Organic Perspectives of Knowledge Management

This paper will introduce, compare and contrast two prototype knowledge systems as it presents a more general framework for thinking about how community of practice and organizational perspectives to knowledge management might be integrated. The first prototype is called the Knowledge Nebula Crystallizer (KNC). The KNC is a demonstration of concept developed at the University of Tokyo. It is used in this paper to describe basic knowledge system functionalities and components. The second prototype is the livingOM (for Living Organizational Memory), a web-based knowledge system developed at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The livingOM shares the basic functionalities of the KNC, but differs in its implementation and application. The role of the livingOM in this paper is to illustrate how aspects of both community of practice as well as organization perspectives can live together within a knowledge system.