Common Knowledge: How Companies Thrive by Sharing What They Know

by Nancy M. Dixon

Overview

"The hope of 'knowledge management' will remain unfulfilled unless organizations learn how to tap into not just their employees' facts and observations, but their hopes, fears, dreams, and feelings. Nancy Dixon has studied the ways in which knowledge truly spreads, and she describes the practice in real-life detail, blending a keen feel for organizational design, in-depth research, practicality, and high spirits."
--Art Kleiner, Coauthor of The Dance of Change and Author of The Age of Heretics

"Common Knowledge is valuable to readers interested in understanding the practices by which knowledge is transferred. An important contribution to the knowledge management literature."
--Stephen Denning, Program Director, Knowledge Management, World Bank

"Nancy Dixon offers insightful case studies that identify the obstacles facing organizations that implement knowledge management practices, and outlines the techniques to overcome them. Her book reveals that by focusing on getting 'best demonstrated practices,' we can all improve and leverage what we already know in our organization."
--Jack W. Hugus, Ph.D, Vice President of Best Practices, Lockheed Martin Corporation

"Common Knowledge presents an elegant view of how knowledge is transferred and provides a simple framework to better understand the complexity of knowledge management."
--Gary Merriman, President, Exploration Production Americas, Conoco, Inc.

"Nancy Dixon brings her unique blend of insight and lucidity to the business of knowledge management. By pointing out the fundamental shifts that are taking place in our view of knowledge, she shows us why the knowledge management systems thatwork do work, and specifies the design principles that could make such systems work in your organization."
--Mike Pedler, Revans Professorial Fellow, Revans Centre for Action Learning & Research, University of Salford, UK

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875849041
Publisher:	Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date:	03/28/2000
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.44(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.96(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Common Knowledge
3. Serial Transfer
4. Near Transfer
5. Far Transfer
6. Strategic Transfer
7. Expert Transfer
8. Changing How We Think about Knowledge
9. Building an Integrated System for Knowledge Transfer
Notes
Index
About the Author