The Forum’s Intent           The purpose of the Knowledge Leadership Forum (KLF) is to enable member firms to enhance marketplace, financial, and operational performance through the effective use of knowledge and organizational learning. The Knowledge Imperative Creating, sharing, and deploying knowledge lies at the heart of every critical business challenge:
Anticipating market changes Perceiving emerging marketplace opportunities Developing innovative customer solutions Determining new ways to change the "rules of the game" in the marketplace Building required organizational capabilities Realizing scope and scale efficiencies Developing leaders for tomorrow's organization

• How to bring individuals together (e.g. communities of practice, cross-functional centers of expertise) to create and leverage knowledge
• How to use data and information technologies to support individuals and groups in knowledge creation, diffusion and use
• How the organization can develop and enhance knowledge assets (e.g. knowledge repositories)

In short, every organization confronts core knowledge imperatives to more efficiently and effectively "manage" knowledge; to more quickly identify required knowledge and how to develop it; to better integrate knowledge into everything the organization does. The Knowledge Leadership Forum meets these needs through a forum where members can share challenges and practices, participate in research, and stay up-to-date with the latest thinking in related fields.

Areas of Focus        

The forum aims to address knowledge leadership from many perspectives including:

• Conceptual issues (how knowledge is affecting the nature of work)
• Practice improvement (best current organizational practices in bringing individuals and groups together to do knowledge work)
• Role of knowledge leaders (the changing role of Chief Knowledge Officers)
• Strategy challenges (the role of knowledge in product innovation)
• Technology (experience of firms in using specific knowledge technology solutions)
• Culture (what knowledge leaders do to develop organization cultures that enable learning – real knowledge generation, sharing, and use)
• Research (updates on relevant research in many knowledge related disciplines and areas of interests)

Modes of Member Engagement

KLF provides two principal means for participants to interact and learn from each other: Participants meet three times per year, for about a day and half each time. Member companies host some meetings. Each meeting offers an in-depth exploration of some aspect of managing knowledge (for example, how to build a knowledge culture; methods for sharing knowledge). Members can also interact through the forum’s members’ only, dedicated, and secure website.

Forum Members

Companies become members by invitation only. The forum consists of a diverse member group across industries, geographies, and approaches to managing knowledge. These individuals are recognized knowledge leaders in member companies. Although their job titles vary, they have responsibility for knowledge strategy, technology deployment, customer solution innovation, leadership development, and organizational learning. Companies can nominate others for membership. More than 15 organizations are now members.

Forum Organization

KLF is a member driven organization. Participants form an executive committee to help develop the forum’s content and direction. They also suggest topics for each meeting, develop small working groups to address specific issues, and contribute “cases” from their own organizations as appropriate around noteworthy events and developments. Member firms are encouraged to host meetings or special events.

Benefits of Membership

The benefits of membership include:

• Interacting with peers around critical issues in managing knowledge
• Learning and assessing what leading edge firms are doing to advance the practice of managing knowledge
• Dialogue with invited guests from other leading edge companies around emerging new practices—both organizational and technological
• Exposure to research conducted by leading thinkers from many institutional settings (including universities, consulting firms, dedicated research programs, and corporations)
• Access to multiple forms of written outputs including materials from meetings, new analysis frameworks, descriptions of best practices, documented “cases” outlining individual firms’ approaches to management knowledge tasks and issues, and summaries of electronic interactions

Meetings

KLF’s kick-off meeting was held on October 2-3, 2003, in Washington D.C. The most recent meeting took place in Annapolis, MD and the upcoming meeting will be in Scottsdale, AZ on February 12-13, 2009.

Membership Fee

The current annual membership fee is $6,500.