Here is a useful list from Lucas McDonnell. He wrote, “while the original list was only 26 sites, and eventually almost doubled to around 50, I’ve now got the list up to 66 sites that are really cranking out some quality content.”
There are some good sources here and I was pleased to see this blog on the list. Most of them were already on my blog list but I added a few more.
Yakabod has been providing knowledge management solutions since 2003. It was founded in 2001 by CEO Scott Ryser and CTO Scott Williamson and first focused on web applications. I recently spoke with Scott Ryser and Chris Coleman, their EVP for Marketing. The firm is headquartered in the DC area and their main clients have been in the US Federal government’s intelligence community.
Yakabod’s flagship product is the Yakabox™ Knowledge Network. It is built to meet Protection Level 3 standards for software used in the U.S. Intelligence Community. It is a secure knowledge-sharing system that enables organizations more control over their content and allows for secure collaboration, both internally and with their business partners. I feel even more importantly it provides the users with great control and flexibility in how they manage content relevant to their work. It is activity based rather than based on taxonomies and file structures isolated from daily work processes. With the release of Yakabox 3.0 they are plan to engage a broader market outside the intelligence community.
Scott and I discussed the importance of activity based knowledge management. I was already onboard with the concept, as all the successful KM systems that I have seen have been work process-based, rather than standalone knowledge repositories. Scott pointed out that 80% of knowledge management efforts fail primarily because of cultural barriers. I believe this and I imagine most of these failures are not work process centric.
Scott mentioned that with transactional applications you can force people to input data as part of their job. However, you miss the large amounts of useful unstructured data around these transactions. If the system for unstructured data is not part of the work process it is hard to get people to engage. A knowledge system that is aligned with work transactions is more likely to pick up this content.
As McKinsey wrote a few years ago, the real value in companies is now in the interactions rather than the transactions, but IT has largely supported the latter. Now more investment needs to be made in supporting the interactions and making them accessible. This is the goal of Yakabox.
If you make the knowledge management system aligned with work processes you have gone a log way to handling the adoption issue. Next, you have to add value to the work process. Yakabox makes the user the center of knowledge sharing and enables them to find content useful and relevant to their work. You can designate content as relevant on a 1 to 5 scale. These ratings drive other relevance algorithms and the systems learns from your actions.
Scott said that when they added the relevance engine to the system, adoption exploded. People now had content come to them that was helpful and spent less time looking for stuff. You can also tag it and make comments for others to see. Yakabox provides fine-grained control over who can see these comments and ratings so people are less hesitant to share, knowing that this information goes to a selected subset of the broader audience with the organization. Scott said that these controls help to build trust and people frequently expand who can see what they do as this trust develops. This way silos can be broken down piece by piece.
The system integrates four applications—collaboration, social networking, content management and search—on one secure platform. It is delivered three ways: an appliance (bundled hardware and software installed behind the client’s firewall), on-site subscription (no hardware/software purchase), or hosted (SaaS with no per-user fees).
Scott gave me a tour. You start with the Activity Viewer page and content is organized around your activities. The top of the widest column contains the “road blocks” you are responsible for. These are the items where your team is dependent on your actions to move a project or initiative forward. Underneath the roadblocks are items organized by recency. Since your rate items on a 1 - 5 scale you can also filter them down by only showing items that meet your designated criteria. You can apply this rating scale to content, people, blogs, and any other item within the system.
For each item you can learn more about the people or topic. You can leave a comment and go to the profile of each person involved. You can go to the home page of every person to see what each is doing. These home pages are not limited to people as you can go to the home page of document and see all the actions around it. You can also see the objects that are generating the most activity.
There is a Twitter like status update field where you can answer the question, “what are you doing that matters.” I think that within the enterprise status updates like this work better within a system such as Yakabox, than as a standalone application like Twitter. I feel the opposite about the Web where I think Twitter status updates work better than those within a system like Facebook. You can set up a TweetDeck like interface to see the actions of people you want to follow and apply the 1-5 rating scale to determine the number of people you see at any one time.
There are robust access and dissemination controls over content. They can be role-based or individual-based. You can add filters to the search function to look at things such as only documents, only people, or even only documents by a certain person. You can add a “see also” link to provide access to additional material related to any content. This allows you to first narrow down and then expand the content you look at while keeping things relevant.
Yakabox also provides a blog tool where you can post in the context of the complete system. The same access controls can be applied as well as the search and relevancy filters. There is also a calendar with these same filters. In addition to the features that come out of the box you can add more. I think that Yakabox provides the right balance of control, features, relevance, and ease of use for an enterprise 2.0 style knowledge management system. It will be interesting see how it doe sin the broader business market.
Personal knowledge management can be very useful and when it is social it can serve many purposes. Can twitter serve this function?
Here is an interesting post from Andre Yee at eBizQ, Is Twitter's Growth Sustainable? He raises four issues: attrition, demographics, user experience and usage patterns, and monetization. I think that each of these are real concerns. However, I think the key in number three: user experience and usage patterns. If they get this right the others will take care of themselves.
Andre points out that “Facebook, MySpace and other social networks have a richer user experience beyond broadcasting. This means additional usage patterns and these translate to greater user affinity and stickiness.” The simplicity of Twitter is a large part of tits power. However, I think there needs to be more for sustainability. One part is the actual interface itself, as TweetDeck has proven.
Another part is the ability to use Twitter as a personal knowledge management system. I do this with this blog so I naturally started doing this with Twitter. I tweet or retweet links to things I want to go back to. Since it is Twitter, a social tool, I am also sharing them but in many cases that is secondary. Twitter does the social part fairly well. But the archive part is very primitive. It reminds me of del.icio.us. Once I got a few hundred links it became clumsy and I stopped using it.
Do you use Twitter for personal knowledge management? How do you think it can improve in this area? Are their third party apps that help here?
Inmagic began in 1983 in the Boston area by providing what became to be called knowledge management solutions unlike many players in the Enterprise 2.0 market. The corporate library function was their first market. Many companies would purchase data from outside sources and the corporate librarian had to manage this unstructured data and make it accessible.
I spoke with Phil Green, the current Inmagic CTO, and Mike Cassettari, the VP of Marketing. With most of the traditional database tools available in the 80s, you had to make the data fit the structure of the data fields. Inmagic offered fields of unlimited length so you could make the database structure fit the nature of the content. They were one of the pioneers in handling unstructured data. They added the ability to handle imaging in the early 90s.
Then in 1996 Inmagic began offering web publishing tools and Web 1.0 applications. went with Web services at the front end level. As Phil and Mike said, their path reflects the ongoing changes in the industry. Some of their clients wanted a Web version to share data across locations. These clients and others discovered that this led to far greater data sharing on a global basis than anticipated. I also experienced this in several firms.
Next, Inmagic moved to a complete Web version with a .Net solution. They now provide both a hosted offering and an on-premise solution. Mike and Phil said it is about 50-50 in terms of client preferences. If the client is a business user and does not want to get IT involved, they often pick the SaaS version. If the client is within IT and/or concerned with security, they often pick the on-premise offering.
All this brings us up to the present and the advent of Web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0. Inmagic now has two product offerings. Their legacy Inmagic DB/Text still serves a large number of corporate clients in the library space. They now also offer Inmagic® Presto as a Web 2.0 offering. They recently announced Presto 3.0 that includes a number of features to make knowledge management more social. Below is a sample home page of a knowledge sharing system based on Presto.
Mike very rightly pointed out how the introduction of social media into the enterprise can add to the information silos. I have seen this before and agree. Presto provides access to a broad array of unstructured content within the enterprise to overcome these silos. It provides this access in a way that maintains the unique aspects of each data type (e.g. images, text multimedia). There is both a quick one field search and advanced search through categories. You can create virtual folders so items can be indexed in multiple ways.
Presto can also be employed in a Sharepoint environment. This enables firms to reduce the amount of costly and time consuming Sharepoint customization to get the capabilities that Presto brings out of the box. Here you can see Presto search results that bring forward to nature of each file type.
