An alliance of management and engineering, blended to show how computers are used in the management of knowledge and what the benefits of this new working relationship are. In clear, readable language, consultant and researcher Kevin Desouza accomplishes an unlikely feat: He explains artificial intelligence to nonspecialists, but in a way that people with full expertise will recognize and accept as correct and immediately applicable. Desouza points out that workers in knowledge management are relatively isolated from each other and seldom cooperate. Business people are still unconvinced that artificial intelligence offers very much help to them day-by-day. And the engineers who create the next, faster algorithm or device seldom ask what value it has for businesspeople. Desouza wants to change that. He introduces us to the concepts of knowledge management and its significance. He shows that the incorporation of artificial intelligence computer-based techniques into business settings can provide truly significant gains in productivity. And he does it all concisely and quickly: His book is thus among the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive one-stop guide to the basics of knowledge management, plus a lucid explanation of what artificial intelligence is. Most important, he shows how to use it in almost all types of organizational settings. Desouza maintains that sooner than we may expect, knowledge will be traded among us just as physical goods are traded now. Thus, business must leverage the knowledge resources within its organizations, in ways that will keep them abreast of what others are doing in the same highly competitive marketplace. Desouza shows that one result of this growing awareness has been the rise of a new breed of management consultant–the knowledge manager. His book ranges widely among the concepts of managing knowledge and the generation of business intelligence through the use of artifical intelligence-based computing. By doing so it blends the two separate, distinct disclplines of management and engineering into a graspable whole. This way he is able to provide an integrated set of concepts and techniques to help nonspecialist readers truly grasp what knowledge management actually is. For Desouza, it is the synergies between management and engineering, accompanied by joining the techniques of computing to those of knowledge generation, capture, maintenance, and distribution, that make the whole thing actually comprehensible, when one stands back a blt. And that, in turn, proves and enhances its utility.
