In an interview with McKinsey Quarterly, Don Tapscott, an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, describes why knowledge management requires replacing email with microblogs and enterprise social networking platforms.

“Knowledge management has failed,” Don says. “We had this view that knowledge is a finite asset, it’s inside the boundaries of companies, and you manage it by containerizing it.”

“Knowledge is an infinite resource,” Don says. “You don’t achieve it through containerization, you achieve it through collaboration.”

Moving beyond email and file systems, social platforms are the collaborative tools enabling affective knowledge management. More robust platforms allow knowledge sharing, ideation and project collaboration to happen across systems and applications.

“Business leaders have traditionally disseminated information along a controlled, linear chain that begins after the development of a formal meaning-creation process,” said Leandro Perez, Head of Global Product Marketing for tibbr. “Think of how your company creates and distributes memos explaining new initiatives. While traditional distribution pathways won’t disappear, enterprise social networking revolutionizes the standard information process. Social communication makes distribution the starting point and then invites company audiences to co-create and contextualize content to create new meaning. Messages are rebroadcasted and repurposed at will by recipients who repost videos, retweet and comment on blogs, and use fragments of other people’s content to create their own mash-ups.”