The four main social aspects that have been added with Presto 3.0 are the ability to tag, rate, and comment on content, as well as the abilty to Blog. There is also role-based access to these capabilities and the other features Presto offers. An administrator can decide who has the ability to place tags, as well as rate and comment on content, and they also have the ability to permission who can Blog. Below you can see the role-based options open to the administrator.
It is nice to see a long term player continue to evolve with the market and do well. Mike said that their performance continues strong in the down economy. He attributes this to three factors: their large client base and long standing clients, the appeal of the Web 2.0 features in Presto, and their focus on departmental solution with low cost points of entry.
I have known Nancy Dixon for some time and have always respected her work in knowledge management and organizational learning. So I am very pleased that she has started a blog. Nancy is well known for her many books, including Common Knowledge and heads her consulting firm, Common Knowledge Associates. Her blog, Conversation Matters, continues this work with very comprehensive thought pieces.
Some recent examples of posts include, Five Actions Organizations Can Take to Increase Knowledge Sharing. She lists these as: 1. Help people build relationships with each other 2. Build knowledge sharing processes into the workflow 3. Design physical space that encourages conversation 4. Deliver an actionable leadership message about knowledge sharing 5. Develop and then practice conversation skills
Nancy then goes on to provide a number of examples for each action. I have seen all of these in action, especially two, three, and four. My introduction to knowledge management began with building knowledge sharing processes into the workflow for a major insurance company in the early 90s. I still think that this process orientation is a essential component to any successful knowledge management system.
I once heard the former head of a major London university describe how they finally got two critical departments to start collaborating after several unsuccessful mandated approaches. They simply created an attractive space for coffee between the departments. Nokia and other Scandinavian firms are noted for this. Leadership needs to both led by example and provide ways for others to follow. The key element of all five of Nancy’s factors is that they are action oriented.
The preceding post was on The Incentive Question or Why People Share Knowledge. This is always a critical one in any knowledge management effort. Nancy goes into detail on several factors: people are willing to share their knowledge, peer recognition, and relationships. She brings in research, as well as experience. I would like to add another. There is an incentive for knowledge sharing if it is tied into their work process and supports this process. That was one of Nancy's five points for knowledge sharing in the post described above. This is also one of the benefits of some of the new workflow based enterprise 2.0 tools. You can have the means for knowledge sharing build into the process of performing work at the point where it is most meaningful and at the point where it does not require extra work.
I recommend taking a look at her blog. There is much more like this. As a disclaimer, I advised Nancy in starting her new Typepad blog. However, this post is independent of that effort and is written after it was completed. As I said at the beginning, I have respected Nancy’s work for some time so I would be writing this in any circumstances. She has long been one of the thought leaders in knowledge management. It is nice to have her blogging now.
I discovered Stan Garfield’s list of knowledge management Twitterers recently. There were 47 at the time and I was pleased to be included. About a third were new ones for me and I decided to follow most of them after checking out their recent tweets. Stan also has an excellent list of knowledge management bloggers.
Stan links to several other lists of knowledge management Twitters including David Gurteen’s KM Twitter list and Patrick DiDomenico's KM Twitter List.
Stan also provided other KM Twitter groups to join: Twitter Groups Knowledge Management (KM) Practitioners and Flocks/KM. These can be added to the We Follow lists I posted on yesterday.
Twitter on.
I discovered an interesting Twitter app – WeFollow. You can add your Twiter feed and place
three tags. You can also search by these tags to help decide what to choose and see who else is using these tags. I tried the tag, KM, and found 7,557 Twitterers sorted by popularity. The others I tried are listed below with the Twitters at the time of discovery. You seem to be able to go back and register again and add more tags. However, they wipe out the old tags so you are limited to three. I ended up picking KM, knowledgemanagement, and enterprise 20 on my third try.
e20 - 748 sorted by popularity
enterprise20 – 10,021
KM – 7,557
knowledgemanagement - 2,688
social media - 8,834,366
blogs – 1,678,425
This is another way to find relevant KM and enterprise 2.0 twitters. There is also the enterprise 2.0 Twitter list started by Susan Scrupski that I have mentioned before.
My former colleague, Tom Davenport, is working on a new book on decision making. My friend Andrew Snider of Athenium recently spent some time with him to talk about the leverage that an organization can get by improving micro-decisions using systematic behavior measurement. Tom reflected on this conversation as part of his blog post, Microdecisions for Macro Impact.
Tom starts with the premise that “what many companies don't realize is that microdecisions — small decisions made many times by many workers at the customer interface — can have a major impact on the business.” I have seen this over and over again, both the “don’t realize” part and the major impact part. One insurance company in the early 90s laid off many of their supervisors to cut costs and effectively removed their company’s intelligence for making microdecisions. The subsequently began losing over 600 million a year. Sound familiar?
One of the solutions for this firm was to build a knowledge management system to capture the wisdom of the few remaining supervisors and place in at the right points in the business process to affect microdecisions. It was my introduction to knowledge management and this help lead to the company becoming profitable again.
Tom adds in his post that until we “start to measure micro-decision makers at the individual level, we aren't likely to improve their performance much. This is the approach of a company called Athenium, which applies it regularly to insurance, health care, and legal processes.” Athenium's offers its teamthink® web-based performance measurement solutions to address this issue. Their Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) measures the workforce behaviors that directly impact the alignment of operations with strategic goals and best practices.
Tom concludes with the idea that one of the simplest approaches to improving micro-decisions is to give those who make them a checklist to make sure they didn't forget any key steps or issues. He mentions a recent New England Journal of Medicine article concluding that a 19-item checklist reduced deaths during surgeries by almost half.
I can believe this also. In the mid 80s, I was involved in developing a checklist for loan officers of a major US bank that recently got a lot of bailout money. In this case they were losing tons of money on loans to South America. The solution was a checklist. I still have my copy. I should offer it on eBay or perhaps to bank so they could reuse the concept to help get out of the mess that they created.
The 13th annual KMWorld Conference and Exhibition will be held on November 17 – 19, 2009 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, in San Jose, California. The theme is Resetting the Enterprise: Focusing on People, Talent & Knowledge. Their site is up and they have issued their call for papers. The deadline is April 15.
I have presented here five times (see for example, "Thinking for a Living" -Thomas Davenport at KM World and KM World 2006 – San Jose). I look forward to being part of this upcoming session. It is great location and important conference. It is nice to see it still going strong as a symbol of knowledge management’s longevity. Their is now a KM World blog. Hope to see you there.
KM World now has a blog organized by Jane Dysart. A number of knowledge management bloggers have now committed to provide posts. There are posts from Dave Snowden and Dave Pollard up already. Here is my first contribution, Memories of Early KM Brought Back with McKinsey Report on Making Enterprise 2.0 Work. It is a cross post from this blog as a starter but I look to provide some original content going forward with a few cross posts sprinkled in when I think they are especially relevant.
I am looking forward to the upcoming KM World 09 on November 17-19 as I plan to attend and do a workshop this year. Details to follow. I hope to see you there.
I recently read the McKinsey report on six ways to make Web 2.0 work. They were primarily speaking about Web 2.0 inside the enterprise so I will rename the topic enterprise 2.0 for clarity in my own mind. They “studied more than 50 early adopters to garner insights into successful efforts to use Web 2.0 as a way of unlocking participation…surveyed, independently, a range of executives on Web 2.0 adoption.” They found that “unless a number of success factors are present, Web 2.0 efforts often fail to launch or to reach expected heights of usage.” They also said that enterprise 2.0 might end up having a greater impact that such recent enterprise approaches as ERP and CRM. So far I agree with them.
Then I looked at their six success factors. Not only did I agree with them, but these six were some of the exact same success factors we found for process centric KM in the early 90s, at least at the headline level. Now some of the details are a little different to no surprise but the essence is the same. I am not saying that KM and enterprise 2.0 are the same but I think their success factors are similar so we can learn from the past. In addition, there is an historic continuity of the early process-centric KM and enterprise 2.0 when it is applied to business processes. I touched on these factors a bit in this series on early KM (see KM Stories: Lessons from Six Implementations). I recently found a 2004 reference to this KM series and a few related ones by ReadWriteWeb . Belated thanks to Richard MacManus who writes and manages a great blog.
