Knowledge management initiatives: learning from failure

Abstract

Large numbers of organizations are taking great interest in the idea of knowledge management and many are launching knowledge management initiatives and programmes. A large proportion of such initiatives will fail. Yet, despite the injunctions to “learn from failure”, little detailed attention has been paid to why and how these apparently popular initiatives run into difficulties. The purpose of this article is to examine, in some unusual detail, a significant example of a failed knowledge management initiative in order to analyse what went wrong and to identify the key learning points.