Making Knowledge Visible through Knowledge Maps: Concepts, Elements, Cases

Abstract

This chapter seeks to establish the conceptual basis for an innovative instrument of corporate knowledge management: the knowledge map. It begins by briefly outlining the rationale for knowledge mapping, i.e., providing a common context to access expertise and experience in large companies. It then conceptualizes five types of knowledge maps that can be used in managing organizational knowledge. They are knowledge-sources, -assets, -structures, -applications, and -development maps. In order lo illustrate these five types of maps, a series of examples is presented (from a multimedia agency, a consulting group, a market research firm, and a medium-sized services company) and the advantages and disadvantages of the knowledge mapping technique for knowledge management are discussed. The chapter concludes with a series of quality criteria for knowledge maps and proposes a five step procedure to implement knowledge maps in a corporate intranet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]