Here are the six success factors McKinsey found for enterprise 2.0 and why they were essential for process-centric KM, and still are. I will let you go to the McKinsey report for the details of what they provide to enterprise 2.0.
One: The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top. I called this: Gain and Enlist Top Down Support to Overcome Turf Issues. I could have subtitled it in the early 90s as “creating a culture of knowledge sharing from the bottom up.” I also think that with process-oriented enterprise 2.0 you also need to overcome turf issues and top down support is needed for this effort. .
Two: The best uses come from users—but they require help to scale. “our research shows the applications that drive the most value through participatory technologies often aren’t those that management expects.” I referred to this as Listen to the Users – success is directly proportionate to the amount of user involvement. We turned to the process experts to build the KM supported need for these processes. In the past many firms had enterprise software that dictated process steps imposed on the users. Many of them resisted this top down approach. So the involvement of users not only got the software right, it helped with adoption.
Three: What’s in the workflow is what gets used. For KM this was called - Align Knowledge Applications to Key Business Goals and Process as well as Design Measures Aligned to Business Processes. I have long thought that process centric KM is much more valuable than library centric KM. The later was what gave KM a bad name. The process centric approach was my introduction to KM and the better tools in enterprise 2.0 are a way to realize this approach.
Four: Appeal to the participants’ egos and needs—not just their wallets - traditional “methods tend to fall short when applied to unlocking participation.” One way to do this is to address the daily business needs of the users or Design Performance Measures Aligned to Business Processes. If you put the tools into the work flow you will generally achieve this objective. Financial incentives that for things that do not directly support work are domed to failure or gaming or both.
Five: The right solution comes from the right participants “select users who will help drive a self-sustaining effort (often enthusiastic early technology adopters who have rich personal networks and will thus share knowledge and exchange ideas).” We always looked to the evangelists to aid in the spread of KM. It is no different here.
Six: Balance the top-down and self-management of risk “Numerous executives we interviewed said that participatory initiatives had been stalled by legal and HR concerns.” One why to avoid these obstacles is to involve all the key stakeholders from the start, another KM best practice. I remember when the legal department at one firm said they wanted to review everything that went into the KM system before it was placed there. That bottleneck would have killed the system. The legal department had not been involved from the start, a lesson learned. We were able to negotiate a compromise approach that allowed the project to move forward.
In summary, when you attempting to get people to embrace a new technology and business approach such as enterprise 2.0 that involved greater participation, lessons can be learned from the relevant past. I also think the similarity helps validate the six factors that McKinsey found.
Knowledge Plaza is a new Web-based platform for enterprise search, social bookmarking, knowledge management, information brokerage and expert identification. It was developed by the Belgium based firm, Whatever. I recently spoke with Olivier Verbeke, CEO at Whatever and COO Antoine Perdaens. They explained the concept behind this interesting platform. There are three components, the Dashboard, the Plaza, and the Web. They offer a SaaS version and an on-premise version.
The Dashboard lets you know is happening in your knowledge community. You can see recently activity within your personal workspace, team workspaces you have joined, and your network of contacts. Pieces of information are called Tiles and they are put together to create Mosaics that provide knowledge. You can see what you have saved and what others have sent you. Here is a screen shot of a Dashboard page
As mentioned above, users can individually and collaboratively combine pieces of information (Tiles) into a Mosaic, build wiki content around the information and make it available for other users. In addition it's possible to export the Mosaic for sharing outside of Knowledge Plaza. I especially liked this last feature. I remember using Quickplace in 2000 along with a Notes based content management system to provide a more primitive version of this concept. We could send the Quickplace where the document and other related ones were created to offer more context. Now with Knowledge Plaza you can create a specific collection of documents and links to build a story and then send this off intact to others.
The Knowledge Plaza is where the real action is located. As the name implies it is place to share information. You can bring many different content types into the Plaza. Users can add internet bookmarks, documents and files, e-mails, contacts and references into the Plaza. There is browser and e-mail integration to simplify the process of adding content. You can just email content to the Plaza. Users rate content and this helps guide search efforts. There is enterprise social search allowing you to use the expertise of those around you to find and retrieve information. You can also save searches and repeat them over time. Here is an example of a Plaza.
You can set up different workspaces, invite members, and provide layers of access to the content. You can search individual workspaces or across all of them. You can also rate members, as well documents, and this rating stays private but it can guide your search results. Members set up their own pages, as in Facebook. Here you put information about yourself and your network of individuals. You also add your workspaces and other information. People can use you to guide their search efforts by seeing what you are storing and what sites you have visited. You can restrict search results to the activity of one or many members.
The third Web component creates on-the-fly vertical search engines within Internet bookmarks stored in the Plaza. A keyword search in this component can provide results exclusively located inside your own bookmarked websites, as well as inside all shared websites in the Plaza. Their concept of “Expert as Search Engine” (EaSE) allows you to search only inside a specific member’s bookmarked websites. Further contextualization of Web search results can be carried out through tag and faceted navigation. The Web component additionally provides a combined search tool for pulling in and categorizing external or commercial search tools to the Plaza. Here is a look at the Web component.
Knowledge Plaza has struck a balance between top down taxonomies and bottom up folksonomies. You can set up a taxonomy for consistency in tagging but users can add new terms. Then administrators can check these new terms on a periodic basis to decide which new terms to add to the taxonomy. When looking for information users are able to combine full text search with facet and tag selection. Such categorization is applied in the same way to all tiles (including members and contacts) and allows for many different uses such as efficient expertise location, library management, etc.
Every tile, or piece of information, has its own page like members so you can see all the activity related to the information. You can also send a link to the page so others can see the context around the information. I like this in the same way I think the Mosaic concept adds value. You get the context surrounding information and you can share this context. This concept of providing context is pervasive in Knowledge Plaza and I think that is one of its greatest strengths. It takes knowledge management nicely into enterprise 2.0.
I have been meaning to write about this excellent and comprehensive post from John Tropea for some time, Post-KM: enterprise 2.0, facilitation and complexity. I have always thought that KM and enterprise 2.0 have a lot of overlap and that the new enterprise 2.0 tools give KM people much, much better tools to do their job and a better chance to realize the original vision of KM. At the same, there is much more to enterprise 2.0 than KM, and some KM functions may reside in old school tools for the time being anyway. I have also said that enterprise 2.0 provides KM people with new opportunities for leadership if they do things rights.
In this post John explores the relationship between KM and enterprise 2.0. He starts with a provocative question: “Some would say, what gives the right for KM to hijack Enterprise 2.0… Enterprise 2.0 is based on bottom-up tools that allows for connections and emergence to happen, ie. knowledge workers now have the tools to do work and distribute their talent without really needing a department telling them to do so.” He characterizes this potential conflict as a Bottom-up vs Top-down management approach. If KM people try to resist enterprise 2.0 rather than provide leadership for the effort, they will lose out on the great opportunity before them, and likely lose this struggle as well. I really agree with John’s suggestion in this regard. He says, “It’s my hope that most existing KM practitioners understand that this new generation of KM has changed from a management role, to facilitating and flow…more about coordinating and guiding.” This is really good advice.
I am going to pause in my comments on John’s excellent post do rant about one point. It is not something John said but a quote from a post, Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War, by Venkatesh Rao, “…not only do Boomers not get complexity, they are suspicious of it, thanks to their early cultural training which deifies simplicity.” There is trend in the US (vs. Europe) toward simplification that I have written about before (see - Talking About Wine (& Complexity) – The New Yorker) but there is also a strong counter-trend amongst many people my age (Boomers) to appreciate complexity. These trends are not age related. This smear against older people is a lot like those statements I frequently hear that old people do not understand web 2.0 and it will take a new generation to really appreciate it. Perhaps we might be able to appreciate it even more as we have seen many waves of technology and management approaches so we can better put it into perspective. I think people of all ages are educable if they want to be. It is not right to group all of us old people as simplistic luddites. I think that Venkatesh is guilty of the over simplification he seems to criticize. End of rant.
