An EU funded project is building the critical mass of knowledge required to ensure that Europe meets the Lisbon objective of becoming the world's most competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010, reports Cordis.
The European knowledge management forum (KM FORUM) is a three year thematic network, funded under the IST (information society technologies) programme of the Fifth Framework Programme (FP5). The network has a total budget of €1.7 million and involves partners from five Member States.
Since its inception, the forum has already built a community of over 5,000 knowledge management practitioners and experts who share information, opinions and experiences on the future of knowledge management. Members include academics, researchers, software vendors and end users from over 100 countries.
The main focus of the forum is to establish and maintain an effective support infrastructure throughout Europe, enabling knowledge management experts to coordinate their research activities and to network, on both a formal and informal basis. In doing so, the forum expects to overcome fragmentation of research activities.
Frithjof Weber, project coordinator of the KM FORUM, explained the impetus for the network: 'Knowledge management cuts across many disciplines: organisational theory, psychology, anthropology, IT [information technology], to name just a few. Normally such people would approach the subject from their own perspective and never interact. We saw a need to help EU KM projects to share their results, and beyond that to network the wider community of KM researchers and practitioners. We call this approach 'KM made in Europe'.'
The forum is using a number of tools to facilitate dialogue between experts and users. The most important of these tools is a web portal called KnowledgeBoard, which practitioners can use to find similarly oriented partners, build special interest groups, and discuss potential synergies. Using smart technology, the portal also allows for 'real time' interaction in workshops, multilingual zones and discussion forums. Furthermore, the portal selects a different aspect of knowledge management to explore and discuss each month, including related results, reports and interviews from experts in the field.
Proof of the portal's success is that researchers are very active in the forum : 'People are finding each other within the community. It's the place to get noticed and to find out what's going on in the world. I know of people who mention their involvement in KnowledgeBoard on their CV [curriculum vitae] and companies that have won contracts through it,' explained Weber.
According to Weber, the KM FORUM is meeting the needs of a fast changing world, where businesses now have think in terms of three or six month planning cycles. 'They are looking for very fast returns. Academics have to respond to that by accelerating the rate at which their research results are taken up and used.'
The KM FORUM is already looking to the future and expects to be able to play a role in research activities within the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). According to Weber, the KM FORUM will be able to provide a platform for Integrated Projects (IP) and Networks of Excellence (NoE) to support the knowledge economy. 'We're a living example of the new model NoE, with very close interaction between academia and industry,' said Weber.