tertiary tasks in job roles experienced a rekindling of the focus and now lies within the top ten priority skills for the digital economy. (see below) 

To conclude, the future of work has been a cyclic evolution that needs the effective management of knowledge, sharing and transferring of knowledge will ensure continuous improvements and that the workforce grows and contributes to a sustainable knowledge economy being future ready. 

Reference 

1. Speech by Mr Lawrence Wong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance at IPS Singapore Perspectives 2023 on 16 January 2023. https://www.pmo.gov.sg/Newsroom/DPM-Lawrence-Wong-at-IPS-Singapore-Perspectives-2023   

2. The Skills Demand for the Future Economy (SDFE) Report 2022 https://www.skillsfuture.gov.sg/skillsreport 

Embarking in a professional graduate study, the four of us were asked in class what is our view on the future of KM Work , this led us to exploring this thru the eyes of the digital era  pandemic generation graduate students.

The term “knowledge worker” was first coined by Peter Drucker in his book The Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959). Drucker defined knowledge workers as high-level workers who apply theoretical and analytical knowledge acquired through formal training to the development of products and services. He noted that knowledge workers would be the most valuable assets of a 21st-century organization because of their high level of productivity and creativity.

They include professionals in several different fields, such as programmers, engineers, architects, lawyers, physicians, scientists, financial analysts, design thinkers, ect.

A KM worker is not only one engaged in knowledge work, but also a life-long learner who is armed  with  several years of formal education and training to master the information needed to perform certain specialized roles. Most of them are the specialists in their professional field. They engage in frequent exchanges, decision-making conversations, goal setting journeys, and brainstorming sessions between the co workers and clients, and other stakeholders. They focus on essential information that will help them solve problems, answer questions, and generate ideas. KM workers utilize critical thinking skills to use analytical reasoning and relevant judgment to make decisions and practice enterprise agility. 

Don Tapscott first coined the term digital economy in his 1995 best-selling book The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence. A Digital Economy that takes advantage of the latest technology to digitalize processes and drive business growth.

In 2010, Singapore’s R&D strategy was expanded to span Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE). The RIE2015 and RIE2020 plans included translation, commercialisation and innovation strategies to tap on the growing pipeline of promising research outputs and support enterprises. Given the rapidly evolving global and technology landscape, RIE plans have also evolved to include White Space funding for unanticipated needs and opportunities. This has enabled Singapore to respond nimbly to new priorities, and to seed capabilities. RIE remains a cornerstone of Singapore’s development into a knowledge-based, innovation-driven economy and society. It is a key enabler in creating new avenues of growth and raising Singapore’s economic competitiveness. It also generates scientific breakthroughs that meet our societal needs and improve the lives of Singaporeans.  In RIE2025, the Smart Nation and Digital Economy (SNDE) domain continues to support the development of strategic and emerging technologies and enhance the translation of digital capabilities to industry. The aim is to achieve Singapore’s Smart Nation ambitions, and leverage growth opportunities in the digital economy.

Singapore is in a constant state of transition and at every stage knowledge is considered the most important force driving the world economy. Knowledge management, the emerging discipline that studies the construction, transfer and innovation of knowledge, has been developing for more than 30 years.

As KM workers, we have been through the journey of change. We have adapted and we have grown in the process, looking back KM workers' Development Process leading to todays Digital Economy. It falls into the following 3 main stages:

KM worker 1.0

Knowledge Sharing Period（Within the organisation）

When the internal knowledge of organisations was one of their most important resources.[1]

• Core tasks for KM workers in this phase:

To facilitate the management of knowledge resources within the organisation, for example how to make tacit knowledge more visible. Therefore, this required knowledge managers to have a deep understanding of the nature of knowledge within the organisation.

KM worker 2.0

Knowledge Transfer Period (Across organisations)

As companies expanded into global markets, resulting in the emergence of many multinational companies that set up production and manufacturing sites in overseas countries to satisfy local market requirements, and creating many international R&D centres.[2]

• Core tasks for KM workers in this phase:

The KM worker focused not only on knowledge within the organisation but also on the use of Internet technology to improve the efficiency of global knowledge transfer and collaboration, to facilitate knowledge collaboration between the parent company and its subsidiaries, the company and its partners, so as to achieve the goal of knowledge transfer across the organisation.[3]

KM worker 3.0

Knowledge Creation Period

• Background:

With the development of 5G technology, BD (Big Data) and AI (Artificial Intelligence), and the transformation of the global economy, the digital economy has become the direction of economic development. The internet of things has been established and is now making way to connect people, process, data and simply everything in the transit into the internet of everything.

In this new era, companies experience not only new opportunities but also face new challenges. Only by constantly acquiring new knowledge to create value can they be able to outperform their competitors in the same industry.

This led companies to adopt an open innovation model, and their strategy change from "How to facilitate knowledge transfer from two established partners" to "How to find high-potential and valuable partners from the many SMEs" and "How to establish an agile and dynamic knowledge sharing model with many temporary partners".[4]

• Core tasks for KM workers in this phase:

KM strategy has been elevated at this stage  as the need for KM in companies has shifted from "Sharing existing knowledge resources" to "Predicting complex knowledge innovation".[5] KM workers are therefore required to obtain and utilise knowledge from massive amounts of unstructured data[6] , to promote knowledge sharing between companies and data-driven knowledge innovation in the context of the digital economy.