John goes on to say that, “enterprise 2.0 is connecting and networks, emergence and autonomous behaviours result (sense-making), so this becomes closer to achieving the original aim of KM.” The original vision of KM, as I remember it in the early 90s, was about empowerment of workers and not about top down knowledge control. This is one reason why I am excited about the promise of the enterprise 2.0 tools. To this end Venkatesh is quoted as saying, “KM is a brittle, mechanical, anxiety and fear-ridden structure.” I am not sure where he got this idea. It is certainly not the KM that I know ( see for example, History of KM Part 6: Digital Age Offers Scalability with New Possibilities for Dialogue or KM Stories: Lessons from Six Implementations, but a brittle straw man set up to create controversy or a war when there does not need to be any. John appears to make this point as well.
John goes on to say that it is “known that enterprise 2.0 needs facilitation to get adoption and network effects compared to the open web.” This facilitation is exactly the opportunity for KM managers. At this point John brings in complex adaptive system theory to address the nature of enterprise 2.0. It is a great post and I suggest you read the whole thing.
Forrester recently sent me a review copy of their 30 page report - Forrester TechRadar™ For I&KM Pros: Enterprise Web 2.0 - Wikis And Social Networks Are Ready To Deliver High Value To Your Enterprise, Q4 2008 by Gil Yehuda with Kyle McNabb, G. Oliver Young, Sara Burnes, Zachary Reiss-Davis. The major areas of focus and conclusions are similar to Forrester TechRadar For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 - How Product Strategists Should Approach A Maturing Web 2.0 Market, Q4 2008 which should be no surprise. However, this reports is targeting the issues faced by KM professionals.
I have written on a number of occasions that the advent of enterprise 2.0 proivder knowledge management professionals with a great opportunity to play a leadership role in their organizations. This reports provides useful guidance on the some actions that KM people might take. It begins with some of options the organizations face.
On one hand, waiting for IT to provide approved Web 2.0 tools leads to competitive disadvantage. On the other hand, using the tools available externally puts information at risk. In addition, downloading and running Web 2.0 tools on internal servers increase IT headaches. I have argued before, as other have, that Web 2.0 is not enterprise 2.0. I agree with the report that none of these options are good ones. Within the enterprise you need to adopt tools that were designed for business use within the enterprise. Some of these tools can be cloud based but they also need to be business based.
They picked the same 11 technologies studied in the vendor report: blogs, forums, mashups, microblogs, podcasts, prediction markets, RSS, social bookmarks, social networks, widgets, and wikis and offered the same conclusions about the tools. Then the report goes on to provide advice to KM professionals in light of these conclusions. The main one are:
“Set your expectations: Web 2.0 technology will improve the business, but not transform it…Experiment with social networking tools. At a minimum, ensure that Web 2.0 deployments clearly connect content to the employees associated with that content… wait for microblogging to mature before jumping on the latest craze. Microblogs may offset email and regular blogs. Variations of the “What are you working on?” status question will be part of new social and presence engines. But microblogging will only become valuable to the enterprise once it truly integrates with other enterprise processes and applications, and only after a whole set of additional tools are added to help filter content and refine the value of aggregated information.”
In backing up the first advice statement, researchers said that, “no one we surveyed pointed to any one tool as “must have,” although many found significant value in wikis and forums.” I guess I have been talking more to vendors that KM people as I have seen examples where enterprise 2.0 tools have, at least, transformed business process to provide greater transparency, accountability, and thus productivity. On the other hand, in talking with a few implementers, they have not yet seen the big wave of demand for enterprise 2.0 tools. So I think the answer is somewhere in the middle here. I would agree to not over-sell.
I completely agree with the second advice statement. You need to take advantage of these two tools to bring out the social side of content. I also agree with the last statement but I think the preconditions for making microblogging useful will appear sooner than later. For example, I recently talked with Jordan frank at Traction who showed me their new microblogging tool that is completely integrated into their wiki platform with such feature as permission levels, search, and tags. It can be become part of a community page and team collaboration space.
If you are a KM professional who wants to play a leadership role in the implementation of enterprise 2.0, this report will provide useful explanations and guidance. There is a lot of detail here.
I wrote a post, KM is Alive and Well at Braintrust 2005. This was the last time I attended and spoke at the event. I did a quite a few others before this. Now they are doing their 10th event., Braintrust 2008. It is very nice to see this conference still going. They have a smaller crowd than KM World but usually very senior people. There is a new generation of speakers. I did not recognize any of them and I take this as a good thing for the conference. My only complaint is that they moved from San Francisco to Orlando. I remember joining Vadis Krebs and others for dinner at Jeanty at Jacks, a French bistro founded in 1864. I have been back to eat there since then with my daughter.
How can Orlando match that? Anyway I still recommend it. It occurs November 18-20 in Disney’s Resort. You check off Disney World off of the checklist of life at the same time. Here is two of many pictures I took at the event. The Sir Francis Drake Hotel bar (where many of us met) from my hotel room and a conference break in Union Square and the Jeanty at Jacks web site. Let the good times roll.
This seems to month for new ECM sites. First, I mentioned Fierce Content Management, Last Friday, it was Informatics by AIIM. Now I recently heard about ECMHUB 2.0. It is described as the world's largest mashup focusing on the ECM and KM industries and married it to web collaboration.
Here is what they did. First they created a generic Yahoo Pipe that reads Google Spreadsheet information that lists hundreds of ECM industry RSS feeds including blogs, news, webcasts, questions, RFPs, and videos. Then they take the feeds and caches them into Google. Using Google App Engine they built an "on demand" feed caching and refresh application. This means the latest articles are instantly retrievable within only a few seconds and the individual feeds are automatically rebuilt with a push of a button. They then built "cloud communities" around the feeds adding comments, ratings, web conferencing, and 3D chat. Currently, they have support for over 40 communities with over 5,000 daily articles. Finally they wrap the entire application using Javascript with an AJAX foundation. The site says that "this means instead of navigating from page to page like a traditional website, you navigate by retrieving web page data on demand. When you click on a community, for instance, the main page area will clear and show an animated star indicating that new data, such as the latest news, is currently loading."
This is a good use of the aggregation capabilities in the new web. They have a tag cloud for their communities, ECM, KM, and Web 2.0 are the largest communities. They have this blog, Portals and KM, appearing in the KM community and this is appreciated. You need to log into your Google account to fully participate. It will be interesting to see how this site evolves.
The ECM Institute is an independent Association of Content Management Professionals. It services both the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Knowledge Management (KM) Industries and their members include IT professionals from both private and public organizations, including specialized vendors and consultants. The site also serves as a clearing house for service providers and seekers.
I was recently sent the first issue of Infonomics Weekly by AIIM. This newsletter is an offshoot of Infonomics (formerly AIIM E-DOC Magazine and Inside ECM eNewsletter) and will supplement the print (and digital) magazine. There is a question of the week and a series of practical articles. In addition, a listing of upcoming AIIM events and offerings: live events, in person and on the Web; upcoming training classes; AIIM membership offerings; all there for a quick synopsis of AIIM in the next month. I am planning to attend their session, Automating Document-centric Processes – Is SharePoint Enough? on October 16 in Boston.
I liked the piece on To SaaS or Not to Saas by Dan Carmel - Five Tests to Determine Whether On-Demand Document Management is Right for Your Organization. They include: First, if your application does need one or more components not often found in an off-the-shelf and integrated package, SaaS is a good option. Second, if you don’t have months or even weeks to allow for the standard IT process, and the looming risk of delay is unacceptable, SaaS is a good option. Third, if your project is restricted to a limited budget, or you want to limit your upfront budget and link cash outlays to the benefits received, SaaS is a good option. Fourth, if it is critical that your software application evolve easily as your needs change and new technologies emerge, SaaS is a good option. Fifth, can you ccomplish your goals with an 80 percent solution—one that provides all the key functionality that you need but maybe not every bell and whistle that you desire, if so SaaS is a good option.
This should be a good resource.
In an explorative study about Knowledge Management weblogs Pumacy Technologies AG has been analyzing active knowledge management blogs by comparing figures from August 2008. Pumacy Technologies AG is solution provider for knowledge, process and innovation management. They wrote to me that they are undertaking a study to explore the potential of Web 2.0 technologies for knowledge management. Their first step is a systematic survey of private and commercial blogs that cover knowledge management. Web 2.0 technologies are already standard communication tools in private communication. The initial results of their survey point out that Web 2.0 becomes more and more interesting for community-based knowledge management activities in companies.
