Filling knowledge gaps

Knowledge gaps arise when a small team in an organization creates or compiles a body of knowledge that needs to be deployed to a larger group of people. A gap then exists between the small team that has the knowledge and the larger group of people who need it. In the normal course of doing business, healthy organizations naturally create knowledge gaps, and the healthiest organizations create the most knowledge gaps. The most successful organizations fill their knowledge gaps as quickly as they possibly can. The most popular approach for filling knowledge gaps is to hold live meetings. For geographically dispersed organizations, live meetings suffer from a number of well-known logistical and financial drawbacks, yet they remain the most popular approach for filling knowledge gaps. But a superior alternative to live meetings has recently become available. A new class of computer-based information systems, called Enterprise Knowledge Deployment Systems (EKDS) combines streaming media technology, intelligent search technology, and the Internet into a powerful and cost-effective solution for filling large knowledge gaps. For example, using an Enterprise Knowledge Deployment System to launch a new product. a medium-size organization can cut the new product knowledge deployment cost from over $1M to under $150K, and simultaneously improve the effectiveness and timeliness of delivering new product knowledge to the field. These economic and strategic benefits of an EKDS increase as the size of the organization increases.