The convergence of ECM, KM and innovation management

Guest Post by Carl Frappaolo

The idea for this article came as a result of a question posed to me by a client. Recently--in preparing for a day of training I was conducting on the topic of innovation--the coordinator asked me “How do you make the leap from information and knowledge management to coaching/developing innovation skills?...Your background seems to be IT.” The question was an epiphany for me. My career has slowly evolved to encompass all these disciplines, and so subconsciously I have accepted the intersection of ECM, Knowledge Management (KM) and Innovation Management, both from an IT and human resources perspective. The realization that my career path has led to an intersection not logically obvious to some however, was not the epiphany.

The intersection between ECM, KM and Innovation Management is not only the fulcrum of my career, but an intersection that escapes many organizations despite the fact that it holds great promise for them. This is a clear case of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. When the practices and disciplines of one are integrated and aligned with the others each reaches a higher level of return on investment. Unfortunately in many organizations--even in those where programs for each of these disciplines exists--these disciplines are handled as silos, and loosely coupled at best.

Defining the terms

Before I explain further, a few definitions are in order. I realize the risk of providing definitions for each discipline may reinforce a silo mentality--positioning each as separate and distinct--but unfortunately each of these disciplines suffers from lack of a standard definition in the industry. In order to bring some clarity to this argument some definition is necessary.

ECM (Enterprise Content Management) – AIIM defines ECM as “technologies used to capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes.” Focus is on technology and the lifecycle management of content (digitally stored “stuff”.) A more detailed discussion on this definition can be found in my blog [1].

Knowledge Management – as defined in my book [2], KM is “the leveraging of collective wisdom to increase responsiveness and innovation.” Focus is on usage (“leveraging”) wisdom of a group (“collective”) expressly to make more efficient (“increase”) agility and innovation.

Innovation Management – as defined in the IAI innovation workshop is “Generation of new ideas that are developed into valuable assets”. Focus is on outcome, specifically the development of a product or service for profit or added value.

So yes, each can be defined individually and more poignantly, each can be implemented and managed individually. But when a strategy is in place to specifically manage and leverage the intersection and coordination of the three, a greater value is obtained.

The three Cs

Interestingly enough, the most fundamental structure to the strategy for each is the same--what I call the Three Cs: Content, Community and Context (aka: information, people and business objective/process.) In each case, the objective of a strategy for ECM, KM and Innovation Management is the alignment of these three Cs, albeit in each case the perspective is slightly different.

In the case of ECM, focus is predominately on the content itself and the application of technology to facilitate its creation, security and reuse.
With KM, the focus is on community and its culture; to develop an environment in which collaboration amongst individuals and teams can thrive.
Innovation Management places emphasis on process, providing a structure (including specific tools and methodologies) to support creative problem solving ideas, vetting them and bringing one or more to fruition (hopefully capturing knowledge along the way.)

Why manage content?

Think of it this way: Why does an enterprise manage its content? Suffice to say, it is to ensure its know-how and experience are captured, preserved and made available for reuse (there is more to it than that for sure, but for purposes of the focus of this article we can limit the answer to this for now.) The point is, the result of ECM can be positioned as a primary source of input to a KM practice, a component to a knowledge exchange. It represents the explicit (as opposed to tacit) collection of collective wisdom.

So one could argue that the quality and comprehensiveness of an ECM system has direct bearing on the quality of the KM practice. The tie between KM and Innovation Management is perhaps a bit more apparent. Indeed, the definition of KM includes the work “innovation”. While KM is focused on the usage of collective wisdom to accelerate agility and innovation, it makes no express attempt at managing the innovation process. That is the focus of Innovation Management. But the relationship is cyclical. And here is the fun part. Given the emerging plethora of new content types and means with which to manipulate content, Innovation Management can be used in an ECM-focused setting to develop new approaches (i.e. products and services) to content delivery. A more detailed discussion on this concept can be found in my blog here [3] and here [4].

Innovation is out there

It is likely that all organizations have some form (i.e. formal or informal) of ECM, KM and approach to innovation. In a good case scenario each is succeeding and accomplishing what it was set out to do. But in a best case scenario, the three are aligned. To do so effectively requires not insular expertise but a hybrid of IT, process and culture/people management expertise. These disciplines can, but should not be, looked at individually. Whether through outside consultants that demonstrate multi-disciplined expertise, or interdisciplinary internal teams, the ECM, KM and Innovation Management triumvirate should be managed as a single coordinated effort, for when these worlds collide the result is far greater than the sum of the parts.

Carl Frappaolo is globally recognized as a thought leader, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and prolific author. He has founded 3 companies and has consulted with the who’s who of the corporate and public sector on innovation, information, process and knowledge management. Most recently has been certified as a DICOR innovation management specialist. He is currently co-founder of Information Architected. Prior to forming Information Architected, Mr. Frappaolo was Vice President and founder of the Market Intelligence unit of AIIM International (2007-2008) and founder of Delphi Group (1988-2007).

His professional blog can be found at TakingAIIM [5] and you can join his networks at LinkedIn [6] and Facebook [7], or follow him on Twitter [8]