Welcome to the MedLibrary.org Wikipedia Supplement on Knowledge ecosystem -- Please Click to Return to Front Page

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2008)

An extension of knowledge management ideas, a knowledge ecosystem fosters the dynamic evolution of knowledge interactions between entities. This bottom-up approach seeks to provide a more resilient approach (for more details, see March 1998). Within certain contexts (e.g., turbulent environments), top-down knowledge management is viewed as indeterminate; hence the intention of creating a knowledge ecosystem to improve decision-making and innovation through improved evolutionary networks of collaboration.

In contrast to directive management efforts that attempt either to manage or direct outcomes, knowledge ecosystems espouse that knowledge strategies should focus more on enabling self-organization in response to changing environments (for more details, see Clippinger 1999). The suitability between knowledge and problems confronted defines the degree of "fitness" of a knowledge ecosystem. Articles discussing such ecological approaches typically incorporate elements of complex adaptive systems theory. The United Nations, W3C, Canadian Government, and several academic institutions have prototyped and employed knowledge ecosystems for various purposes (see References below).

Key Elements

To understand knowledge ecology as a productive operation, it is helpful to focus on the knowledge ecosystem that lies at its core. Like natural ecosystems, these knowledge ecosystems have inputs, throughputs and outputs operating in open exchange relationship with their environments. Multiple layers and levels of systems may be integrated to form a complete ecosystem. These systems consist of interlinked knowledge resources, databases, human experts, and artificial knowledge agents that collectively provide an online knowledge for anywhere anytime performance of organizational tasks. The availability of knowledge on an anywhere-anytime basis blurs the line between learning and work performance. Both can occur simultaneously and sometimes interchangeably [1]. Key elements of networked knowledge systems include:

1. Core Technologies: Knowledge ecosystems operate on two types of technological core - one dealing with the content or substantive knowledge of the industry, and the other involving computer hardware and software and telecommunications, that serve as the "procedural technology" of operations. These technologies provide knowledge management capabilities that are far beyond individual human capacity. In the business education and training context substantive technology would be knowledge of different business functions, tasks, processes products, R&D, markets, finances and relations. Research, codification, documentation, publication and electronic sharing create this substantive knowledge. Communications between computers and among humans permit knowledge ecosystems to be interactive and responsive within the wider community and within its subsystems.

2. Critical Interdependencies: Organizational knowledge resides in a complex network of individuals, systems and procedures both inside and outside the organization. This network is established in the form of social and technological relationships. The relationships reflect vital interests and mutual histories. The elements of the network are dependent on each other for resources and mutual survival. Accessing and using this knowledge network involves understanding and maintaining the integrity of underlying relationships [2].

3. Knowledge Engines and Agents: This refers to the system of creating knowledge including the research and development processes, experts, operational managers/administrators, software systems, archival knowledge resources and databases. Knowledge agents are independent software systems that perform dedicated organizational knowledge functions. In the case of business education knowledge ecosystem these engines and agents include, researchers, faculty or trainers, WWW information resources, corporate and industry data bases, and software systems for accomplishing specific strategic tasks [3].

4. Performative Actions: Organizational knowledge is converted into economic value through processes that involve action. These could be cognitive actions such as learning or deciding, or physical actions such as preparing a meal or writing a check, and social actions such as organizing or entertaining. Organizational tasks most often require all these and other types of actions to occur in a linked way for value to be created. They occur in the physical spaces, electronic spaces, economic transactions, and communicative exchanges of knowledge tasks. They contribute to achievement of organizational goals. To concretize these elements let us review a few examples of knowledge ecosystems.

An Emphasis on Feedback Loops

A knowledge ecosystem includes a cycle of events that occurs when "explicit" knowledge is acquired by novice learners and becomes "tacit" knowledge over time and learning experiences. In this cycle, the novice (or beginning) learner acquires knowledge in the form of receiving explicit knowledge from experts during the learning process. Through repetition, the phenomenon of "automaticity" occurs, in which the knowledge becomes intuitive to the learner progressing forward to reach an expert level. Eventually, the knowledge becomes tacit because can be remembered by the learner without job aids or references. At this point, the learner becomes a subject matter expert and can then transfer knowledge out of his or her head and distribute it to learners in the form of explicit knowledge [4].

Through these cyclical feedback loops, communities of practice co-evolve with their shared body of knowledge, and the protocols and tools for upgrading it. The dynamic force of this co-evolution is the network of conversations, in which critical perspectives, new needs and circumstances, and better solutions to meet them, are introduced [5].

References

• Building an Ecosystem of Policy-Related Knowledge
• Clippinger, J. (ed.). The Biology of Business: Decoding the Natural Laws of Enterprise, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1999.
• Knowledge Ecosystems: A Theoretical Lens for Organizations on SSRN
• Knowledge Ecosystems and National Security
• March, James G. A Primer on Decision-Making. (1994)
• March, James G. The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence. (1998)
• Simulation-Based Engineering of Complex Systems
• The Research Laboratory: Silicon Valley's Knowledge Ecosystem
• Towards an Integrated Knowledge Ecosystem: A Research Strategy
• W3C Ontology Working Group: Knowledge Ecosystem Task Force Proposal
• What Is a Knowledge Ecosystem?
• What Is a Knowledge Ecosystem: through a "Bi-focal" Lens
• Knowledge Ecology: Knowledge Ecosystems for Business Education and Training
• Physical, Social, Mind, and Virtual Spaces in a Knowledge Eco System
• Developing a Globally Networked Intelligence Capacity

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 13 November 2008, at 14:40.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Knowledge ecosystem".

The URL for this specific entry is:

• http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Knowledge_ecosystem

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.