The latest insights on knowledge management from Serious Insights.
For more serious insights on knowledge management, see the new Serious Insights on KM SubStack. On this SubStack, I focus on traditional KM concepts and how they are evolving in the context of AI. I revisit my positions from Hughes Aircraft, Forrester Research, and Microsoft, reintroducing them with an emphasis on synergies and opportunities in AI. Long-time readers know that I often included AI-based technologies in my earlier analysis. In this substack, I will reflect on what I got right and what I got wrong about today’s AI versus the AI of the 80s and 90s.
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Read Dan’s APQC 2025 Knowledge and Process Conference Keynote Page
Access Innovations Leaders on Semantic Enrichment and Why The Scholarly Publishing Model Is The Blueprint for AI Readiness And the days of XML Are Numbered The AI revolution is exposing a fundamental …
From Content to Knowledge Infrastructure: Why Your 2026 Strategy Needs an Authority Architecture We have crossed a threshold. For the better part of two decades, “Content is King” served as the ra…
How a Taxonomy Becomes an Ontology in the Real World Cynefin’s Dave Snowden was right to call on philosophy when he pushed back on my claim that a conference lanyard and badge formed a “living ont…
This article examines why documents are only fragments of knowledge, how generative AI exposes brittle content, and why access alone never guarantees understanding. It argues for context-rich knowledg…
APQC Communities of Practice Survey Findings Reveal Design and Strategy Gaps Organizations Must Close to Make CoPs Effective and Relevant Surveys, even when well-crafted, reveal only what respondents …
Mind Mapping and AI: From Personal Insight Capture to Strategic Empowerment Since the late 1990s, mind mapping has been a digital proxy for representing Tony Buzan’s freewheeling paper-based map…
Back to Basics: What is Knowledge Management? As we move deeper into the era of artificial intelligence, it is important to not just tie knowledge management to the development of AI, but to resist kn…
The Tens: KM and Enterprise AI―10 Actions KM Leaders Should Take to Ensure More Robust Enterprise AI As a follow-up to my post, Knowledge Management and AI: Revisiting the Need to Apply KM Practices…
At APQC’s 2025 KM Conference, I challenged attendees to stop treating AI like magic and start managing it like knowledge. From opaque guardrails to missing metadata, AI systems are increasingly embe…
7 Reasons AI Needs Knowledge Management Cover image by DALLE-3 using a summary of this article as a prompt. Much of the discussion about generative AI and the future of work focuses on the potential f…
AI and Knowledge Management: How KM Will Change As a complement to my long reflection on KMWorld 2023, I offer this more practical set of insights on specific ways KM will likely evolve with AI integr…
Reflections on KMWorld 2023: How Will AI Change Knowledge Management? Many at the November KMWorld 2023 Conference in Washington DC projected disappointment in what the knowledge management (KM) disci…
Fake News and Sloppy Editing: Scientific American and InStyle Offer Examples of Speed Triumphing Over Quality. There are plenty of instances of opinion or misinformation parading as fact. Sloppy editi…
Machine learning training sets focus on precise aspects of a domain. A machine learning algorithm trained on the identification of cancer cells does that job with accuracy and precision. The algorithm…
The Problem With Document References and How Knowledge Management Fails Us The other day a colleague called and asked about the best way to find a concept within an enterprise document repository.&nbs…
In 2013, I was asked by the Chinese government to join the United States delegation to the Tai Hu World Cultural Forum in Hangzhou. The following is the paper I provided to accompany my presentation. …
We are grateful to our readers who trust us to advise them on their strategies, operations, and how they work through collaboration and knowledge management. This list highlights the most read researc…
The idea of the knowledge worker stems from Peter Drucker’s 1950 and 60s work. The term was first used in his book, The Landmarks of Tomorrow where Drucker explored the characteristics of workers wh…
Knowledge Management And The Covid Quarantine: Acting as a learning organization remains critical during the Covid Quarantine. Knowledge Management is perhaps more important now than ever. Organi…
A Knowledge Management Assessment Tool A knowledge management assessment tool. Is my organization ready for knowledge management? That may not seem like a common question, but it should be. Knowledge …
KMWorld 2018: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI, IoT and XR On November 7, 2018, I gave a talk at KMWorld 2018 on knowledge management in the age of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things…
As an organization converges on a set of long-range scenarios, it typically wants to validate its scenarios. Since scenarios reflect logical speculations about the future, there is no right or wrong a…
Knowledge and Expertise: Most mental work falls into three distinct modes: synthesis, delivery, and collaboration. Knowledge synthesis Knowledge synthesis is usually a form of research characterized…
