Selected Bibliography for Capturing Knowledge

Bednar, C. “Effective Ways to Capture Knowledge: How to extract information through different interview techniques.” Knowledge Management Review. March/April 1999.

The writer specializes in record and information management and he shares his perspective and advice on using different methods to capture and share knowledge. The most effective methods of capturing and disseminating knowledge includes: interviewing face-to-face, writing a compelling story on the interview, creating videos of the knowledge captured, and sharing the end-products through meetings and seminars.

Dixon, Katrina PughNancy M. "Don't Just Capture Knowledge-Put It to Work." Harvard Business Review. 31 July 2014. Web. 09 June 2017.

Knowledge harvest, the approach to capture lessons from after-action reviews from Intel Solution Services, involved the following steps.  Intel’s marketing department recounted the project process to a facilitator, then the facilitator conducted follow up interviews with knowledge seekers with accompanying source documents.  Knowledge seekers discovered key technology that was utilized, how the Intel team structured its work with clients, and how it helped the marketing department. 

Duguid, John Seely BrownPaul. "Balancing Act: How to Capture Knowledge Without Killing It." Harvard Business Review. 31 July 2014. Web. 09 June 2017.

For managers, there is a delicate balance between process, the way matters are formally organized, and practice, the way things actually get done.  This article documents how Xerox corporation found a balance to foster best practice then then circulated their expertise using organizational support that process can provide. Service reps relied upon social time just as much as standard protocol to keep updated in their necessary skills and share experiences, emphasising the importance of storytelling as means to convey tacit knowledge.  Xerox initiated the Eureka project to oversee knowledge dissemination which, while supplied by the company, relied upon the input of the reps and engineers to supply and vet the tips for servicing machines, and allow the most useful reps to gain social capital and reputation among the company resulting in $100 million in savings. 

Greenes, K. “10-Step Guide to Knowledge Capture.” Greenes Consulting Knowledge Management. June 2010.

A step-by-step guide to the entire capturing knowledge process that also includes advice, technical considerations, and common pitfalls. This paper also highlights a “filtering” part as part of the process - highlight and extracting major themes and key learnings, and removing redundancies (after transcribing interviews) for better publishing of the knowledge gained.

Inter-American Development Bank. “Knowledge Capture Interview: Learning After Doing.” Knowledge and Learning Sector (KNL) Technical Notes. June 2012.

This paper shares methodological tools that the bank personnel and regional stakeholders use to help identify, capture, and share their knowledge for re-use by others. The methods focus on the individual and collective experience in every phase of bank projects - learning before, during, and after. They interviewed personnel that worked on projects, events, or any other organizational processes and focused on gaining multiple perspectives on the same topic.

Kingston, John KC. "Tacit knowledge: capture, sharing, and unwritten assumptions." Journal of Knowledge Management Practice 13.3 (2012).

There are several debates in the knowledge management community that affect authors’ underlying assumptions about tacit knowledge, but authors of papers often fail to make clear their position on these various debates.  The debates include whether tacit knowledge includes all knowledge that is not explicit; whether tacit knowledge is unrecordable or simply unrecorded; whether knowledge can be owned by groups as well as individuals; and whether the capture of partial knowledge is a necessary step in knowledge sharing, or a waste of effort.

Schings, Stephany. "Capturing the Knowledge: Federal Agencies Work to Retain Baby Boomers’ Wisdom." SIOP.org. Science for a Smarter Workplace, 2017. Web. 09 June 2017.

Many businesses have come to ICF international to implement knowledge capture techniques on the soon retired baby boomer workforce.  The templates capture knowledge such as meetings, responsibilites, important contact and chain of command, but also tacit knowledge such as how to speak with certain people and the unwritten codes of conduct, by imagining giving instructions to their successor.