Current economic conditions have given birth to a new frugality in business. I saw that recently in my response to a request from a colleague who was looking for a new way to organize client materials. There was a time when that request would have triggered fun research into the coolest available technology. Instead, my initial reaction was to identify tools and resources the firm already owned that could be extended or repurposed to meet my colleague’s need.

Welcome to the era of Waste Not, Want Not.

For those of you who have been practising this discipline at home, take a look at the website supercook.com.  It’s a search engine that suggests recipes based on what you already have in your kitchen.  This is a dramatic departure from the more typical recipe search engine that inevitably generates a long shopping list of hard to find ingredients.  Identifying new and creative ways to use what we already have may be the lasting legacy of our current economic woes.  Perhaps knowledge management’s job is to mimic supercook.com’s functionality, but within the enterprise — by helping the organization find and use creatively the resources it already has.

[Thanks to Nicole Black for pointing out supercook.com]

[Photo Credit:  H is for Home]