This knowledge management casebook is one of the best documented case studies of knowledge transformation at work in a global business powerhouse. Siemens has been rated as one of the top ten KM-driven companies worldwide according to an international benchmarking exercise (MAKE ' most admired knowledge enterprise), thanks to its comprehensive efforts at fostering, promoting and optimizing knowledge utilization.

The 19 chapters covering Siemen's KM journey have been compiled by a team of 44 writers, including business executives, managers, interns, professors and graduate students. The material is divided into 7 sections, covering overall KM strategy, transfer techniques, communities of practice, e-learning, and organisational change.

With a diverse group of companies and almost half a million employees globally, Siemens is one of the world's oldest and most successful corporations ' which successfully adapted to the chaotic world of the Information Age to re-structure itself around its most valuable assets: its knowledge base and people.

'Companies today live in knowledge ecologies where one company feeds knowledge into another. What counts is a networked approach to KM, involving internal as well as external parties. The logic behind this is as simple as it is compelling: if you cut off the outflow of knowledge, you will also cut off the inflow. We believe, therefore, that the firm's openness to external experts and the sharing of ideas within a broad network will be a key driver for maintaining competitive success at Siemens,' begin the editors Thomas Davenport (KM expert) and Gilbert Probst (professor at the University of Geneva).

'Increasingly, information is either a part of, or an important facilitator of, Siemens' diverse businesses. Since KM is greatly enhanced by the effective use of IT, it's not surprising that Siemens was a relatively early and enthusiastic adopter of KM. The IT-driven nature of the company's businesses also provides a strong motivation to manage knowledge effectively. One attribute of these technologies is that they change very rapidly; keeping up with various computing and communications technologies is much easier when a company has a system for rapidly circulating new knowledge,' according to the editors.

But KM is more than technology, and Siemens has also focused on a culture of sharing, synergy, and customer focus, especially in markets and fast-moving technology areas where the customer needs are more for total business solutions and sector intelligence than mere technology components.

KM at Siemens began in a bottom-up manner via various mid-level initiatives in communities of practice and bodies of knowledge. Managers of these initiatives themselves formed a semi-official community of practice. This was then followed by a corporate knowledge function which officially supported and coordinated these various initiatives, via the creation of the Corporate KM (CKM) office in 1999.

The Corporate KM (CKM) office held an international meeting in Munich in May 2000, drawing over 200 managers and KM practitioners to formally reflect on the company's KM strategy via the CKM Council and CKM TaskForce. Moving beyond a loose association of KM followers, the company now has formal support, constancy, transparency and a joint approach for KM practices.

The vision statement, goals and roles at the company now formally emphasise the role of knowledge and sharing. CKM has initiated over a hundred KM projects divided across lines of geography, industry, and functions. It has received numerous awards across Europe and the US, such as APQC, MACILS, KVD and Teleos.

KM capacity building at Siemens is promoted by yet another initiative, the Knowledge Community Support (KCS) project, founded in 1999 with support from units like Corporate Technology, Siemens Business Services, and Siemens Qualification and Training. It promotes the use of knowledge communities within Siemens, via coaching, hotlines, resources, newsletters, and its own Web site. It maintains an employee portal and a directory of all knowledge communities in the company, Communities@Siemens. KCS expects that in future, community management will be as common as project management.

Yet another area of KM focus at Siemens is the use of e-business methodology. It formed the Centre for e-Excellence in May 2000 to analyse business transformation via the Internet. A quarter of the sales of Siemens itself is expected to be eventually transacted via the Internet ' 50 per cent or more of its consumer products.

Challenges faced by Siemens on the KM front include balancing energies, resources and rewards for local versus global KM initiatives on a daily basis, managing the knowledge-sharing tension between different business units, and nourishing KM during hard economic times.

Each of the chapters in the book ends with useful discussion questions and key propositions from each case study. It would be suitable to end this book review with a sampling of these propositions.

'The economic value of knowledge does not lie in possessing it, but in using it. Pilot projects for KM must have clearly defined, measurable objectives that can be achieved in less than six months. However, the changeover to a knowledge-based company involves a change process that can span several years,' according to the authors.

Knowledge management and learning management are two complementary disciplines that are continuously growing closer and support an innovative and agile enterprise.

Knowledge sharing should not be reduced to appendices to everyday practice, but must become intertwined with practice. Casewriting about this sharing is a useful learning tool, teaching method, and knowledge recap mechanism via its ability to tease out details and provoke or inspire further action. Such methods are already used by other companies like British Petroleum (Post-Project Appraisal) and Xerox (pre-thought and after-thought cases on KM tools). An interplay between writers from the outside and inside helps elicit crucial details in the case stories.

'When established procedures are not conducive to the sharing of knowledge, the company must be ready to restructure itself into an organization more amenable to knowledge sharing. Over time, the intrinsic benefits of sharing knowledge should become apparent and the system then becomes self-perpetuating, thereby rendering incentive systems obsolete,' the authors recommend.

