What is a Corporate Memory?

I find it useful to interpret corporate memory at a macro and micro perspective. Here are my interpretations:

Macro perspective

Corporate memory is a virtual expertise-based resource to consult and enable management of know-how in a company. Roughly speaking, a corporate memory is comparable to a virtual network about human and project expertise (tacit or explicitly represented) available in a company at any time. This network specifies where and how to access or consult this expertise.

Micro perspective

Corporate memory is a collection of distributed and heterogeneous knowledge-bases about individual and project experiences and tools to manage these knowledge-bases for or in (new) project situations.

Knowledge-bases about individuals are at their highest level of abstraction similar to the CV of these individuals. At a detailed level, this knowledge base may represent the problem solving expertise of an individual (expertise model à la CommonKads).

Knowledge bases about project experiences detail project histories in terms of

1. project management issues (such as the composition of the project team, project and budget planning, project monitoring, social and organizational aspects related to the project team);
2. design technical issues (such as design rationales, the solution space (alternatives) explored, the arguments raised about each alternative);
3. the lessons learned (e.g., advice, often at a methodological level, about how to pursue similar projects in a better manner).

These experiences (may be with the exception of 3) are not necessarily represented in a manner that enables direct reuse.