Knowledge Mobilization for the corporate

There is a new kid in the zoo: Knowledge Mobilization.
Not another word! Please, not another hype, if you try to sell the same old fish! Is there really a need for another term?
There is, but in order to see this, we need to take a short tour through the corporate knowledge zoo:

Knowledge Sharing (KS): the good old pet, the act of individuals of externalizing and distributing knowledge, so that others can use it; the other – long neglected - side of the coin is Knowledge Demanding (something that is very well supported nowadays by Social Media).

Knowledge Management (KM): this animal needs some more attention, because as discussed in earlier posts (Lessons from failures , KM is dead) the idea of KM is often confused with its manifestation in time, context and culture, or even worse reduced to the IT tools supporting the idea. The idea however is very simple: knowledge is a company assets, KM is thus the management discipline that optimizes the use of this assets for the well-being of the company. The aim of KM is the corporate wealth, in other words, shareholder value. Although in more advanced considerations KM reaches beyond the corporate and includes customers, partners, suppliers, or even the whole industry, the aim nevertheless is the competitive advantage of the company. The mechanism is to create value for the company from knowledge. With the aim of the company, the mechanism also includes Knowledge Security, meaning knowledge leaking to others is avoided and counter-acted, if this is doing harm to the companies well-being and position.
If you limit the purpose of the corporate to increase shareholder value, there is nothing beyond Knowledge Management.

So why would you leash and pet Knowledge Mobilization? Or, in which cage to put Knowledge Mobilization in the first place?
According to Wikipedia it is a different species:

Knowledge Mobilization (KMb): may be defined as putting available knowledge into active service to benefit society.

So instead of the corporate aim of KM, the aim of KMb is society. This explains also from the historical point of view the strong footprint of KMb in health and education. Knowledge Mobilization has been very much on the governemental and academic agenda, as both these entities’ aims is society. The mechanism by which this is done is mainly the externalization, exposure of knowledge (in particular research knowledge) towards the public. And as academic research is not always formulated in a language suited for a broader audience, it also needs a commoditization of knowledge.
But also the private sector / business – the corporate is represented in the model in the picture (Myers KM vs KMb).

Literature identifies their main application as internalizing. Put simple, they take the research knowledge and create value out of it (for the corporate and with the help of Adam Smith’s invisible hand for society).

That’s the shareholder view, in recent years however also economists have argued the stakeholder perspective, the Corporate Social Responsibility. In a global village global players take responsibility beyond profits, the most prominent example is sustainability, but child labour or anti-corruption can be named. In this context Knowledge Mobilization is a responsibility for the corporate.

So as a conclusion Knowledge Mobilization for the corporate and Knowledge Management are very different animals, living usually in different ecosystems and on different nutrition, if they match and meet, it should be considered the exemption, not the default. Thus Knowledge Mobilization for the corporate has its purpose and justification.

How this is realized, shall be shown in the next post.

regards
gerald