Knowledge Management; Not dead; Living and Kicking
Yes; I listened to the interview of Patrick Lambe with Prof. Larry Prusak and Dave Snowden. I heard it twice. And I read the comments all around the net. The interview included many statements, each a subject for a full discussion. I want to concentrate on the main question that Lambe raised: "Is Knowledge Management dead?"
Listening to the full 42 minutes, one may examine that there are many nuances to the answer, and everyone can understand whatever he or she wishes. Yet, the title of the interview, as well as the loud pronounced answers, both by Prusak and Snowden, is definitely: "Yes, Knowledge Management is dead". Prusak provides a list of the dead knowledge components starting with knowledge technologies, through documents and repositories ending with knowledge measurement and knowledge outside people. Lambe notes: "they are still walking" and Prusak answers: "They are dead but they won't lie down". Snowden agrees: "Once governments adopt something, you know it has died".
Later on, they soften. Prusak is pro knowledge, against management; Snowden speaks about the re-invention of Knowledge Management.

No, Knowledge Management is not dead! I work with many organizations and have the privilege to see people sharing knowledge and developing new knowledge. All these are enabled as result of Knowledge Management initiatives: KM programs or KM projects. I experience difficulties and failures, and there in no garden rose easing the path, but Knowledge Management activities fostering Knowledge Management are indeed not dead. There may be fewer conferences every year, but as Lambe stated, this indicates mainly the level of technology KM interest, as they sponsor most conferences; nothing else. I can state that in Israel, where I live and work, our annual KM summit on 2008, was one of largest and most successful KM conferences within the past decade (600 attendees). And though we are a small country, it was not the only one held.

A few points:
Social computing is appealing. We see its affect on social networking culture across the web and we are fascinating. Let me remind us all that the same happened with the first generation of the internet. We saw the discussion groups and its success and immediately copied it into our organizations. Now we seem to be disappointed that it did not work as we wished. Well, the same thing, I assume will happen with the WEB2.0 technologies. They will be adopted as part of the Knowledge sharing and developing tools. Whenever used wisely, in the right conditions, they will succeed. As they are fashionable, they will be overused, and therefore, will be accompanied with disappointment; a lot of disappointment. I disagree with Dave Snowden who speaks about the re-invention. I understand the phenomenon as an evolution rather than revolution. This is the most natural thing to happen as the KM is still on its maturation stage. We are yet unstable. New technologies seem to shake it all, but we are on the right path and the shakes are getting smaller as time passes.

The KM categorization is not going to die so fast. Over-categorization was a mistake, and in the coming years I believe that search engines will be smarter implemented enabling much more auto-categorization. The technology is already there, it is mostly an implementation issue. That will eliminate the deliberate codification. What must be clarified is that the WEB2.0's unorganized nature cannot give us a good enough solution for managing the so important asset of organizational knowledge. WIKI's and blogs have their benefits, but are certainly, the way they are designed, no substitute for the main Knowledge retention and sharing effort; they are too unorganized. Over the corner, WEB3.0 is promising us a better solution. We shall wait patiently and hope to find the right balance between categorization and natural knowledge work. We did not reach that balanced point yet, but cannot kill everything on the way, until we do.
Documentation and repositories are part of Knowledge Management. Information Management is part of Knowledge Management. If we ignore them, we return to the stage of managing everything in our heads only and limiting the level of pure knowledge sharing and retention. We just must promise ourselves that we do not settle for Information Management only, but deal with higher levels of Knowledge Management as well.

The main point, as I understood, that Larry Prusak was against, was Management. Knowledge and learning is OK, but do not try to manage it. I disagree. If we want focused and affective learning, we have to nurture it. If we want to less reinvent the wheel, we have to manage debriefing sessions, or experiences' harvesting, or communities of practice, etc. We are not controlling the brains of people; we are running controlled projects that aid us to really succeed in the complicated mission of leveraging relevant knowledge assets to improve efficiency, effectiveness and innovation (thank you Prof. Stankosky for the wonderful definition). The main asset we have in this century, as Peter Drucker first stated ("Management Challenges for the 21st century"), is the knowledge, and managing the knowledge worker. Managing the knowledge worker is challenging. Managing their knowledge, as difficult as we experience, is probably one of the easy parts of it, considering other aspects (see my blog "Managing in an era of knowledge"- http://managing-knowledge.blogspot.com/). Prof. Prusak: If we will not manage these processes, it will be almost impossible to stand on the shoulders of giants (Neuton and earlier Bernard of Chartres). That is where Knowledge Management seeks to be. Sharing knowledge never makes the listener an expert; but it makes him a knower. The experience added, later on, enables him to turn into an expert. That is why we can stand on the giants' shoulders only, and never stand on their heads. We never start where they finished. However, let us manage the knowledge and start, at least, from their shoulders.

Knowledge Management is not dead. I manage the Israeli biggest KM consultancy firm in Israel. We mainly work with the private sectors. They have the money. Yet, we work with some public and government organizations manage knowledge as well. This does not kill the issue, Mr. Snowden! In some cases, it only makes it more important. Not only managing knowledge for the sake of money. Knowing that when I review the daily discussion group of the social workers community of practice every night, those working with mental handicapped people, I see how they share their thoughts, difficulties, and mainly their experience. Thanks to the Knowledge Management program, one can ask the group how to deal with death of one of the people living in shelter, and get the best answer there is. Universities do not teach that. Thanks to the Knowledge Management program, another group of social workers, in charge of fostering services, developed new (innovative) knowledge how to identify signals and turn down the level of settlement collapses. Knowledge Management is live, kicking, and helping organizations. We have to do it right, we have to adjust to new technologies, and within five years, maybe we will be turn into a mature discipline. Knowledge Management will be taught much broader (also in management schools and as a basic course in many other schools); much deeper (as a formal program in most universities). Then, maybe organizations will know how to it right, and we will experience less failures and less disappointment. Then, we will not treat it as fad, rather as a business issue, and a management tool. The discipline will turn mature.
Until then, I hope that thought leaders like you two, Prof. Prusak and Mr. Snowden, will continue showing us the way in which to methodology wise do it better. We count on you. Do not kill Knowledge Management. Help us finding the way.
Thank you,
Moria Levy, CEO
ROM Knowledgeware
Israel

That's a long and considered comment Moria and it deserves more than a quick reply, so anticipate a blog sometime in the next couple of weeks.  In the meantime, for a more nuanced position you might want to look at an earlier entry