Marko Arsjad – What is Knowledge Management?

Nokia Telecommunications has adopted a knowledge manaagement business strategy to move the organization from hierarchical structure to a network-based learning organization. The company believes that success in global terms will be derive from:

– Global Efficiency and Effectivenes

– Learning across organizationals boundaries

– Local flexibility and responsiveness

Ms. Kaisa Kautto-Kuivola was appointed a head of knowlegde management development in 1996. She is responsible for esthablishing the basic concepts and strategies and has initiated some of the first knowledge management solutions in Nokia.

She said that: ” The value of knowledge management to nokia was demonstrated by appointing me to the position of head knowledge management development”. Following her appointment, Nokia conducted a survey of knowledge management withn the business to discover areas of best practice. This was followed by workshops and creating a knowledge management map to aid senior manager in understanding the benefits of pursuing a KM strategy.

Nokia’s lessons learned include taking small steps and integrating them with other organizational activities and programs; not falling into the trap that knowledge management is an advanced form of information technology; and addressing the human aspects of change, work activities and reward and recognition.

Nokia has emphasized the role of knowledge management in global success. Ilkka Tuomi, the chief researcher of Nokia Research Center , states that knowledge creation, supply, and utilization are the most essential tasks in modern business world. Out of all information, Tuomi regards tacit (implicit) information as the most important one. In order to reach a global success. Nokia was forced to manage with the explosive increase of knowledge intensity. Thoose it was   extremely important to coordinate all the factors that are associated with knowledge management; that means personnel, information system, strategy, quality and process delevopers.

Furthermore, Tuomi says that the theory of knowledge management provides Nokia with new ideas about future organization and their nature of activities. This is very essential because successful new product development is base on strict prioritization of pilots projects, which are used to test future visions. In fact, Nokia does not predict the future but create knowledge that can be used to understand it when it is present.