Knowledge Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Knowledge Management - Essay Example There are no doubts in the fact that the business environment of this globalised world has been changed radically due to the revolution that the world has witnessed in information technology. The marketplace has become increasingly competitive, competition is becoming cutthroat, suppliers have become intelligent, customers have become more demanding, and substitutes are increasing in number. General Electric is the only corporation which has been able to survive amongst the top 10 companies that appeared on the Dow Jones Index in 1900. Furthermore, only four out of the Fortune 500 companies of 1900 were able to make it to the 21st century (Davenport & Prusak, 2000, pp. 20-21). It appears that the marketplace is now operating on the principle that used to govern the earliest human societies, â€Å"survival of the fittest†. Alice Carol once wrote something which perfectly depicts the business environment of today. â€Å"Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep you in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that† (Rao, 2005, p. 36). In order to ensure that organisations are â€Å"running twice as fast†, they have come up with a variety of procedures and techniques to improve their profitability, productivity and exploit all possible opportunities. Knowledge management is amongst one of them. The raw material, which was made available to them, included steel drums, logs, pontoons, and some rope. However, the real catch was that these managers, from different countries, were not allowed to communicate with uttering a single word from their mouth (Voelpel & Han, 2005, pp. 55-56). Therefore, the communication was talking place with the help of diagrams and sentences on the flip charts.