In the world of Information Technology, a key measure of success and failure is Return on Investment, or ROI. For many IT things, measuring the direct impact is a straightforward matter, such as how many man-hours were saved because of the insertion of technology.
Since many knowledge management initiatives and systems are seen as information technology projects, many times run through the CIO/CTO, it is only natural that many people want to apply this same measure of ROI to knowledge. But how do you measure something like that?
A concept that has logically evolved is that of Return on Knowledge. As part of some current research I’m working on, I am exploring that very question. Unfortunately, it is not as straightforward as a simple ROI.
no straight lines 