Knowledge Management at the World Bank

This case traces the history and evolution of Knowledge Management at the World Bank. While primarily a financial institution offering customized loans and grants across a wide range of sectors in some 100 countries, the World Bank has increasingly become involved in developing, storing, and transferring knowledge requested by its clients for project and other development. Currently there is a growing interest and demand for the sharing of Bank knowledge and its more formal knowledge-based advisory services. Many of the more advanced middle-income countries have graduated from the Bank's development assistance programs, but still want to have access to the Bank's knowledge capital, whether this is in the form of cross-country evidence, informal policy notes, or specialized advisory services. In this case, it is against this background that the Bank and its shareholders are grappling with the question of how best to combine and leverage its knowledge capabilities along with its financial resources. HKS Case Number 1936.0