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Madanmohan Rao is the author of 'The Asia-Pacific Internet Handbook' and can be reached at madan@inomy.com

The Knowledge Management Case Book clearly illustrates how knowledge sharing can begin either as a bottom-up or as a top down activity. This book was developed through collective efforts of Siemens employees working together with external "case coaches" who acted as 'devil's advocates' in conceptualizing and writing cases. This book offers concrete case-based ideas on how Siemens is promoting and optimizing knowledge utilization on a worldwide basis. It is written in a very understandable, narrative style, and organized into five sections that flow well together. These sections offer case studies of knowledge transfer, communities of practice, added-value of knowledge management, measuring KM, and an epilogue written by Gilbert Probst. As Gilbert Probst states in his epilogue, this book is a kind of knowledge tool itself and has offers the reader many practical examples of KM in practice.

Part I of the book offers the reader cases addressing the fundamental issues of knowledge transfer, critical success factors, underlying principles, descriptions of know-how exchange, lowering knowledge-sharing barriers, KM strategies, and it addresses the need to weave best practices into the day-to-day work that everyone does. Part II is focused on communities of practice -- one of the major driving forces of KM. Its cases explain the challenges of set-up, implementation, coordination and the support required for managers and teams to systematize KM practices. Part III illustrates the added value of KM in innovative arenas such as neurological-disease centers, knowledge intensive medical solutions and services, mergers and acquisitions, or corporate learning programs. Part IV examines quantifiable measures of KM as a critical basis for developing incentives for stimulating knowledge sharing and networking. It suggests ways in which results can be promoted, and discusses the intersection of KM and e-business, incorporating knowledge from outside corporate boundaries with organizational knowledge.

Gilbert Probst proposes that the very process of case writing is instrumental in managing knowledge and reflecting on the process. Thus, according to Probst, the case method used in this book offers an excellent example of a knowledge-sharing tool. Each case is presented as an independent study. They can be read in any order. The consistent emphasis throughout the book is placed on an ongoing balance of identifying what knowledge is most relevant to the interests of managers, and illustrating how to transfer it. I really enjoyed reading this this book. I consider it a treasure trove of ideas on how to use an organization's best knowledge practices.

This is a premier book on knowledge management--a definite must read. Although it's a bit pricey and not in main stream distribution, please note that Tom Davenport is the co-editor. The book provides an inside perspective on how Siemens, a 400,000 person global company has scaled KM to be both part of their business practices and their business model. Since they operate in over 190 countries, it's easy to see why the communities of practice concept would be so appealing to them. Given the limited amount of available literature related to communities of practice, the how-to chapter about communities in this book by itself makes the book a must read. As you read about the KM work at Siemens you can get a good sense of how KM will eventually reside permanently in the main stream of management practice. I have collected quite a bit of the KM literature and would place this in a top ten read list.

Top class and first rate. A very thorough guide to a variety of technical items. I have found it indispensable.

I highly recommend this book. You learn so much about Lucille
Ball and Desi Arnaz from this book. A great read!

This ine of the best Lucy-Desi books ever written. The only book I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed this one was Lucy's own autobiography, although I have to admit this gives a lot more detail. This one of the few books written about the team that is actually accurate and correct. The only people who know what happened better are Lucy and Desi themselves. At the end of this book, I cried for hours. I cried my eyes out. It's so obvious that Lucy and Desi loved eachother to their dying days. This book will make you laugh and cry. Words cannot describe how wonderful this book is. It is so incredibly moving. It's a facinating book. I never wanted it to end. I just couldn't put it down. If you love Lucy and Desi, this is THE book to read. Desilu lets you take a peek into the minds of TV's favorite couple, the making of the world's most loved and successful TV show, and Lucy and Desi's life before and after the show and eachother. You may think you know Lucy and Desi, but you don't really know them until you read this book. Only Lucy herself gave a more accurate account of what happened, but this book gives more detail. All in all, this book is GREAT. You have to read it if you are a true Lucy and/or Desi fan.

Candid account of televisions best known duo during TV's begining. A must read for any Lucy and Desi fan. Television's most beloved red head and the love her and Desi had for each other to the very end. A lot of input from those that knew them best and how Lucy a dedicated perfectionist in whatever she did to her ski accident in which she never fully recoverd to Desi's bout with alchole & cancer that would claim his life. Her marriage to producer Gary Morton and Desi Jr's bout with drugs. This book is by far the best that's been written on this great team from accounts of Studio people at Desilu Productions to people that were closet to them. Loaded with never before seen photo's including tremendous input from daughter Lucie Arnaz. Thanks for memories, Lucy and Desi! Larry Dodson

