How to manage knowledge?

Knowledge is power, they say, but managing knowledge is a completely different bag of tricks. These days you probably need an engineer of sorts to do it. Alvaro Fernández Castillo from Spain has been an exchange student at Helsinki University of Technology in Otaniemi, Espoo, since last January. Spending the summer, too, in Helsinki at the Knowledge Management course was just what he was looking for.

During his engineering studies Castillo, who is a native of the Canary Islands, has mainly concentrated on telecommunication. At one point he started wondering if his expertise could be applied to Knowledge Management, his new field of interest.

- This course is a great opportunity to network all over the world. In advance I thought that most participants would be Finns, but the opposite turned out to be true. Our group was quite international.

Castillo explains his field of expertise quite matter-of-factly and says he really liked the methods used at the course. Even if the students were at different stages in their studies, from beginners to those working on their doctoral degrees, everyone participated enthusiastically. The course centred on two workshops and the four person group assignment turned out the most fruitful part of the course.

- It was more like we shared our knowledge and information, shared a round table among ourselves, more than listened to lectures.

In the same breath the two teachers who ran the course receive their commendations.

- Both ladies spoke good English, they were very supportive and conversational.

This autumn this knight of the round table starts working in a big international consulting firm in Barcelona whose line of business is to estimate the value of services provided by companies.

- There is a method to measure the intangible assets that companies have at their disposal at any given time, the young man explains.

There is always demand for experts in that line of work in the future. Castillo himself received many job offers and he is positive that at some point he will be working outside of Spain.

- I was tempted by an offer from the United Kingdom, but we have to wait and see. In the future I hope to be working in customer contact management at some international company.

Text by Kai Maksimainen
Photo by Annika Rauhala