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1. The relevance of sketching for knowledge management
Knowledge management (KM) can be considered to have at least partly grown out of the understanding that the mere reliance on information management infrastructures is probably not sufficient to enable organizations to utilize their intellectual capital effectively. While modern knowledge management applications (such as context-aware applications or collaborative filtering systems) are an important element to solve many knowledge management challenges (such as the on-demand retrieval of experiences codified in documents), it is not a panacea for all knowledge-related problems that companies face today. Many genuine KM problems - such as enabling teams to use all of their members' expertise when solving a problem - cannot solely rely on IT-based solutions, as these may be too demanding in terms of the required infrastructure or budget, or simply require too many training efforts to unleash their full potential. At times, IT-based KM technology may even distract knowledge workers from the tasks that they should focus on. A Gartner study found for example that those companies that had put into place knowledge management systems also had employees that reported a higher perceived information overload than those organizations that had not implemented specific KM technologies.
Based on these insights, there seems to be room for complementary, "low-tech" or hybrid (low and high tech combined) approaches that can help to foster knowledge creation, sharing, and documentation. In this paper, such an approach is proposed to knowledge management, namely the use of collaborative, live hand drawings or conceptual sketches. The authors systematically review the documented benefits of this visual knowledge sharing practice (in such domains as computer science, psychology, and design), and derive action implications and recommendations for knowledge management practitioners and scholars. In doing so, the authors hope to highlight simple and effective ways in which the use of hand drawings can enhance existing knowledge management practices. With this regard, the authors will also show how simple "analogue" hand drawings can be combined and integrated with more sophisticated digital knowledge management technology. The paper concludes with an outlook on future research in this area. First, however, the authors will define and delineate the realm of sketching in section 2, before then presenting the literature review on its benefits in section 3 and...