Understanding What You Know

Is intuition in business enough?

The Wall Street Journal yesterday (23 October 2007) had an interesting article/interview with Tom Davenport about business intuition vs. business intelligence.  The article, Understanding What You Know (subscription may be required) doesn't discount intuition, but it more correctly focuses on how organizations are now actively using the data about their business or their customers to generate knowledge that can help them create a competitive advantage.

The KM space has morphed over the last few years from a focus on tacit knowledge to the point where business intelligence (decision support) systems are on equal footing with tacit knowledge.  The relationships/trust/leverage of collective tacit knowledge has not diminished in value, but sifting through organizational data to understand cause and effect, value pricing, and relationships between decisions often proves a more potent "sale" of KM in organizations than does the more ethereal "tacit" knowledge.