Knowledge Management at HP: Initiatives, Impact, and Risks

Running head: KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
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1KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
1. In the middle of 1995, various initiatives of knowledge management were undergoing in
different business units of HP. Observing this happening, Chuck Sieloff and Bob Walker,
determined to venture assisting knowledge management at HP by organizing different and
various workshops (Davenport 1998). The knowledge management initiatives taken by the
HP are Trainer’s Trading Post, which involves the HP educators, is a Lotus Notes-based
forum that would assist many internal educators and trainers to share their knowledge by
motivating the value of the knowledge transfer and sharing. Other knowledge management
initiative taken by the HP library within the company’s laboratories that aims to provide
guidance to the resources of the human knowledge in the laboratory and it would
automatically spread to the other parts of the HP. The HP’s Product Processes Organization
(PPO) takes another important initiative, which initiates developing knowledge links, which
is a complete web-based collection of the knowledge of the product development gathered
from the various functions of PPO. However, the initial action taken from the HP group was
related to capturing and leveraging the HP product knowledge for the dealer channel of the
Computer Product Organization (CPO) (Davenport 1998).
2. The knowledge management initiatives have great impact on the success of the Hewlett-
Packard or in short HP. The knowledge management practices adopted by the company have
get many recognition around the globe and its knowledge about the markets, customers and
products are the main source of its competitive advantages (Peel 2012). The Trainer’s
Training Post has helped to build the group, which is small groups of the HP educators, more
like community. This platform has become the assertive medium for these educators and it
has great impact on the success in the future of the HP (Davenport 1998). It permits the
educators and trainers to share the ideas, methods and materials, which help the internal
employees to gather knowledge from this platform. Connex, which is the short form for
“connection to expert”, will help to expand the network connection in HP. However, the

2KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
developer of the Connex was expected that different parts of the HP would develop their own
databases probably using the Connex structure (Davenport 1998). The Connex structure
would be helpful in communicating with the experts and developing knowledge in easy
manner. However, the knowledge management is so successful in HP that it would create a
massive impact on the core competence.
3. Lotus Notes, which is a web-based technology used by the thousands of HP’s educators
and internal trainers to share many ideas, methods and materials is employed to establish the
different knowledge base. Lotus Notes is the collaborative web-based platform of the client
and server respectively. In 1989, the Lotus Development Corporation has developed the
Lotus Notes and later it is bought by the IBM Company (Ghouse 2016). It works as a
business collaborative medium and e-mails, discussion forum, sharing of important files,
blogs and using directories are some of the important features, which is offered by this
software. As this software functions as a collaborative medium between two parties, Lotus
Notes has been used in HP to build three different types of knowledge bases for the groups
who are the educators of the company. Three different knowledge bases are Training Library,
Trainer’s Trading Post and Training Review.
The importance of the knowledge base in knowledge management lies in the fact that
knowledge base is the operating factor of the knowledge management (Peel 2012). Company
uses its knowledge base to operate the whole function of the knowledge management. The
other important factor in the knowledge management is to channelize the knowledge base.
The importance of the knowledge base in knowledge management functions in this way. It
helps to channelize the knowledge base without which it has no utility.
4. Training Review, which is a collection of report regarding the evaluation of the training
resources and was part of the Lotus Notes knowledge base was never took off. The reason