The scientific endeavor that culminated on July 20, 1969, with the first American walking on the moon is considered one of the most significant accomplishments in human history. Especially noteworthy about this undertaking was that when President John F. Kennedy made the promise in 1961 that the U.S. would land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the end of that decade, most of the scientific and technological knowledge required for that “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” did not exist. The necessary science and technology essentially had to be discovered and developed in order to accomplish this extraordinary task.

Those first missions to space carried less computer power on board than what some of us typically lug around through airports in our portable computers. The computers on board Apollo 11, considered “state-ofthe- art” in the 1960s, had 4 KB of RAM, no disk drive, and a total of 74 KB of auxiliary memory! From the knowledge management (KM) perspective, how did they manage the extraordinary quantities of knowledge that had to be developed in order to accomplish the task? The required knowledge about space travel, rocketry, aerodynamics, control systems, communications, biology, and many other disciplines had to be developed and validated prior to being used in the space mission. From the knowledge creation perspective, this was an extraordinarily successful endeavor. On the other hand, a closer look reveals that attempts to elicit and capture the knowledge resulting from these efforts may have been largely unsuccessful, and some studies even suggest that NASA may have actually lost that knowledge. In fact, in the words of Sylvia Fries in her 1992 study called NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo, “The 20th anniversary of the landing of an American on the surface of the
moon occasioned many bittersweet reflections.” According to Fries, who was NASA’s chief historian between 1983 and 1990, and who interviewed 51 NASA engineers who had worked on the Apollo program, “Sweet was the celebration of thehistoric event itself. Bitter, for those same enthusiasts, was the knowledge that during the 20 intervening years much of the national consensus that launched this country on its first lunar adventure had evaporated.”

KM may simply be defined as doing what is needed to get the most out of knowledge resources. It is viewed as an increasingly important discipline that promotes the creation, sharing, and leveraging of an organization’s knowledge. Peter Drucker, considered the father of KM, best defines the need for KM. Writing in the article, “The Age of Social Transformation” in a 1974 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, he noted: “knowledge has become the key resource for a nation’s military strength as well as for its economic strength.” Moreover, he argued, effective
KM is required for “the performance capacity, if not the survival, of any organization in the knowledge society.” Rapid changes in the field of KM have, to a great extent, resulted from the dramatic progress in the field of information technology (IT), which facilitates the sharing and the expansion of knowledge. IT allows the movement of information at increasing speeds and efficiencies, thus providing the major impetus for enabling the implementation of KM systems.

The KM Lab began operation in June 1997. Its facilities are located at Florida International University and its mission is to research and evaluate the practices, processes, and technologies that are being used in the field of KM. Students working at the KM Lab get hands-on experience in exploring research issues related to this innovative field, including developing new practices and tools that support knowledge sharing, creating knowledge sharing systems such as expertise-locator systems, and Web-based collaboration systems. Attention also has
been paid to developing new mechanisms and technologies that support knowledge discovery systems, such as data mining applications, and new mechanisms and technologies that support knowledge application systems, such as web-based advisor systems. Beyond this, the lab has provided assistance to organizations seeking help with the design and deployment of a KM strategy to capitalize on their intellectual assets.

The KM Lab is funded by research grants received from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through numerous grants from NASA/Kennedy Space Center (KSC), NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), NASA/Ames Research Center (ARC), and the U.S. Air Force Research Lab. It is an interdisciplinary center of research staffed with graduate and
undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, including computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, English, international business, management information systems, and materials engineering.

It is noteworthy that the KM Lab is staffed by FIU students, not just professionals. This gives the students an opportunity to gain important research experience early in their careers. KM Lab students actively participate in the development and deployment of KM systems for knowledge discovery, capture, sharing, and application. Many students have also collaborated in the development of KM assessments to enable organizations to understand, prioritize, and address their KM needs.

For undergraduate students—many of them the first in their families to attend college — work at the KM Lab is their first exposure to research. Working at the KM Lab is an excellent confidence-booster that demystifies what research is about. Many of the undergraduate students continue to pursue their masters and doctoral degrees. Students work on federally and privately funded projects and gain valuable experience that gives them advantages, in particular when seeking their first job after graduation. Students who have worked in the KM Laboratory have consistently been recruited by top companies such as BellSouth, Deloitte-Touche, FedEx, FPL, GE Medical Systems, Goldman-Sachs, IBM, KPMG, Lennar, and Motorola. Thus, students get
the hands-on opportunities that make a difference later.