Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Gaby Neumann and Eduardo Tomé
improving <strong>the</strong> cost-benefit ratio <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> company as a whole or <strong>of</strong> a particular product, service, process,
or department, and maintaining or extending <strong>the</strong> company’s position at <strong>the</strong> market. The success,
effectiveness and efficiency <strong>of</strong> any company development depends on how well <strong>the</strong> company knows
its situation, how clearly and correctly it specifies problems and potential for improvements including
<strong>the</strong>ir sources and drivers, and how purposefully and efficiently it selects and applies methods for
solving problems and changing situation or behavior. Here, knowledge and experience play a major
role as problem-solving in a company context needs to be always knowledge-based and nowadays
even more and more knowledge-focused. Due to <strong>the</strong> complexity <strong>of</strong> today’s problems and processes in
a company and because <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> multi-facet appearance <strong>of</strong>, view on and benefit from applying <strong>the</strong>
concept <strong>of</strong> knowledge, companies face <strong>the</strong> challenge to really manage, operate and understand
knowledge as a strategic resource.
Consequently, <strong>the</strong> knowledge clinic provides an environment for well-structured collection <strong>of</strong> and
targeted access to numerous and scattered <strong>the</strong>oretical and practical knowledge management
resources, such as concepts and approaches, methods and procedures, tools and frameworks,
covering all three dimensions <strong>of</strong> knowledge management, i.e. individual, technological and
organisational aspects. With this, <strong>the</strong> knowledge clinic is not meant to be ano<strong>the</strong>r knowledge
management method or tool, but to support a purposeful selection <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> right knowledge
management resource for a certain company setting as characterized before and developmental
objective as clearly identified.
3.3 Knowledge clinic departments
The key objective <strong>of</strong> introducing a knowledge clinic mainly consists in supporting companies and
organisations in solving knowledge-related problems, i.e. – to some extent – improve <strong>the</strong>ir knowledge
management maturity. For this, <strong>the</strong> company or organization needs to specify <strong>the</strong> problem or question
it deals with, characterize pre-conditions, settings and environment or currently level <strong>of</strong> KM maturity
<strong>the</strong> problem is situated in, and define or explain <strong>the</strong> change that is intended or to be achieved.
Therefore, <strong>the</strong> knowledge clinic needs to host <strong>the</strong> following departments:
The reception department enables registration and specification <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> “patient”, i.e. defining <strong>the</strong>
particular company setting (e.g. <strong>the</strong> organizational technical and cultural environment KM measures
have to fit in, any KM activities or systems already in place, <strong>the</strong> current state-<strong>of</strong>-implementation <strong>of</strong> KM,
<strong>the</strong> planned investment volume, methodological preferences), but also <strong>the</strong> economy or society as <strong>the</strong>
framework a company acts in. In addition to this, reception also aims to specify <strong>the</strong> “disease”, i.e. <strong>the</strong>
problem, in order to decide about <strong>the</strong> right department to go on. As <strong>the</strong>re is no focus on details but
just a rough orientation that is required here, this stage <strong>of</strong> determining <strong>the</strong> company situation and
problems can be defined as macro detection mainly basing on self-assessment methodology. Here,
<strong>the</strong> company manager (or any o<strong>the</strong>r representative dealing with a particular problem) can directly
specify <strong>the</strong> concrete problem or might more or less clearly describe <strong>the</strong> symptoms observed or just
mention impressions or a fuzzy feeling on a certain situation. If <strong>the</strong> problem cannot be mentioned
clearly or is even not known so far, assistance for diagnosis is needed.
The diagnostics department supports companies in defining <strong>the</strong> path from symptoms to problems. In
particular this requires determining (knowledge-related) problems a company faces from
investigating/questioning on symptoms, seeing/observing (in terms <strong>of</strong> sensing or screening)
situations, lab testing, assuming. This procedure leads to micro detection <strong>of</strong> symptoms first and
problem identification <strong>the</strong>n. Clarification might be achieved by simply naming <strong>the</strong> problem (if known or
being aware <strong>of</strong>), matching symptoms with types or classes <strong>of</strong> problems, developing and testing
hypo<strong>the</strong>sis, associating patterns, or – if major difficulties in problem specification appear - consulting
with specialists. In <strong>the</strong> end problems should be known and specified with regard to type and area,
characteristics (qualitative and quantitative) and constraints.
For healing <strong>the</strong> company by introducing and applying knowledge-based interventions a variety <strong>of</strong>
specialised departments might be needed:
• Medication (e.g. in form <strong>of</strong> guidelines and guidance for fur<strong>the</strong>r intervention) represents <strong>the</strong>
non-invasive way <strong>of</strong> solving problems or achieving change. Here, already existent methods or
tools are to be applied more effectively and efficiently in order to achieve <strong>the</strong> intended or a
stronger impact.
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