Yet cultural change is often the most difficult. Companies around the world are demonstrating there are lots of ways to get started. IBM itself has been a leader in this area. IBM Global Services, for example, created an award-winning intellectual capital management tool called ICM AssetWeb that allows its teams to share and reuse information, experiences and other assets they create in the course of their work. Today, as companies begin to recognize the value of a learning organization, they are beginning to transform fundamental aspects of their business.
Greater competitiveness is one motive.
But many companies are also offering products and services for a growing knowledge management market, for which a recent IBM study estimated a value of tens of billions of dollars per year, and a compound annual growth rate of 36 percent over the next five years. IBM researchers are expanding the frontiers of knowledge management through a number of projects, some of which have already grown into full-fledged products. Many Research projects in knowledge management have been reported in earlier issues of this magazine. This article continues our ongoing survey of knowledge management efforts.