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Knowledge management stores information. Institutional memory preserves how to act on it. One captures data; the other encodes judgment.
Systems for storing, organizing, and retrieving information. Wikis, document repositories, databases. Captures what is known.
Structures that preserve judgment and context. Decision architectures that encode lessons. Carries wisdom regardless of personnel.
| Dimension | Knowledge Management | Institutional Memory |
|---|---|---|
| What it preserves | Information, documents, data | Judgment, context, wisdom |
| Storage mechanism | Databases, wikis, document systems | Structures, processes, governance |
| Access pattern | Search and retrieve | Automatic application in decisions |
| Maintenance | Requires active curation | Self-sustaining through structural embedding |
| When people leave | Information remains, context lost | Judgment persists in structure |
Knowledge management stores information—documents, data, procedures. Institutional memory preserves how to act on it—the judgment, context, and wisdom accumulated through experience. You can have extensive knowledge management and still suffer institutional amnesia.
Knowledge management captures explicit knowledge but struggles with tacit knowledge—the context for decisions, the lessons learned from failures, the judgment that comes from experience. When key people leave, their tacit knowledge leaves too, regardless of documentation.
By encoding memory into structures rather than documents. Decision-making processes that automatically reference relevant past decisions. Governance structures that embed lessons. Architecture that carries wisdom independent of who is making decisions.