Collateral damage from layoffs - The loss of Knowledge Capital
According to Ivonne Chirino-Klevans of Walden University - The increasing number of layoffs during the economic downturn will have serious implications for companies as employees take with them the knowledge and expertise gained throughout their working life. This causes huge problems for companies with this loss of knowledge capital which ends up affecting productivity and thereby profitability. Knowledge maps and organizational memory systems are needed in times like this to preserve some level of organizational knowledge.
KM Awards and initiatives increasingly mentioned in company annual reports
Corporate annual reports seem to be mentioning KM initiatives and awards a lot more these days. A classic example would be Logica's report which talk about its proactive KM programme with emphasis on collaborative competency team development amongst other programmes to ensure their technology advancement challenges are met.
KM implementation wins Queen’s Award in UK
Flare Solutions has won an internationally recognized award for its development and deployment of web based knowledge management software for oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) companies. The Queen's Award is the highest honor that can be bestowed on a UK company and represents independent recognition of outstanding achievements in innovation. Flare's E&P Catalog has developed taxonomy and ontology (knowledge map) solutions, knowledge dashboards and other KM tools. - Read more.
Siemens Healthcare Announces Planned Collaboration with Harris Corporation
The Image and Knowledge Management (IKM) business unit of Siemens Health care (www.siemens.com/healthcare) and Harris Corporation (www.harris.com) are joining forces to offer health care providers affordable solutions critical for Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) disaster recovery to support business continuity. The value placed on information technology for healthcare providers is ever-increasing, along with the amount of data they are generating - making the need to protect this information, data, and IT infrastructure in the event of an emergency a critical requirement for them. And yet, while health care providers clearly recognize the need for such a disaster recovery plan, they often lack the infrastructure and resources required to safely replicate large amounts of clinical data and images. Siemens IKM business unit and Harris Corporation created an initiative that will help make PACS disaster recovery easily attainable and affordable. This collaboration is intended to provide customers with the synergetic competencies acquired by decades of combined experience in healthcare and network technologies. The greatest benefit to the customer is fast and secure recovery in the event data is lost in a natural or human-induced disaster. The solution provides access to dedicated fiber-optic, microwave, satellite communications, and landlines that are part of the Harris Wide Area Network, which will connect the local PACS deployments to the disaster recovery capabilities at the Harris network operations facilities.- Read more