You can find the PUmacy list of 50 KM blogs within their web site. I was pleased to see that both Portals and KM and Fast Forward are included, along with many of the blogs on my list. There were some now ones that I was glad to learn about. Here is an older list I put together in 2005, Some Knowledge Management Blogs.
Braintrust is now ten years old. I have spoken there a few times and found it to be a good knowledge management conference, not too big and not too small. This time they say you can “garner more effective “collective intelligence” with an emphasis on “Knowledge Management 2.0” Good to keep up with the times or at least the terms. The last time I spoke was at Braintrust 2005 and wrote this post afterwards, KM is Alive and Well at Braintrust 2005. Prior to that I spoke at 2001 when as I wrote “the market was still going strong and budgets were more robustt’ and there were a few more during that era. I commented on the 2005 version that “it was nice to see that the topic is still very active, that people continue to do interesting things, and a decent, and active, crowd attended.”
This year I see a new crop of speakers, which is great. There are speakers from Google, the Orlando Magic basketball team (they could sue some good KM), and Rick Close, the Pfizer guy who spoke at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston.
I glad that KM continues such a long run. My only complaint is the move of the event from San Francisco to Orlando. I guess it is cheaper. At any rate, you should go if you want a good take on the current state of the KM art.
The Information Advisor recently published a useful article, Enterprise 2.0: Is it Knowledge Management by Another Name? Disclosure - they interviewed me as part of the article ☺ - and then used some of my comments. Specifically, they said that enterprise 2.0 as a term seems to be sticking, it is not web 2.0, there is a useful role for social activities at work, and enterprise 2.0 tools need to be developed to solve business problems. This last issue is critical in making tool selections. You need to be certain that the enterprise 2.0 tool provider is not simply bringing a web 2.0 tool into the enterprise. I also said that enterprise 2.0 is an opportunity for knowledge management professionals and corporate librarians to take a leadership role into making sure these tools are selected and used properly. BTW - I think the answer to the question in the title of this post is - yes - but enterprise 2.0 is also more than KM.
The article has a nice review of the Awareness platform that I have written about a number of times, including some of their enterprise 2.0 success stories. There is a good case study of one of their clients, Sg2, a US healthcare information intelligence organization. There is much more in the article. I have only hit a few highlights. Thanks to the Awareness people for posting it on their site.
Who would have imagined that there would be a KM World 2008 when KM broke into the scene in the early 90s. But yes, the 12th KM World will be back, a bit early this year. It appears on September 23 - 25, 2008 at its usual venue, the San José McEnery Convention Center San José, CA. It is nice to see it still going and it did not even change its name like some other conferences. I did see enterprise 2.0 track and even an Information Architecture 3.0 session so it is keeping up with the times. KM remains alive and well. The rooster includes some of the usual suspects and some new faces. I think I have participated in six of the prior eleven. A Google search of “km world” this blog turned up 74 entries led off by my post on "Thinking for a Living" - Thomas Davenport at KM World. I will be there is spirit this year. The Enterprise Search West conference is being held at the same time and location. It should be a good event and a reunion for many in the field. I enjoyed my last trips. Be sure to see the nearby San Jose Art Museum.
I recently joined another group on enterprise content management and social computing. Information Zen is AIIM's online network for education, research, and best practices to help organizations optimize their information. They have a number of special focus groups. I joined the Enterprise Content Management group, the Enterprise 2.0 group, and the Information Organization and Access/ Search group. There are 144 members when I last checked and it seems to be growing. Here is a bit more about it on the AIIM Blog.
I recently joined Content Management Connection, organized by George Dearing. It is an “online community for technology practitioners, software companies, and end users to share thoughts and ideas on the changing landscape of content management and collaboration. This site is produced by The Dearing Group LLC., a marketing and new media communications company.” There is growing list of bloggers in this space, many of them I recognize. George also runs the Enterprise Content Management Feedburner Network. I appreciate his leadership in these efforts as they provide a nice aggregation on blogs in the main space covered by this blog. You can add your own blog to have it reach a new audience. I already have a comment on one of my PKM posts that reappeared there. It also has news, events, and surveys. In addition it was features like most read posts, ability to comment on posts, quick surveys with instant results, most discussed authors, most active authors, most highly rated posts, etc. I liked the layout.
Stan Garfield writes the excellent Weekly Knowledge Management Blog that I have referred to on several occasions. It was nice to see that I was recently selected on his blog as the KM Thought Leader of the Week. This is one of several categories that he covers weekly. Stan also includes the KM Question, Blog, Link, and Book of the Week. In this case, Stan asked many people, "If you were invited to give a keynote speech on knowledge management, what words of wisdom or lessons learned would you impart?" He posted my answer that is repeated below in its entirety. There is much more on Stan’s post for this week so I encourage you to visit the Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield and add it to your RSS feeds.
"I would say that some principles still hold after 15 years. Align your KM efforts with business processes and measure them by the impact on these processes. Do not create disconnected document libraries. I would add now to explore the opportunities that Web 2.0 brings to the table. There is the potential for creating searchable knowledge bases as a byproduct of working in the new transparency offered by these tools.
However, I would not abandon the first two principles as you explore these tools. Some of the newest generation Web 2.0 tools for business use behind the firewall have gone beyond blogs and wikis to create workflow applications that incorporate this new transparency. This allows for better teamwork AND a searchable, archived window into to what the organization is doing for all who need to know, should know, and can benefit from this knowledge.
Now, when I say workflow or work process, I do not mean the static inflexible workflow of old-style content management or project management tools. The advantage of these new tools is that they allow work processes that are more organic and dynamic. They allow the users to control the workflow or process, build it up from tasks and make changes as needed. And, to repeat, they allow for transparency and archiving, and thus KM, to be a byproduct of work, rather than an added requirement."
So be sure to invite me to your next KM conference and I will elaborate. Thanks, Stan.
I learned from Dale Arseneault through an email group I belong to that the Canada School of the Public Service has crafted a good overview of knowledge management (in the context of organizational demographic changes) and has some useful s of common approaches/techniques. The research based report is called Lost & Found: A Smart-Practice Guide to Managing Organizational Memory. The focus is on public but the report provides a good introduction for fairly broad consumption. Knowledge management is getting close to tits twentieth anniversary, depending on when you count the start. That is a good run for something that people though was a fad.
I still do not like the name. Notice they do not use it in the report title. However, the concept is still current and getting a great boost from the new enterprise 2.0 tools
Here is a really good presentation by Matt Moore of Engineers Without Fears on demonstrating the ROI / Value of Knowledge Management to beancounters - based various experiences. As he said, “Of course, I can't put the really juicy stuff in the presentation - you'd have to get me in to deliver it for that...” However, it shows a lot of common sense. I use to do KM value statements for years and it was never about volume measures as Matt states. It is about business value, which he also states.
Matt has a nice blog and does a lot of podcast interviews.
APQC’s will host its 13th annual KM conference, The New Edge in KM, in May 1-2 in Chicago. The keynote speakers include Carla O’Dell, president of APQC; Laurence Prusak, co-director of the Working Knowledge research program at Babson College (with Tom Davenport); Robert Wendover, managing director of the Center for Generational Studies; Jeremy Gutsche, founder of TrendHunter.com; and Steve Denning, famous for his storyteller, along with many other KM thought leaders and practitioners. I have heard Larry and Steve on a number of occasions and they are always interesting. Prior to the conference they are offering five pre-conference training sessions and workshops on April 28-30. You can learn more by visiting the APQC conference site.
Patrick Lambe created this Knowledge and Information Sharing Sub-Policy. I now forgot how I received it but Straits Knowledge was listed in the footer so I give them credit. It was in one of the several email groups that can fill up my email inbox. In the spirit of the topic I wanted to share it with you. But then I only had the word doc. So, this being the web, I found their site, their blog, searched their blog and found this post, What Would a Knowledge Sharing Policy Look Like? Through the blog post, I found something useful, guidelines for developing an information and records management policy. There was also a link to download the Knowledge and Information Sharing Sub-Policy that you can use with acknowledgement. You have to go to the post for the link.
