KM vs. Innovation

The term knowledge management can describe a wide range of practices organizations use to harness valuable information within the firm.  In some instances, knowledge management is used to compile information on everything from how specific tasks should be done, to lessons learned from major company-wide projects.  KM is intended to be used by the company to shed light on future projects and processes.  One thing to consider, however, is how does this impact original thought and innovation?

Personally, I don't think there is an easy answer to this question.  There's no doubt that repetitive tasks benefit from having a predefined preferred way to approach them.  This maintains consistency and provides less experienced employees with concrete methods to complete tasks.  What about something a little more abstract?  Lessons Learned from past projects, for example, can give insight into pitfalls as well as possibly new approaches that worked in previous projects.  These can be very useful for future ventures.  The problem is that no two projects will be alike, so these may be relevant much less frequently.

So how does the use of KM affect innovation?  I don't think it does because truly innovative people won't look to knowledge management to solve their problems.  That's not to say they won't gain insights from it.  I think that is certainly a possibility, but they will continue to approach problems in different ways.  This may be one reason knowledge management is so difficult to implement.  Strategic initiatives are much less likely to benefit from KM than more operational processes.  So the majority of information will pertain to more routine work.  And, how useful would metrics from an incredibly unique process improvement project be to future ones that are in no way similar?  I agree we must be sure we're not reinventing the wheel every time we undertake a project, but I think KM has its limits.