Knowledge and Innovation: 21 Innovation Principles That Benefit from a KM Perspective Knowledge management often sounds like a controlling function, but it can also be a liberating one. Seeking knowle…
Education and museum knowledge management It seems counter-intuitive to advise learning organizations about how to implement learning, but educational institutions and museums often find themselves lo…
Don’t Deploy IoT Without Knowledge Management The Internet of Things (ioT) empowers organizations to apply knowledge management (KM) in the physical world. IoT provides a platform for capturing and …
Why Strategy Needs Knowledge Management Strategy requires knowledge. Too often, strategy begins with a foray into an environmental scan—a knowledge project initiated to develop the context for the s…
What is the Chief Knowledge Officer Job? At the highest level, the Chief Knowledge Officer job, or CKO job, includes managing the processes, practices, and technical specifications for the capture, re…
What is the difference between Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom? Need help with your KM Strategy? Click here for the Serious Insights Business Advisory Services. The debate over the relationshi…
Knowledge and aging industrial infrastructure require organizations to think about the knowledge embedded in their infrastructure, and the knowledge required to embrace digital transformation. For mos…
Accounting for Knowledge in Mergers and Acquisitions The Serious Insight Knowledge in Mergers and Acquisitions: Knowledge is central to the success or failure of a merger or acquisition. The val…
Inheriting Other People’s Thinking We have all experienced what I call Inheriting Other People’s Thinking. A stack of files, a directory on a server or some other form of “organized…
The rise of the CDO is regressive because data is an input to information & knowledge, and it is dangerous because it reinforces the propensity of organizations to focus on the moment rather t…
Knowledge Management: The Price of Entry Knowledge management requires a price, and good design an even higher price. It is important that those involved in knowledge management pay attention, acutely…
Learning from and Teaching Older Workers According to the OECD the aging US is at risk from antique policies and prejudices that fail to appreciate the benefits of a workforce of experience. It is p…
The first thing all reporters, and eventually lawyers, ask, is: “Who knew what when?” In the case of emergency response or disaster recovery, there should be no doubt, because the organiza…
It’s Time to STOP Talking About Company Culture From my November 2013 Newsletter: Over the last month, I keynoted the Chief Learning Officer Symposium and KMWorld. At both conferences, many spea…
Dan Addresses World Cultural Forum on Knowledge, The Environment and Civilization On May 18th-19th May, 2013, Dan presented to the World Cultural Forum (TCF) in Hangzhou, China. Here is the abstract o…
A recent Strategy + Business article posed just this question: Strategy or Execution: Which Is More Important? I believe the answer is both. Execution without strategy is aimless. Strategy without exe…
The traditional categorization of collaboration software no longer reflects the way people actually work. As we text over phones in the same room, or chat via instant messaging in the same meeting, …
On this Harvard Business Review blog this morning, Daniel Markovitz, wrote a piece titled: How to Break Free from Email Jail. I appreciate Daniel’s manufacturing analogy of creating a pull syste…
download a PDF here. Knowledge Management Success Factors These then Knowledge Management Success Factors will help any organization get started on the right foot. Document the value propositio…
Embracing Video for Organizational Learning More at Mediaplatform.com Dan Rasmus Discusses Knowledge Management from MediaPlatform on Vimeo.…
A must-listen interview from Seattle’s KUOW THE CONVERSATION. Reinventing Discovery delivers a highly recommended new way to see science. It hints about how the Serendipity Economy is becoming r…
MediaPlatform Knowledge Management Interview: The Value of Video In Knowledge Management Daniel W. Rasmus Discusses Knowledge Management from MediaPlatform on Vimeo. The MediaPlatform Knowledge Manage…
As a consumer, I see nothing wrong with subscriptions coming through the Apple App Store, as was announced today (Apple Launches Subscriptions on the App Store). At least from the business model stand…
The game show Jeopardy! will host an unusual array of contestants on Februrary 14-16, 2011. Two of the shows superstars, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, will be pitted against Watson, an artificial inte…
I do a fair amount of marketing consulting, and we spend hours talking about value propositions. So I thought I would share the value proposition for Management by Design. And today is a good day to h…
This week’s (January 03, 2011) McKinsey missive focuses on the strategic value of IT in M&A. All well and good, and I encourage your review, but I think there is a bigger issue, and that is …
I have talked to many K-12 educators, as well as college professors. Some are adventurous technophiles, and others are resistant, reluctant or not technology capable of embracing new technology as mov…