Sam injected a useful dose of down-to-earth practical experience in discussing his role within Unilever's 4-year old KM strategy. His principal message was that KM programme goals need to be aligned with overall business goals and also expressed in the same terms in order to become an integrated element of business operations like finance, logistics, HR, etc. He believes there is no simple recipe for success in KM, and the applicability of different approaches is entirely context-dependent. This calls for an integrated programme of KM interventions that represent a balance between people, process and technology.

Sam's highly practical approach is also based on the idea that KM problems are generally "wicked" problems, with:

• many stakeholders
• constraints that change over time
• "one-shot" solutions that change the problem
• no definitive solutions, only those that "satisfice"

He suggests a simple methodology based on:

• understanding knowledge needs for a business strategy
• understand the gaps (e.g. flow gaps, knowing-doing gaps, knowledge value gaps, creativity gaps)
• create a balanced KM programme to address them

To support this, Unilever have developed a database of problems and a database of potential interventions or solutions, with associations betweeen the two. This means that people throughout the company who are considering how to address business issues where KM might have a role to play can navigate a problem tree, drilling down to see potential solutions. KM specialists throughout the company contribute to the development of the databases and try to ensure that informaiton about what works in particular circumstances is added to the databases for others to benefit from. The problem/solution tree can also be browsed, which promotes serendipity.

see sammarshall.blogspot.com for more info.