Taxonomy of KM Tools

Heath Row at Fast Company Now's blog points us to an interesting taxonomy for KM from the Kaieteur Institute for Knowledge Management: A Taxonomy for Knowledge Management

• Knowledge auctions


• Knowledge stores or malls


• Expert knowledge or question and answer exchanges


• Intellectual property exchanges


• Stock market or investment knowledge exchanges


• E-Education or e-learning exchanges


• Community oriented or social capital knowledge networks


• Intellectual capital exchanges (human capital, talent, work, job, project, free agent, or professional services exchanges)


• Vortexes (vertical or industry specific knowledge markets)


• B2B knowledge exchange

Not only is the taxonomy a useful tool when considering your own personal and organizational approach to knowledge management, the roundup is a good source of place to go for answers and ideas. What categories might be missing from the taxonomy? Is this an adequate framework?

I like the list and particularly the examples given for each category. It's not an exhaustive example list, but carries quite a range from the Bed & Herts Hedgehog Rescue to the sadly defunct Coffee Machine.net Knowledge Network. The page claims you can add new links, but it hasn't been updated since January 2002.

With that in mind the biggest missing components are the personal information management and personal information management markets and there doesn't seem to be a category into which I would drop these. If the tools are connected to a larger enterprise system, then you might have a combination of knowledge stores and expert knowledge systems. There is also the question of where weblogs, wikis and other "lightweight" community tools fit. I suppose I would put most into category 7: Community oriented or social capital knowledge networks, but blogs don't particularly fit.

Finally, this is focused on tools. One could imagine a parallel list of items associated with personal and organizational practices associated with finding, creating, using, storing and transferring knowledge.