Managing Existing Intellectual Capital

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 1990s, there is probably no area which has received more attention and investment in Consulting firms than knowledge management. If we include the technology which makes knowledge management possible, then the investment runs into hundreds of millions of dollars. There is not a major firm today which does not have a sophisticated infrastructure for sharing its knowledge on a global basis and which does not actively promote this facility when selling its services. Ernst & Young has its Centre for Business Innovation; Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Knowledge On-Line. ‘I think there’s a big difference today with the major firms’, Tom Barron, the Vice-President of Shared Services at Dun & Bradstreet (and an ex-consultant) observes. He notes that:

the information flow is now technology-based and global. McKinsey knows as much in Tokyo about how they do XYZ-type projects as they do in New York. A decade ago, it was all in the heads of individuals. The only way [a client] ... got good services from Price Waterhouse was for Price Waterhouse to get the right people in a room, find the last ten reports and noodle around. It wasn’t very productive for the client.¹