A partnership worth pursuing

By Hugh McKellar, KMWorld executive editor

Knowledge management just took a big step forward as the board of governors for the George Washington University Institute for Knowledge Management held its first meeting to help guide the blending of the university’s academic foundation and highly developed services to the worldwide KM community.

Founded by GWU’s Mike Stankosky of the School of Engineering and Applied Science and Bill Halal of the School of Business and Public Management with considerable support from The Learning Trust, the Institute is uniquely positioned to combine the best of KM theory with technology integration, organizational learning and best management practices. Stankosky established the first certificate, master’s and doctoral programs in knowledge management. Currently some 25 students are pursuing doctorates in knowledge management at GWU with the goal of advancing the body of the discipline’s knowledgebase and developing guidelines to implement KM architecture and systems (visit http://km.gwu.edu).

Halal has led the way in discovering organizational intelligence and heads the university’s GW Forecast, which gathers scientific information from experts around the world to identify when approximately 100 technologies are likely to mature and their related economic impact. Like Stankosky, the Institute’s managing director, Art Murray, is also a GWU professor of KM and co-founder of the Behavioral and Computation Neuropsychological Group, which studies the natural structures and flows of knowledge.

Decidedly avoiding the pitfalls related to pure academe, the Institute is dedicated to disseminating the information it gathers from its global resources, so it’s dedicated to serving the very practical role of raising the level of knowledge for all types of organizations worldwide—businesses, government agencies, universities and other institutes.

Looking to build even more mutually beneficial partnerships, the Institute has so far forged alliances with:

• Gartner Group,;

• George Mason University,;

• Groupe Ecole Superieure de Commerce Marselle-Provence,;

• National Knowledge & Intellectual Property Management Task Force,;

• Microsoft,;

• Software Productivity Consortium, ;

• U.S. Department of Defense, and;

• Veridian.;

Along with the alliances, the Institute is looking for founders, sponsors and members to help launch its programs. And depending on the level of support, individuals and companies have access to its knowledge library, data, seminar attendance, briefings on research results and the like, advance copies of publications, discounts on conferences and services, as well as occasional advice and consultation.

KMWorld is proud to be a small part of this initiative. The GWU Institute for Knowledge Management deserves your support