So now I can share it in accord with the policy. It is designed to “help staff appreciate the importance of knowledge and information sharing; identify suitable sharing opportunities; explain how the organization’s information systems can be used to support knowledge and information sharing.” I like that fact that it is aimed more at encouraging sharing that restricting it as some policies in other areas are designed to accomplish.
Here is a study, Does Knowledge Sharing Deliver on Its Promises?, by Wharton management professor Martine Haas and Morten Hansen, professor of entrepreneurship at INSEAD. They found, to no surprise that the benefits of knowledge management depend on how it is implemented.
“In a study of 182 sales teams that were bidding for new client contracts in a management consulting company, Haas and Hansen found that using personal advice from experienced colleagues can improve work quality. As an example, their paper notes that colleagues with experience in areas related to a sales proposal can provide complementary expertise that a team can draw on to generate ideas and identify possible solutions for a prospective client.
Consultants frequently travel to sales meetings with potential clients accompanied by experts from the firm who help them convey the message that the consulting work will be done by competent individuals. Also, the names and credentials of advisors often are listed in proposal documents, identifying them as contributors to the proposal and to the future project work."
However they researchers add:
“The strategy of obtaining personal advice, however, also involves processing costs. Having colleagues attend meetings or appear on client documents can backfire if these colleagues are unwilling to exert the effort needed to fully understand the client's situation, adapt their knowledge to the task at hand or respond to client demands.”
I have been in both of these situations on a number of occasions. When I worked for a large consulting company I was often brought in as a firm expert and frequently added to the proposal. I was also on proposal and project teams where the visiting expert showed up to check his email and octel and to ask for the charge code for his time. Here is a more.
"We find that using codified knowledge in the form of electronic documents saved time during the task, but did not improve work quality or signal competence to clients, whereas in contrast, sharing personal advice improved work quality and signaled competence, but did not save time,"
The cavet here is that codified documents need to have context. If they do not they can be a short cut, but a short cut to the wrong direction. Context takes time and is actually best supplied by direct contact. It should not be an either or situation in terms of codified documents or personal contact. It should be both. The codified knowledge allows you to make better use of the expert and visa versa. Thanks to Tomaoki Sawada for providing this link.
I tend to write more about web 2.0 and its cousin, enterprise 2.0, on this blog now. But I am pleased that knowledge management continues to play and important role in many organizations. I am doing some more traditional KM consulting right now for a firm that wants to better leverage its intellectual capital and spread the insights and work of the more experienced staff across the firm. Knowledge management has been around for 15 – 20 years depending on when you start to count. It is still going strong in many places. That is fairly good for a practice that some thought was a fad.
Here is a great story about how knowledge management is being used at Boeing. It is called Get Our Heads into It. The sub title says, “Each Boeing employee has job-related knowledge. Here’s what steps the company is taking to manage and share this collective information— and use it as a competitive advantage.” These headlines read like its 1994 but I see that as a very good thing. Kudos to Boeing
Here is a useful site. The eLearning Forum has information about events and offers downloads of presentations. You can get Don Tapscott’s (author of Wikinomics) presentation at the February eLF meeting for free. There is also a wikinomics discussion forum. The eLearning Forum is a “non-commercial, global community of people who make decisions at the intersection of learning, technology, business, and design.” It is located in Silicon Valley.
There has always been a lot of jargon in knowledge management. With the advent of Enterprise 2.0 more people are getting exposed to it. The people at the Applied Knowledge Group put together a useful list of key KM jargon terms for those new to the field. Thanks to Josh Rosenthal of iQuest for pointing me to this site.
Applied Knowledge Group is a knowledge management consulting and training firm.
I do not normally cross posts stuff I write for the Fast Forward blog but I wanted to share this since it is very relevant to KM. The Nielson Normal Group has released their 2007 Intranet Design Annual, naming the ten best Intranets for the year. To get on this list, companies submit themselves and are reviewed by a panel of three experts in the field from the Nielson Normal Group, including one of the founders, Jakob Nielson. The criteria include: navigation, design, search, personalization and news delivery, content, and overall. Each of these criteria is further broken down into subsections, (e.g, overall includes: innovation and fun, support for main functions, captures company’s spirit, accessibility). A summary can be found on Jakob Nielson’s web site and the full report is for sale through the firm. I was given a review copy of the full report, via Mat Schwartz, another panel member.
The 10 best-designed intranets for 2006 are:
American Electric Power (AEP), United States
Comcast, United States
DaimlerChrysler AG, Germany
The Dow Chemical Company, United States
Infosys Technologies Limited, India
JP Morgan Chase & Co., United States
Microsoft Corporation, United States
National Geographic Society, United States
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), United Kingdom
Volvo Group, Sweden
I was especially interested in the inroads of Enterprise 2.0 features and approaches. The summary said that the winners “took a pragmatic approach to many hyped “Web 2.0″ techniques.” So I approached this exploration with a little caution. Yes, many web 2.0 features have been hyped and fortunately I did not find the report reactionary in substance. Rather it offered some data on what is being done at several leading firms who are heavy intranet users, although I did take some exception to some unnecessary wording. For example, it said. “Several winners have weblogs this year, but the blogs are restrained, emphasizing useful information instead of “what I did on my last date.” This is an anachronistic straw man as business blogs have been around for several years, getting high marks for Fortune, Business Week, and Harvard Business review as early as 2005. However, in fairness the report went on to say, “Microsoft even has a blog for its intranet’s managing editor to discuss features and news coverage.” That sounds like a very practical and good use of blogs.
They reported that Ajax was widely used this year, primarily “applied as an add-on feature that’s integrated into useful contexts as opposed to being used for its own sake.” They gave some examples. “Comcast displays nicely designed content previews that look like super-tooltips when users roll over lists of brand assets. Similarly, AEP updates the user’s custom list of links without refreshing the rest of the page, DaimlerChrysler updates its homepage stock ticker, and Microsoft shows the results of employee polls (a popular feature on many intranets) as soon as the user has voted…RSPB’s carpooling page (seems interesting). When users click on a map marker, it brings up a photo and other information about the employee who’s driving from that location, without otherwise changing the map or the rest of the page.” This sounds both practical and creative.
They also found that Microsoft uses social networking in a pragmatic manner to make its employee search even better, sorting results by degree of distance from the user and noted that such “sorting can be very helpful in a big organization where many people may have similar names or the same job titles.”
They also found some wiki use on intranets beginning in 2005 and noted that this year “National Geographic Society employs many wikis in a highly useful manner” through its NG Lingo wiki, which explains its internal acronyms and specialized terminology. They noted that such an intranet feature is especially helpful for new employees and that “this year’s winners included many more features to facilitate the “onboarding” (new employee) process.”
I think that one of the most practical uses of wikis is event planning for both logistics and substance but that might not surface on the formal intranet stage. Another practical use is document sharing such the enterprise wiki set up by Novell.
The report did not say anything about tagging or mashups. One of last year’s winners, IBM, is big into both of these behind their firewall. Perhaps they were not looked into or included in the award submissions.
It seems that these high profile firms are beginning to integrate Enterprise 2.0 features in the manner prescribed by Andrew McAfee and many others, including the adoption tip writers on the Fast Forward blog. Beginning with practical, focused applications that address specific business needs to demonstrate the value of these approaches and tools. The idea is to win converts from the bottom up as people directly experience the benefits and ease of use that Enterprise 2.0 can bring. The big payoffs from broader adoption will come when this foundation is established. The report appears very useful for anyone wanting to keep up with what is happening at big firm intranets.
Stan Garfield recently updated his Home Page and in the process created a great KM resource. He used Google Page Creator that appears to be a useful resource, Stan said it is easy to edit and it allows up to 100 MB of files.
Stan’s home page includes news, articles, presentations. There are also links to other KM blogs, as well as his KM blog. There is a list long list of KM related sites. It is a good example of what you can do with Google home page. Here is what CNet News had to say.
