Institute For The Future

  • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • IFTF Vantage Partnership
    • IFTF Foresight Essentials
    • Forecasts
    • Workshops
    • Maps
    • Artifacts from the Future
    • Events
    • In the News
    • Media Center
    • Gallery
    • History of the Future
  • Our Work
    • Featured Projects
    • Global Landscape
    • People + Technology
    • Health + Self
  • Partner with IFTF
    • IFTF Vantage
    • IFTF Foresight Essentials
    • Research Labs
    • Partners
    • Jobs
    • Donate
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • Future Now
  • Donate
Medium Facebook Twitter RSS
  • Global Landscape
  • People + Technology
  • Health + Self

Knowledge Tools of the Future

  • Featured Projects
  • Global Landscape

    • Ten-Year Forecast

    • Food Futures

    • Work + Learn Futures

    • Workable Futures

    • Cities Futures

    • Governance Futures

    • Inclusive Futures

    • Socialstructing

    • Sustainability

  • People + Technology

    • Tech Futures

    • Work + Learn Futures

    • Workable Futures

    • Games

  • Health + Self

    • After the Pandemic

    • Centering Health

    • Health Futures

    • Health Care

    • Health Games

    • Aging

INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT IFTF?

Contact us today »

Future NOW Blog

Futurist Book Reviews

Apr 16, 2021

Hiding in Plain Sight: America’s Working Poverty Epidemic

Apr 14, 2021

Future Factors: Flex Your Foresight Muscles with IFTF's Signals Database

Mar 29, 2021

Are foresight practitioners optimists?

Mar 29, 2021

News From the Future #54

Mar 24, 2021

Browse all blog posts »

Knowledge Tools of the Future

IFTF is pleased to release Knowledge Tools of the Future, a research report written by Alex Pang and Mike Love. This report takes an in-depth look at signals, drivers, and trends shaping how organizations will utilize knowledge management in the future, particularly how humans will drive knowledge creativity and innovation.

Pang writes:

It's a truism that we live in a knowledge economy. For the last decade, being competitive in the knowledge economy has required developing systems to manage information—information like consumer data, logistics, organizational practices. But the tools of the next decade will be very different. The growing accessibility of knowledge management systems has greatly reduced the competitive advantage that companies can draw from adopting them: KM is business as usual. The growing recognition that there are important kinds of knowledge work that aren't supported by KM systems has further dulled their edge. As a result, for companies that want to become more innovative, tools designed to make information storage and sharing more efficient are less attractive. So what tools will knowledge-intensive organizations use in the next decade?

Knowledge Tools of the Future argues that companies trying to differentiate themselves around innovation and creativity rather than efficiency and cost will turn to the array of devices, systems, methodologies, and services sometimes called the “intelligent web.” These tools exploit things like semantic Web functions, microformats, and recommendation agents to provide a more productive and intuitive experience for users. These tools are powerful because they aren't hard to use, are relatively easy to use, and don't require creative people to change they ways they work. They enable users to be creative and innovative—to do what humans are uniquely good at doing, in other words—while leaving the heavy lifting of brute information processing to computers, which are very good at such tasks. These tools matter because the most powerful creative tools are brains and teams. There’s a social aspect to knowledge, creativity, and innovation that we are just learning to tap. It is this social aspect of knowledge that the next generation knowledge tools, and next generation of users, will seek to magnify and support. Organizations are in the middle of a paradigm shift from machine-heavy knowledge management tools designed to maximize efficiency and standardize organizational practices to technically lightweight, human-centered instruments that facilitate creativity and collaboration. It is this human creativity that will differentiate businesses in the future.

Publication Date

November 2008

Download

  • SR-1179_FutKnow.pdf

    Knowledge Tools of the Future Report [SR-1179]

  • Institute for the Future

  • 201 Hamilton Avenue
  • Palo Alto, CA 94301
  • 650.854.6322
  • info@iftf.org

  • © 2021 Institute for the Future

    What We Do

  • Who We Are
  • IFTF Vantage Partnership
  • IFTF Foresight Essentials
  • Forecasts
  • Workshops
  • Maps
  • Artifacts from the Future
  • Events
  • In the News
  • Media Center
  • Gallery
  • History of the Future

    Our Work

  • Featured Projects
  • Global Landscape
  • People + Technology
  • Health + Self

    Partner with IFTF

  • IFTF Vantage
  • IFTF Foresight Essentials
  • Research Labs
  • Partners
  • Jobs
  • Donate
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

    Future Now

    Donate