This is where the next order of magnitude in productivity will come from: leveraging learnings already learned by others in our own company, and elsewhere. In fact, this is what the Internet is all about. I can’t even imagine trying to do the things we do today without it.

The biggest problem, as you pointed out here, is that it is difficult to measure the impact of knowledge management done right. We are rarely given sufficient time to capture knowledge learned on a project before we are rushed off to the next one. And, who among us has ever been encouraged to review past projects to avoid the mistakes of our predecessors or to tap into the collective wisdom within in our own company to speed product development?

With competition breathing down our necks, perhaps most of us feel like that famous Ferrari driver in the movie “Cannonball Run” when he said, “What’s behind me, doesn’t matter”.