Glossary of Terms

Skill or capability derived from knowledge and experience.

In information technology, knowledge is, to an enterprise or an individual, the possession of information or the ability to quickly locate it. This is essentially what Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first comprehensive English dictionary, said when he wrote that "Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."

Those parts of an organisation’s intangible assets that relate specifically to knowledge, such as know-how, best practices, intellectual property and the like. Knowledge assets are often divided into human (people, teams, networks and communities), structural (the codified knowledge that can be found in processes and procedures) and technological (the technologies that support knowledge sharing such as databases and intranets). By understanding the knowledge assets an organisation possesses, the organisation can improve its ability to use them to best effect and also to spot any gaps that may exist.

A knowledge base is defined as a Searchable Database with Answers to the Questions. An integral component of knowledge management systems, a knowledge base is used to optimize information collection, organization, and retrieval for an organization, or for the general public.

A person who facilitates the creation, sharing and use of knowledge in an organisation. Many organisations have created knowledge broker roles such as ’Knowledge Co-ordinator’. The term knowledge broker is also sometimes used to describe companies or individuals that operate commercially as knowledge traders or provide knowledge-related services.

A place where knowledge is gathered and stored and can be accessed and used by other people. It may be a physical place like a library, a ’virtual’ place like an interactive website or an online discussion board, or a place where people gather such as a caf? or an informal meeting room or discussion area created to encourage knowledge sharing.

Knowledge management is the name of a concept in which an enterprise consciously and comprehensively gathers, organizes, shares, and analyzes its knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and people skills.

Strictly speaking, a solution to a knowledge management problem, or the use of knowledge management techniques to solve an organisational problem. However, in practice a ’knowledge management solution’ more often refers to a piece of knowledge management technology or software.

A detailed plan outlining how an organisation intends to implement knowledge management principles and practices in order to achieve organisational objectives.

A place to store and retrieve explicit knowledge. A low-tech knowledge repository could be a set of file folders. A high-tech knowledge repository might be based on a database platform.

An employee whose role relies on his or her ability to find and use knowledge.