Abstract

Recently, suggestions to advance Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) have been voiced in order to provide overdue support tools for knowledge workers in the rising creative class and knowledge societies. Based on the assumption of autonomous capacities and nourished by the creative conversation of many individuals' PKM devices, the systems are supposed to assume an elementary role that enables the emergence of the distributed processes of collective extelligence and intelligence, which in turn feed into the systems. Currently, a prototype system pursuing this concept is about to be converted into a viable commercial PKM system aiming at providing vital lifelong knowledge management support that benefits individuals, institutions, and society. This position and applied research paper complements eight current papers which have concentrated on the PKM challenges to be addressed as well as the conceptual aspects. Its emphasis will be on higher education and five knowledge-related areas (acquisition and preservation, development, sharing and collaboration, applied competences, knowledge societies) where a PKM system support approach can make a difference in academic value chains, in the logics and logistics of new knowledge formation, and in paving the way for personal accomplishments. It explores the hypothetical question:“In light of the changing settings of study and work, what if an institute of higher learning would not only succeed in accomplishing the learning outcomes set, but also provide its staff, students and graduates with the conceptual and technological means for a Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS) whose backing and support would encompass the full life span of an individual’s academic and professional career?”