IKM Lab Perspective on Individual Knowledge Management
(includes ideas by D. McConnell, Univ. of Sheffield, UK)

1. A major factor in the take up and use of ORGANISATIONAL Knowledge Management is the development of professional staff ('knowledge workers')
   
2. Within a KM initiative there is a clear need to help staff in making the PARADIGM SHIFT from 'conventional' work to work in a knowledge based environment.
   
3. The new opportunities provided by a knowledge management system pose significant issues about the development of professional staff's understanding and skills in contributing to the success of organisational KM (knowledge sharing, etc.)
   
4. A new paradigm is needed for thinking about these issues, which challenges our understanding of the nature of knowledge, of knowledge identification, construction, sharing and use by the networked individual knowledge worker: this new paradigm is INDIVIDUAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT.
   
5. INDIVIDUAL KM is not a simple shift but a complex cultural change. it has been ignored up to now by the KM community but will emerge as a strong need
   when KM activities will become more and more established in organisations.
   
6. We need a critical analysis of this new emerging paradigm, if we want to be able to develop tools and methods that can efficiently and effectively help knowledge workers in coping with the required cultural change.
   
7. The IKM Lab has developed MailTack, a pioneering pilot tool to be used in trial actions for exploring the development of individual professionals which need
   to cope with organisational KM.
   
8. Professional skills promoted by MailTack  include:
   • finding out what I know, also if I remember it vaguely
   • reusing what I know
   • sharing what I know
   • finding out what other know
   • reusing what other know
   • ensuring that what I say is interpreted the way I intend
   • ensuring that I understand what is said the way it is intended
   • raising new issues
   • justifying positions
   • questioning and answering
   • negotiating and structuring controversy
     
9. Using MailTack thus  helps the individual at two levels:
   • in managing her personal knowledge assets (individual level)
   • in using the new opportunities provided by organisational KM like participating in organisation-wide networked knowledge sharing (organisational level).
     
10. Experiments with MailTack could provide material for doing the critical analysis mentioned and thus putting the organisation in a better position for managing the cultural change of INDIVIDUAL KM in a way that would contribute to the success of organisational KM.

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