A number of people spend close to a hundred hours every month on collaborative sites like Wikipedia, discussion forums and social networking sites.  While you can't call this Knowledge “Management”, it does cater to its basic requirements - Getting people to share their knowledge and work collaboratively on a variety of subjects.

Rankings, based on traffic, give us a fair idea on how popular these sites are. In the last year Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia  and Blogger appeared in the top 10 global sites ( stats from Alexa ). More importantly, this cultural phenomenon has shown the long term sustainability of initiatives without traditional drivers like rewards.

So, the question here is :

Why is Knowledge Sharing or collaboration so different in the corporate world?

For a lot of you the answer might seem obvious, but with a requirement to adopt KM adoption in corporates rising there is a serious need to understand why this is so and what can be done to address this issue.

Collaboration seems to happen a lot outside the organization ( take for example the case of this blog ). Now the question is, why does this happen more successfully outside the walls of an organization and not within? In most cases these are the same people doing the sharing. What makes it so different within an organization?

True, there are certain preconceived notions about corporations. The biggest of which is that you always have a feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder. Add to that the fact that you need to be extremely careful about the things you say or do and you and you have a system designed to cut off collaboration at its knees ( or so the impression ). Checks and balances are required in most organizations, it's difficult to run a business without them. However when these become roadblocks to hassle free collaboration you need to start taking a hard look at these policies.

Wikipedia is a prime example of Knowledge Sharing, here thousands of strangers help put together an amazing collection of information without any perceivable reward. You might say the reward here is recognition. However, if you take a closer look, a sizeable portion of these contributors are anonymous.

So why do they do it? What drives this need to share knowledge , when everything we’ve learnt so far tells us that we shouldn’t.  Would you spend that much time contributing?

The answer i feel lies in the fundamental issue of competitiveness. It exists in the corporate world, it isn't as pronounced outside. When you remove an individual from those restrains you get to see the true “sharing” potential of a person.

A noticeable difference would also be made if there was a cultural shift in the thought processes of a company’s leaders. A collaborative work environment that has rich social networks and intense knowledge sharing is driven when the organization makes it part of its work ethic. While it is true there are always pockets of collaboration I’ve noticed most “innovative” companies have one thing in common. A commitment to knowledge sharing and collaboration by its leadership team, which is then trickled down through the corporate rungs to the grass root level.

Reward collaboration, don't stifle it.