Supporting the Knowledge Life Cycle with a Knowledge Network Management System

Knowledge management requires changes in processes, organizational structure and corporate culture. These changes are very often accompanied by the introduction of knowledge management systems that manage digital documents or facilitate unstructured cooperation in distributed teams. Although the technology very often plays the important role of an enabler, its main functions are in many cases limited to knowledge retrieval which is supported for example by full text search mechanisms. The acquisition and classification phase of the knowledge life cycle, i.e. the systematic collection of new knowledge and its integration into a pre-defined structure, are not facilitated in general. In this paper, a system is presented that in addition to knowledge retrieval also supports the acquisition and classification phases of the knowledge life cycle. It is aligned to the requirements of consulting companies and is based on a model of a knowledge network that incorporates not only explicit knowledge but also relevant objects of its context.