Presenting a framework for knowledge management within a web-enabled Living Lab

Abstract

<strong>Background:</strong> The background to this study showed that many communities, countries and continents are only now realising the importance of discovering innovative collaborative knowledge. Knowledge management (KM) enables organisations to retain tacit knowledge. It has many advantages, like competitiveness, retaining workers’ knowledge as corporate assets and assigning value to it. The value of knowledge can never depreciate. It can only grow and become more and more valuable because new knowledge is added continuously to existing knowledge.<p><strong>Objective:</strong> The objective of this study was to present a framework for KM processes and using social media tools in a Living Lab (LL) environment.</p><p><strong>Methods:</strong> In order to find a way to help organisations to retain tacit knowledge, the researchers conducted in-depth research. They used case studies and Grounded Theory (GT) to explore KM, social media tools and technologies as well as the LL environment. They emailed an online questionnaire and followed it up telephonically. The study targeted academic, support and administrative staff in higher education institutions nationwide to establish their level of KM knowledge, understanding of concepts and levels of application.</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> The researchers concluded that the participants did not know the term KM and therefore were not using KM. They only used information hubs, or general university systems, like Integrated Technology Software (ITS), to capture and store information. The researchers suggested including social media and managing them as tools to help CoPs to meet their knowledge requirements. Therefore, the researchers presented a framework that uses semantic technologies and the social media to address the problem.</p><p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> The success of the LL approach in developing new web-enabled LLs allows organisations to amalgamate various networks. The social media help organisations to gather, classify and verify knowledge.</p><p><strong>How to cite this article:</strong><br /> De Jager, L., Buitendag, A.A.K. & Van der Walt, J.S., 2012, ‘Presenting a framework for knowledge management within a web-enabled Living Lab’, <em>SA Journal of Information Management</em> 14(1), Art. #506, 13 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/sajim.v14i1.506</p&gt

The Living Lab as a Tool to Promote Residents’ Participation in Destination Governance

“…innovation support, including idea generation [143], knowledge transfer [26,141], facilitating user tests [156], and performance improvement [141]; 2.…”

“…community involvement and participation in the sense of a bottom-up approach [26,105,106,138,160]; 5.…”

“…This paper involves the assumption that the LL might be a useful tool in DG as well by bringing all kinds of stakeholders together to discuss concrete development issues in a flexible and innovative setting. The LL therefore functions as a medium for self-organization in knowledge conversion and innovation [26][27][28][29].…”

Factors influencing e-collaboration for knowledge development and innovation

“…When investigating the value of knowledge workers, Steyn and du Toit (2009:12) asserted that they were encouraged by participants' willingness to share their private knowledge stock and the willingness to using conversations as an approach to obtain the required knowledge. The motivation to focus on the use of electronic communication and blogs came from an investigation conducted by De Jager, Buitendag and Van der Walt (2012). De Jager et al's (2012) investigation was supported by the importance of discovering innovative collaborative knowledge.…”

“…De Jager et al (2012) state that collaborative knowledge activities are necessary to generate vast quantities of knowledge within multiple domains. E-collaboration is considered as a contributor to knowledge development and innovation where similar challenges exist.…”