KM 2.0 and Web 2.0

As we have been hit with the flurry of Web 2.0 tools, is Knowledge Management evolving to KM 2.0.?

As Matt points out in KM 2.0, KM has never been about the technology. The technology is just one tool to help unite people with processes to share knowledge.

The big reason Web 2.0 will not mean KM 2.0 is the percentage of participation. If you look at some of the participation percentages for the big Web 2.0 sites, only a very small percentage of user contribute content. [Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers]

If 1% is the right amount of contributors to Web 2.0 platforms, apply that to the number of workers (or even worse, knowledge workers) in your enterprise. In my case that means for the 750 lawyers in my firm, 8 (I rounded) will contribute to a Web 2.0 like system.

Web 2.0 cannot equate to KM 2.0 because first Web 2.0 needs to be converted to Enterprise 2.0. The massive scale of the internet for producing content fails when it is translated to an enterprise level.

As James Dellow pointed out last month, Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 merely provides some new tools for knowledge management.

I am excited to deploy blogs, wikis and RSS in our enterprise. But I do not expect they will operate on our intranet with the same process they do on the internet. In fact, I have been hesitant to even use the terms "blog" or "wiki" in the discussion of the new features coming in the next version of our intranet.