Personal knowledge networking

Various technologies and behaviours support personal knowledge networking for example wikis, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and relationship networks. Interest is also being driven by the realization that KM can happen without a lot of explicit governance. This trend is called "grass-roots KM" as opposed to traditional, top-down enterprise KM.

With PKN technologies, employees can get to the information they need by using:

• Personal knowledge search tools instead of searching on the corporate intranet
• Instant messaging and Short Message Service (SMS) instead of the telephone or e-mail
• Peer-to-peer file sharing instead of enterprise file servers
• A wiki instead of a team collaboration space
• "Blogging" instead of the enterprise's Web content management.

PKN expands through grass-roots adoption within virtual teams and communities. As a result, the tools in which an enterprise may invest for enterprise KM may not get as much usage as expected — particularly when operational support is weak for those technology solutions.