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Knowledge Management tools emerged in the 90s but never got very far, because for the most part, they relied on individuals to fill out forms about what they knew. Even if they were willing to do that, the forms would provide limited information or become outdated very quickly providing little actual utility. Enterprise 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis and micro-blogging, which you may be adding to your Intranet mix, provide a way to capture knowledge much more organically than its 90s counterparts without people even realizing they are participating in knowledge capture.

Enterprise 2.0 Makes KM Easier

Bill Ives, a consultant who has been working in this space for years, and who writes the Portals and KM blog, says today's tools make it much easier to capture knowledge without nearly as much effort as the older generation of knowledge management tools.

"With Enterprise 2.0 much of knowledge capture happens as a by product of using transparent searchable tools for common workflow and collaboration tasks," he says. "You do not have to go after people to format material for a separate and often siloed repository."

Tracy Smith, Product Manager of Collaboration Solutions with Novell agrees and says these tools enable employees to give and take information in ways that weren't possible in the 90s. "While there needs to be some level of oversight and guidance with Enterprise 2.0 systems, the flexibility of the tool allows for very dynamic usage. Most of the tools from the 90s are file and mapped drive based. Enterprise 2.0 tools should support file sharing, but also allow and enable usage of new information creation and sharing options (like wikis and blogs)," Smith says.

Smith says that file-based system from the 90s don't work in today's worker dispersed world. "Today, organizations are far more dispersed then before. There is not always access to the file system, but browser access is nearly universal. In addition, often information sharing and project collaboration is not only within a single company. Today's tools need to enable internal users as well as include external participants," he says.

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