Stan also mentioned that the Ark Group has just published two new knowledge management reports. Jerry Ash's "Next Generation Knowledge Management II" with contributions from Dave Snowden, Patti Anklam, and Verna Allee, and Stan's report, "Implementing a Successful KM Programme" – see the Ark group site, Inside Knowledge, for details. These are all very experienced knowledge management experts so the reports should be very useful. 
business blogs
I have been pleased to write on knowledge management, portals, and more recently, blogs for KM Review. They recently updated their web site and created a new home for my articles. They can be found at a special section on their site and downloaded at no cost. Normally, their publications are for paid subscriptions, certainly understandable, but authors can distribute their own work and this is appreciated. Here is a link to my co-authored article, with Kathleen Gilroy, on Intranet 2.0 that is not yet on the Melcrum site. They also have a Melcrum blog now, written by their employees. There was nice post, Seeing the opportunities in Second Life, that discusses why some at IBM see it as a next source of wealth on the web. There was also a reference to Melcrum FM?, discussing the option of a company radio station through podcasting. I am sure they will be starting for some large companies with concerns about their image.
The Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise winners for Europe and Asia have been announced. You can also find the winners for India at the site. This award has expanded with the global economy. This award is for those organizations that create value through best leveraging their knowledge. I wonder when Enterprise 2.0 approaches will be included in the analysis. Thanks for Stan Garfield for pointing this out.
2006 European MAKE Winners listed in alphabetical order:
1. BMW (Germany) - Motor vehicles
2. BP (UK) - Oil & gas
3. British Broadcasting Corporation (UK) - Media
4. Novo Nordisk (Denmark) - Pharmaceuticals
5. Repsol YPF (Spain) - Oil & Gas
6. Schlumberger (France) - Oil & gas equipment and services
7. Siemens (Germany) - Electronics & electrical equipment
8. Telefonica (Spain) - Telecommunications
9. UBS (Switzerland) - Financial services
10. Unilever (Netherlands/UK) - Household and personal products
2006 Asian MAKE Winners listed in alphabetical order:
1. BHP Billiton (Australia) - Mining & mineral resources
2. Canon (Japan) - Computers & office equipment
3. Honda Motor (Japan) - Motor vehicles
4. Infosys Technologies (India) - Information technology services
5. LG Electronics (S. Korea) - Electronics and electrical equipment
6. Nissan Motor (Japan) - Motor vehicles
7. POSCO (S. Korea) - Metal fabrication
8. Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (S. Korea) - Research
9. Samsung SDS (S. Korea) - Information technology services
10. Satyam Computer Services (India) - Information technology services
The 2006 Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) are out. I did not make up this acronym. Since Portals and KM is not eligible, the North American MAKE winners include, Apple Computer, Caterpillar, Fluor, Google, Halliburton, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Raytheon, 3M, and US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA). Thanks to Stan Garfield for alerting me to this.
In the late 90s I used to represent my former firm at the rewards events in London. It seems so long ago and another generation of business budgets. I wonder if they have a live event. I did not see it listed in their calendar. One of the findings I liked in past reports was that the earnings for MAKE winners were higher than for the rest of companies, demonstrating a correlation between good KM and profits. But I am sure these firms are good at a lot of stuff.
You can get the report summaries for free at the MAKE site.
Happy Thanksgiving to those in the US. Here is a link to Dilbert's views on knowledge management. I have been aware of this for some time but it is nice to find a link.
More recently the Gaping Void put out this view on blogging. Enjoy.
I always liked Tom Davenport and Larry Prusack's Working Knowledge. For many years I recommended it to people as a good intro to the subject. Now I really like Tom's new book. Thinking for a Living. With the advent of web 2.0 I think what we think KM is will change and a new set of books will emerge.
Here are some books recommended by Chris Remer of Knowledge Street. I know them and agree that they are valuable but a now they have become a but historical.
The Knowledge Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi; Oxford University Press, 1995.
Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations, by Thomas A Stewart; Currency/Doubleday, 1997.
He also recommended Tom Stewart's second book, which is The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization; Currency/Doubleday 2001.
Here is Denham Grey's picks,Selecting 5 KM books
What are your favorite books for KM?.
I recently participated in a stimulating event, the Value Networks and Social Media sponsored by the KM Cluster in Dallas. Verna Alee started with “Network Strategies for Managing Complexity: Organizational and Value Network Analysis.” I have written about her comprehensive work before –see Open Value Networks Resource - and we presented together at a session in Cleveland in May. “Value networks (value webs), are the human and technical resources that work together to form relationships and add value to a product or service.” Verna showed us some new examples including the Viagra Value network. This drug started out to treat heart conditions. The test recipients noticed another effect and it was soon in great demand. By listening to what people were saying in the test trails, Pfizer was able to discover a new blockbuster drug in a novel way.
Nancy Dixon of Common Knowledge shared her experiences helping organizations listen and ask the right questions. We did a useful exercise that demonstrated the increased power of face-to-face communication in small groups. Conversations help you frame your thoughts in the act of communicating with others. Repeated conversations help you refine your thoughts and can lead to new insights. Nancy gave us some examples including experiences in the US military. We also experienced the impact directly.
Michael J. English of Best Practices, LLC covered Japan's suppa ginosha Movement: 21st Century Human Capital, Knowledge Transfer, & Organization Development. Japan is very aware of the issue of the aging workforce. They have designated suppa ginoshas to help transfer knowledge to the younger generations. These are people who are designated experts, primarily in manufacturing. They are accorded high status and the movement considers their knowledge as a national treasure. Michael said the US should adopt this practice for knowledge workers.
Camille Venezia of Knoll discussed “Time as a New Currency: Flexible and Mobile Work Strategies.” She also provided statistics on the changing demographics of the work force and the need for more flexible work arrangements. With the declining talent pool it is important to keep employees happy. Within Fortune Magazine’s 100 best places to work, 99 have flexible work strategies. These firms also outperform the S&P 500 and have about half the average employee turnover rates. Mobile and flexible work forces can also increase efficiency, as well as make people happier with their work. Camille has recently become a mobile worker, one who does not have assigned office space in a company facility. I experienced this transition during my days with a large consulting firm. I found it liberating with no down side.
The event was hosted by Adriaan Jooste of Deloitte and held in the Irving Texas Deloitte office. Robin Athey of Deloitte Research shared with us her report, It’s 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is? – Why Acquisition and Retention Strategies Don’t Work. You can download for free at this link. I recommend it to anyone interested in the state of workforce and where it is going. It concludes with six questions that CEOs need to ask their HR leaders, a good heads up those in HR. Karl Wiig, one of the pioneers of KM, was an active participant and will speak next time.
These conversations will continue in the Boston area on Oct. 12 and 13 at the Value of Networks: Vertical Networks and Methods for Leaders. Verna and I will be there and we hope to see some of you.
I have been shifting through a lot of web and enterprise 2.0 articles. Andrew McAfee provides some very useful comments in The Mechanisms of Online Emergence. First he mentions a great opening for a talk on the subject. “When I talk about Enterprise 2.0 with company management teams, industry groups, and executive education students I usually start by asking people to raise their hands if it's easier for them to find what they want on their company's Intranet than it is on the public Internet. No one has ever raised their hand….” I plan to try this with credit to Andrew the next time I talk on web 2.0.
He then explains the concept of emergence, from complexity science, as the appearance of global structure as the result of local interactions. He then goes on, “The Web is emergent because it's the dynamic creation of countless people around the world interacting with each other via links as they create new content. This is a key difference between the public Internet and private Intranets. Public Web sites are built by millions of people, while most Intranets are built and maintained by a small group. Emergence requires large numbers of actors and interactions, but intranets are produced by only a few people (even though they are passively consumed by many). In addition, most Intranet pages aren't as heavily interlinked as pages on the Internet.”
I think this is brilliant and a key reason why intranets are not actually used much and why enterprise knowledge management systems are not used much. This is the great promise of intranet 2.0. It turns enterprise content management on its head. Everything is able for knowledge exchange with no extra work by the employees. As Andrew points out the participation of employees in a healthy company should be even greater than strangers scattered across the internet. These companies should have the motivation for participation in place if it is part of the work process and not a separate activity. Now there are tools that enable this participation to be accessed and leveraged.
