Xerox’s recent foray into knowledge sharing products could be called a well-researched maneuver. And the biggest guinea pig in that research project was the 91,000-employee, $18.2 billion corporation itself.
Starting in late 1995, a "knowledge movement" of grass roots initiatives was growing at Xerox. The company was still evolving as "the document company," but customers and employees were already taking a keen interest in knowledge management. Dan Holtshouse, director of Xerox Knowledge Initiatives, was a key element in developing knowledge management internally.
The lessons learned from the early internal plunge into knowledge management will likely be seen in several Xerox product releases over the next year--particularly DocuShare 2.0, a custom tool called AmberWeb inside the company. The newest version will be released this quarter.