In today's highly competitive business environment, companies all over the world are increasingly realizing that it is not financial capital that is the key to their survival. Rather, it is the human capital that lends them an edge over the competition; and attracting and retaining this capital poses a major challenge to firms. When an employee leaves a firm, he takes away valuable institutional experience and knowledge with him. Hence, the challenge before companies is how to prevent this loss. Knowledge Management (KM) is one such tool which helps companies deal effectively with this challenge. KM is a collection of processes that govern the creation, dissemination, and utilization of knowledge. Simply put, KM is the ability to manage "knowledge." Organizations are now beginning to look at "knowledge" as a resource. A business enterprise's knowledge assets are both document and people based, as suggested by the article, "KM and the Collaborative Culture". It adds that unless this knowledge base is managed effectively alongside a company's business process, its true value remains unrealized and unexploited
Interestingly, it is becoming clear that the two emerging disciplines of KM and Project Management are embedded in most major corporations to some degree, as suggested by the paper, "Linking Knowledge Management and Project Management Practices: The Missing DNA of Business Success?" The paper suggests that it is widely recognized that it is the execution of the strategy that poses a real challenge to a business enterprise. Given that projects are generally the starting point for implementing and executing a strategy, successful performance management of projects is critical for a business to succeed and also the realization of the strategic agenda, the paper adds. It says that concurrently, KM is the discipline most associated with corporate learning and intellectual capital. However, it says that there appears to be prima facie evidence of an initial gap in practice, thus indicating that most corporations and internal project management offices are not linking these two internal initiatives together. This may either be because of a failure to understand the value of doing so or perhaps that the value of doing so is more limited in practice than the current theory would suggest. Furthermore, even the already established best practice in terms of systematic knowledge sharing among internal project managers do not appear frequently as part of the overall corporate KM initiatives and important potential synergies are being lost, the paper says. The paper also mentions that the concerted effort to co-ordinate and link these two initiatives, where both exist, increases internal management acumen and effectiveness and can improve strategy execution.
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