Stan Garfield sent me a link to this interesting article on the value of knowledge management. Using a more clever title than I did Knowledge Street wrote Raiders of the Lost Tapes about how the original video tapes got lost in the government retention facility where they were sent for safe keeping. They wrote that the fuzzy image we saw was not a factor of the transmission from the moon. In fact, “the video frequency of the lunar camera was incompatible with broadcast television. So the signal that went to the world was actually coming from a conventional TV camera, which was pointed at a monitor at the telemetry station.”
The actual image was much better. When some people went back to find the orginal tape in 2002 to transfer it to a more permanent digital format and presumably to share it with the world. Knowledge Street continued, “they couldn't find the tapes. There's no evidence they were destroyed or moved, but nobody can remember what became of them. They're just lost.”
Now I lose things from time to time. I just moved and I am still looking for some of my books like Blink and Tipping Point. But this was the first walk on the moon. Hope remains. There is a web site in Australia supporting the search. Contact the The Apollo 11 tape search site if you find the tapes.
The authors go on to discuss the importance of KM and the role of narrative in useful ways but that is content for another post. I am still thinking about their opening.
Denham Grey organized a KM wiki to “to explore, gather links, annotate, debate and dialog around KM - what it is, where to find stuff, and why this an important subject.. It continues, “This is our second re-incarnation. An earlier attempt 1997 - 2005 was halted due to spam. The ultimate aim is to prepare wikipedia entries on key KM concepts, develop topic and concept maps of this exciting domain.”
There is a lot of great material there. Some of it is links to useful posts by Denham such as KM strategy is easy! And key decisions to make when developing a KM Strategy. Other links go to other wikis such as this wiki for comparing wiki products. There are other contributors such as Steve Barth’s definition of KM. This is a great service to the KM community.
I observed a robust email discussion about the definition of KM recently. I found that KM comes to life when contextualized within the specific busienss environment as Greg Reid added to the discussion. But trying to define it to someone else does help you think about what you are doing.
Here is the current definition of knowledge management in Wikipedia. A number of people have been working on improving it recently so it will likely continue to change. I like the link to context. There is much more of course.
“Knowledge Management (KM) refers to a range of practices and techniques used by organizations to identify, represent and distribute knowledge, know-how, expertise, intellectual capital and other forms of knowledge for leverage, reuse and transfer of knowledge and learning across the organization.
Knowledge Management programs are typically claimed to be tied to specific organizational objectives and are intended to lead to the achievement of specific targeted results such as improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation.”
Here is a recent post from Denham Grey with the following definition that lloks at outcomes and the complexity of KM.
“A practice concerned with increasing awareness, fostering learning, speeding collaboration & innovation and exchanging insights. There is a delicate balance to be maintained between explicit and tacit, between personal and community, between collecting assets and enabling flows, between looking inward and externally, between mining and capturing insights and building on shared experiences.”
There is more in Denham’s post on KM Principles. Here is Steve Barth’s 2002 definition of KM.
Here is the US government definiton of knowledge management thanks to Greg Reid of InFuture.
What is your definition?
Portals Magazine posted a series on the state of the portals market in 2006. The research was done by portal vendor, BEA. The highlights are that the portals market continues to be robust. I am sure it will have to accommodate web 2.0 capabilities but, as often happens, the new technology suppliments rather than replaces, the older one.
Stan Garfield is the Worldwide Consulting & Integration Knowledge Management Leader, Hewlett-Packard. He also writes a KM blog (see below) that I commented on last week. Stan recently shared a great list of KM related blogs and bloggers that I want to pass on. Let me know of any favorites that you have that are not included.
1. Anecdote
2. APQC
3. Patti Anklam
4. Colabria
5. Tom Davenport, Larry Prusak, and Don Cohen
6. Steve Denning
7. Stan Garfield
8. Denham Grey
9. Joitske Hulsebosch
10. Bill Ives
11. Dave Pollard
12. Luis Suarez
13. Dinesh Tantri
14. Jack Vinson
15. David Weinberger
I put together my own lists a while back in Some Knowledge Management Blogs, More Knowledge Management Blogs, and Some More Knowledge Management Blogs - Part Two. It is good to have this updated list from Stan.
Portals Magazine online hosts a number of blogs, including KM Blog written on a weekly basis by Stan Garfield, Worldwide Consulting & Integration Knowledge Management Leader, Hewlett-Packard. In a recent post, Stan provides comments on KM Books (in this case - Managing the Knowledge Workforce: Understanding the Information Revolution That's Changing the Business World -- by Jonathan Spira of Basex), offers KM Links (KM Cyberary -- a gateway to Knowledge Resources by Bhojaraju (India), and answers KM Questions.
This is a great resource to check on and add to your blog list.
John Maloney pointed me to the Verna Allee site that is now a Creative Commons resource where people can access, download and use anything on the site. It includes all the materials on her value network analysis. She is going to expand the library to include “detailed guides, case studies and tools to doing a value network analysis” with the goal of making value network analysis an open source methodology. Others will be able to contribute but the inputs will be screened to ensure quality. They will also use blogs and wikis as part of the platform. It will be interesting to see how this develops. I have heard Verna speak a few times at KM conferences and her work is very thorough.
Here is a recent podcast Verna did to the College of Engineering, Collaborative Intelligence Laboratory, on Feb 22, 2006.
Here is another useful thing that showed up in my Google Adsense. Babson Executive Education is holding a one week workshop, Managing in the Knowledge Age: Tools and Techniques for Building the 21st Century Enterprise April 9 to 13 at their center in Wellesley, MA. It is led by some of my favorite knowledge management experts, Tom Davenport, Larry Prusak, Dorothy Leonard, and the social networking guy, Rob Cross. I have heard all of them speak and they are good, as well as entertaining. Here is the Managing in the Knowledge Age schedule.
It is great to see quality academic programs covering knowledge management still in effect. It has been over 12 years since knowledge management broke into the media and it has out lasted many similar initiatives. Tom, Larry, and colleague Don Cohen also have a blog on knowledge management, Babson Knowledge, that is full of good stuff.
I also continue to see a number of Google ads that feature knowledge management in their head lines. Vendors and other service providers seem more eager to link their message to this term than in the late 90s, another pleasing turn of events. Of course not all the Google Adsense are properly targeted, such as the several ads for voting for Kelly Ripa vs, Regis Philbin. Not usre of the connection here.
Elusa.net is a blog by Luis Suarez about “Knowledge Management, Communities of Practice, Collaboration, Social Networking and Work/Life Balance” that I recently discovered. I read an interesting long post about Changing My Default Web Browser to Something Else More Web 2.0. In it he talks about the ability to integrate with such Web 2.0 tools as del.icio.us, IBM’s dog ear, and flickr. I give him kudos for talking about dogear which I also think is great as tagging inside the firewall.
There is a lot of tools discussion in this blog such as his comments on: GMail and Google Chat - Is It Really Innovation in the Instant Messaing and E-Mail Space? Luis says that this is the first time that two major web tools like these have been integrated by one provider. He writes that we can see . “how two of the most frequent activities we all get to carry out first thing in the morning are now walking hand in hand next to each other. I am sure that you would agree with this: the first thing you check in the morning is, perhaps, your e-mail, and then your buddy list to check who is online and who isn’t. Then you wander elsewhere (i.e. RSS Newsfeeds, your weblog(s), etc.).” Personally, I am perhaps one of the few who do not like IM and refuse to use it because of the interruption. I had to use it in my former job and people always expected you to stop whatever you were doing and respond to them. This was especially distracting when you were on the phone so I always said I was away from my computer. Perhaps this is one reason why I only got 8 on the geek test. Luis I am sure scores much higher.
Luis also points out in this post that IBM did this same integration a while back with its Notesbuddy. As the IBM site reads; “NotesBuddy is a lightweight tool for Lotus NotesTM Internet (POP3) mail, and Lotus SametimeTM that announces important new mail by voice, pager, or display. Instant messaging (chats) and buddy status are integrated with email to produce a single messaging tool.” Luis adds that Notesbuddy will eventually be able to connect not only with other IBM’s “Sametime end-users but also with AOL, Yahoo! and even Google Talk end-users, all of that at the same time and from a single IM client.” So it seems that both Google and IBM are moving in this direction. I will likely pass this innovation by but it should be a very good thing for those who want it.
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