How Knowledge Drives Out Assets (pdf) by John Sviokla, October 2000. I came across a 2000 piece on knowledge management through a friend-of-a-friend.
The article is notable to me for its strong tie to Theory of Constraints (ToC) language. Sviokla focuses knowledge management's purpose as making assets more valuable. Period. He lays this out very clearly in the opening paragraphs:
Let’s define knowledge management (KM), its scope, and its goal. Knowledge management has two parts: (1) the gathering of relevant facts, theories, and procedures; (2) application of those facts, theories and procedures at the highest impact points. Its scope is throughout the firm, with customers, suppliers, and partners. The primary goal of knowledge management is to improve the return on capital.
He gives examples from Dell and Grainger as having excellent customer-facing systems that are the essence of his definition of knowledge management. The systems provide these companies with a perfect combination of systematic information with deep knowledge of their customers needs and their internal systems. He talks a lot about using the ideas of knowledge management to lower inventory and increase throughput. I'm guessing he would agree that it could be applied to reducing operating expenses too. That's all of ToC's T, OE and I.
Nice catch.