This biography by Thomas W. Gilbert on Roberto Clemente was very informational but at times lackluster and unexciting. In the book, the author described Roberto Clemente as one of the greatest baseball players and a person who valued life. He died in a plane crash on New Year's Eve in 1972. He was going to Nicaragua to help earthquake victims, but the DC-7 cargo plane developed engine failure and the plane turned back for San Juan. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame, the only player to be immediately inducted. He finished with 3,000 hits, 12 gold gloves, 4 batting titles, and other great accomplishments. I think young readers and baseball fans would enjoy this book because it is informative about his life and his career. This book is unique from others because it went in depth more than other books I read. The language of the book was very understanding and it used many thrilling adjectives to describe games and it used some similes but not a lot. The author also included great realistic details, and various quotes from players. This is a great book for baseball fans of all ages.

In my review of last year's edition of this annual price guide, I was only willing to give it two stars. While that may seem brutal for what is clearly a lot of compiled information, keep in mind that most of this data has evolved over a twenty-year collection process, and each new year is now largely a product of editing and tweaking the previous volume. However, I have decided to raise my rating for this year's edition by one star because even a cursory overview reveals that the effort put in since the last volume was not nearly so minimal as the previous 2000 version.

There are not a lot of new additions in the way of specific models or grades, and this still remains a significant weakness of this guide. To the newcomer, it appears to cover a vast array of models and grades, but to the experienced collector, it is by no means near the definitive encyclopedia of watches. Even in its strongest area, American pocket watches, it continues to overlook a considerable number of grades, leaving the reader to make lump assumptions about prices of watches overlooked. The same comments apply to wristwatches, where it might have been better to leave well documented names completely out (such as Rolex or Patek) since they are better represented with great detail in other books. Does this matter? Just look at the number of "rare", "scarce", bogus and absurd claims on some Internet watch ads, and the answer should obvious: such claims would not survive the light of day were this guide truly complete.

But for the many grades that are in the book, both pocket and wrist, it appears the authors have awakened to the reality of the market: a booming economy has been driving prices ever upward, particularly for collectibles. And whether the marketplace is cable TV, Internet auctions, or watch marts, the reality of any market is constant: prices are set by a willing seller and ready buyer who agree on money. To deny the prices that are have been paid with repetition on Internet auctions is naive at best. A sale is a sale, and a collection of sales is the marketplace. Pretending that the majority of sales (which today is clearly Internet auctions) does not represent the market is absolutely ludicrous.

So with the 2001 edition, a review of item after item in comparison to the 2000 version shows almost unilateral increases, which indeed reflects today's expanded market: no increase in supply, a significant increase in demand, and an enhanced marketplace to help keep things from simply skyrocketing. Revel in the price growth -- your collection should be worth more as time goes by, particularly in a strong economy. And price guides should reflect this rise. Finally, with this edition, I can say the guide is catching up. And it appears to have done so without defaulting to some simple formula. Important and popular watches show the greater increases, and this is reality.

Will this publication ever be perfect? Perhaps one day. In Ehrhardt & Meggers American Pocket Watches Identification and Price Guide, an extensive cataloging of grades and variations far beyond the Shugart, et al guide is presented. But it was in some ways its own undoing. It is nearly impossible to keep tabs on every watch sale down to the fine details and thus produce a truly definitive price guide each and every year. The labor would be staggering. But as sales continue to occur on the Web in far greater proportion to any other venue, and web crawling software becomes more sophisticated, it seems that a combination of Ehrhardt's grade and variant detail with Shugart's annual pricing may yet come. When it does with real time price, a veritable commodities market ticker for watches, I am ready to award all five stars. This should, after all, be the ultimate goal even if it seems a bit unrealistic at the moment.

Until then, I confess this is a book you really can't survive without in this hobby. It is the standard price reference when in doubt, and a particularly valuable asset to newcomers who are not yet familiar with prices for most watches. It is wise to be aware of its shortcomings, yet for all the missing grades, at least the prices are now more realistic. And should the market fall, I would hope the guide keeps track with the whole of the marketplace and reflect the ongoing reality, subject to the unfortunate constraints of annual updates and publications delays.

Wheather you buy, sell, trade, collect, swap, ebay, or just like wrist watches the Cooksey Shugart price guide is the most complete and accurate book of it's kind on this planet. I refer to it daily if for nothing but identification purposes. Excellent pictures, technical info as well as histories of watch makers and their companies. A wonderful format for novice to expert.

This giant latest edition (19th) contains over 1,100 pages and covers over 10,000 watches. 7,500 are illustrated. It provides a wealth of information useful to the novice or professional collector or dealer. Not only is it a price guide, but it has a huge amount of information, including grading, how a watch works, how to date a watch, history, coding and much, much more. It has so much data, one wonders how they were able to assemble it all. The volume is really a bargain at its price. Wonderful reference !!

this was a great book with some wonderful facts and in fo i say u should read it