Knowledge Management in the Era of AI
Towards Collaborative Intelligence
In the age of digital transformation, companies must successfully process and use all the information they continuously create or receive. One of the information flows that companies should master is knowledge management (KM).
According to KM theory, knowledge can be divided into explicit and tacit knowledge according to whether the knowledge can be clearly expressed and effectively transferred[1]:
- The explicit knowledge: easily delivered because it can be expressed orally, notably through figures and data. It is considered to be more concrete or factual: the progress of a production process, the evolution of the company’s figures, how to fulfill a contract, etc.
- The tacit knowledge: a skill innate or acquired by a person: intuition, interpersonal skills, knowing how to manage a particular customer… This knowledge is difficult to codify.
Gloet and Terziovski believe that the process of innovation depends largely on tacit knowledge. By transforming general knowledge into specific knowledge, new knowledge can be created and new products, services or processes can be generated. In the 1990s, Nonaka also showed that knowledge is a prerequisite for innovation, and more generally, a prerequisite for company competitiveness.
KNOWLEDGE and INNOVATION
“It is estimated that today’s information workers may spend up to 2 hours searching and assembling the specific information they need to do a task.
AI holds great promise to take on much of the heavy lifting of sifting through corporate information sources, as well as customizing interfaces — and providing end users with the answers they need, almost instantaneously” Joe McKendrick, lead analyst at Unisphere Research
AI technology is changing the way the world does business. A study by PwC calculated that global GDP will increases by 14% by 2030 as a result of AI adoption, contributing an additional $15.7T to the global economy (PwC, 2017). In the next five years, business executives across the globe expect AI to have a positive impact on growth (90%), productivity (86%), and job creation (69%) in their country and industry (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2018). And this growth isn’t limited to specific industries. According to Gartner, “any organization in any industry, especially those with very large amounts of data, can use AI for business value.” (Gartner, 2018).
Today, we can talk about “Collaborative intelligence”; when man and machine (AI) join forces. Smart machines are helping humans expand their abilities in three ways. They can amplify our cognitive strengths; interact with customers and employees to free us for higher-level tasks, and embody human skills to extend our physical capabilities.
The benefits of implementing an AI-driven KM:
- Improve onboarding new employees
- Reduction in the time required to complete work
Reduction in errors (reuse reliable results) - Provide better service to employees
- Improve the handling of existing knowledge and the sharing of knowledge
- Support knowledge flows in an organization
- Map sources of internal expertise
- Reuse of content across multiple channels without having to recapture
- Fast, accurate resolution of problems, reducing time customer spends on a website
- Ability to service in multiple languages
Technologies
With Microsoft AI, companies can build an AI experience on top of its corporate knowledge by incorporating it into existing productivity and business applications, or by creating new applications supported by AI (such as dialogue agents).
By indexing content across data sources throughout the organization, Microsoft Search can provide employees with the most relevant answers. Cortex will create and update new themed pages and knowledge centers aimed at like Wikis. Theme cards are available to users in Outlook, Teams and Office. Cortex is built on Microsoft Cognitive Services for image and text recognition, form processing, and machine teaching (via LUIS).
Digital transformation gives companies from all backgrounds the ability to think about many of their core functions, and the need to share information publicly with internal and external offices is strongly recognized. Because many companies have built functional islands in their systems, the KM solution is an effective way to bridge the knowledge gap that is a necessary goal in an AI era.
[1] Nonaka I, Takeuchi H (1995) The knowledge-creating company: how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford University Press, New York
About this article
This article has been written by Khaled Ghrissi, digital transformation consultant and student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Master in Digital Business Strategy. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content.
Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DBS.
