In order to realize a significant return on our investment, to get the value return, we must also use bottom-up innovation to change our business processes. We envision what we call a common tabletop. This is a virtual environment where people will conduct both warfighting missions and business management using browser technology and new concepts like data mining, data warehousing, and relational databases to share information and IT applications. This is an inefficient way of doing business. The goal is to give all users access to the same information when and how they need it.
Knowledge management means technologically driven process change.
It means taking the huge amounts of data we have and organizing it to make it useful. It means innovation from the bottom up, and from the top down. Another major lesson we've learned is that the greatest benefits from information technology investment require the highest commitment to cultural change. There is a continuum of potential benefits. Realizing the benefits of a Knowledge-Centric environment requires that people change how they work and change their attitude about how they approach information.