Essential competencies for Future KM workers in the Digital Economy

Market Acumen & Forward Thinking

In the digital economy, the form and speed of knowledge is very different from the past: products and services are updated in increasingly rapid cycles as consumer needs change constantly and competitors emerge rapidly.[4]

Future KM workers are therefore required to accurately predict the knowledge creation process combined with big data-based analysis and to build agile KM models so that they can react to the market and develop and implement new KM strategies as quickly as possible.

Ability to Analyse Data & Think Critically

Social networks, mobile communication and other smart tools are representative products of the digital economy, and the development of the Internet has led to the rapid growth of various open knowledge platforms.[4] Large amounts and multiple types of data are being generated at every moment, but the Internet information explosion causes a scarcity of valid information.

Future KM workers are therefore required to have critical thinking to extract valid information, as well as to have the ability of data analysis to explore and process the hidden knowledge in huge amounts of data in real time.

As the digital landscape evolves at rapid speeds not only in Singapore but globally and accelerated by the recent pandemic, digitalization is not a choice but a requirement to ensure efficient, effective and agile knowledge management for business survivability. This has been coined as the term Knowledge sustainability and as we embark into our journey as fresh graduate knowledge workers, we are the leaders who have the responsibility to ensure not only do we have the environment but also the knowledge realm leading to knowledge worker 4.0 and more.

All four writers are full-time postgraduate student in Knowledge Management at Nanyang Technological University  

Chinese Buddhism Zen believes that there are three realms in life: (i) looking at a mountain as a mountain, (ii) looking at a mountain as not a mountain, and (iii) looking at a mountain as still a mountain.  Translating the meaning into English, This can be interpreted as three realms as – (a) to look something as it looks, (b) to look something as it means, and (c) to look something as it is. 

This refers to the perception of things, which can be compared with a person's life. For organizations, before having a mature knowledge management system, the organization will also experience a journey through these three stages, from simple and direct learning by doing, to encountering challenges and change when transformation is necessary, discovering its strategy and knowledge gaps, and then in the end, integrating all into one, to develope its own knowledge management system in order to establish a long-term agile competitive advantage – i.e  become an organization with awareness and mindfulness. 

References: 

1. Doctor Li Chanxia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%E8%9D%89%E5%A4%8F-%E6%9D%8E-7b108333/?originalSubdomain=cn

2. 晨雾. (2019, September 27). 如果可以的话，请叫我李博士！- 李蝉夏《感恩故人》Sina News. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from http://k.sina.com.cn/article_1409194012_53fe981c00100knal.html#/

3. Ermine, Jean-Louis. (2013). A Knowledge Value Chain for Knowledge Management. Journal of Knowledge & Communication Management. 3. 85. 10.5958/j.2277-7946.3.2.008.

4. MTarnowski. (2017, September 4). Action learning = form of learning by doing. Plays. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://www.plays-in-business.com/action-learning/ 

5. Zack, M.H. 1999. "Developing a Knowledge Strategy," California Management Review (41:3), pp. 125-145.

Chyi Lee, C. and Yang, J. (2000), "Knowledge value chain", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 19 No. 9, pp. 783-794. https://doi.org/10.1108/0262171001037822

In 1999,  a small group of people, brought together by their interest in knowledge management and by the nanyang technological university’s KM Master program, met regularly to discuss  KM matter, then led by Dr Suliman Hawamdeh, it planted the seeds of the information and knowledge management society (iKMS) as we crossed the millennium. in January 2001, IKMS was officially registered as a non profit society in the registry of societies in Singapore. serving both the public and  private sectors. To date it continues  to promote knowledge management among organisations which seek to become more knowledge ready, 

Renamed as Knowledge Management Society (KMS) in 2016, the team has continued to pursue inclusive, practitioner-focused perspectives, grounded in research.bringing together practitioners, researchers and commercial providers through publications, workshops, conferences, and online platforms such as webinars and global network online meetings.

Two years prior in 2014, KMS, led the formalisation of Knowledge Management Global Network (KMGN) with parner countries Australia, Hong Kong and Thailand, with the addition of India, Japan, Russia and the USA in 2015 and later iaugrated it at the Global Learning Week (2016) in Nanyang Technological University, which brought together leading KM experts from various partner countries. These were the humble beginnings of the KMGN network we have today.

The Wee Kim Wee School at the Nanyang technology University, has been running the Masters in Knolwedge Management for 23 years. Designed for students from both public and private sector organisations that utilises human and knowledge resources to contribute directly to its survivability and profitability.it has had students from Brunei, China, Indonesia, India, Malaysia Singapore and Switzerland to name a few. As the only fully fledged KM Graduate program in Singapore, the program blends theoretical and industry practice, with emphasis on creativity innovation, strategy and storytelling the program is often fully subscribed. 

The close relationship between NTU and KMS continues with exploration into how we can further provide valued KM education to students and practitioners. 

NTU accepts global students annually for the KM Masters program and more information is available at 

https://www.ntu.edu.sg/education/graduate-programme/master-of-science-in-knowledge-mangement