KM Consulting

Education is the next key sector for major disruption through effective knowledge management

2011-10-09T00:38:00.001-07:00

It’s Sunday lunchtime and I am sitting by the Singapore river having a coffee.

I have my netbook connected to SingTel and I am thinking about my work this next week. This is with teams of people who are wanting to explore knowledge management to see how it might help their work in supporting teachers, and how to create and share even better knowledge, practices and methods for better teaching. They are the teachers training college, the National Institute of Education, NIE Singapore, and they support a community of over 30,000 teachers in 650 Singapore schools.

The question I have been asked by NIE to discuss thoroughly is ‘Why should they consider the latest developments in knowledge management in their work? What effects, if any, could the most effective knowledge management strategies, methods and tools have on even better teacher support, quality, productivity and even more innovative education? They are an innovative organisation with a mission and passion for excellence.

In considering the ‘why’ for any industry sector, it’s good to consider first any radical innovations that are already taking place.

So I will first point out to the group the work of the ‘University of the People’ the first tuition free global online university, more details here

Then I will present to the group an overview of the MIT free online courseware, with over 2000 titles freely available on the web today.

I will then tell the story of a lecturer who I met at the ‘KM Asia conference’ three years ago, from Singapore University, who told me that students now come to lectures with iPads and wireless PC’s and smart phones, of course, and if they are not happy with the lecture they can instantly google the subject, find, for example, a world class professor from Harvard who has a free video lecture on the same subject, and circulate that to the class virally, whilst the lecturer continues unaware.

We will also discuss how students and conference delegates often tweet key messages and key new learning’s, ideas and insights to people around the world, as it happens, because their followers also like to learn from what the audience think and feel, and not just what the presenter/lecturer says.

I thinks these four examples show disruptive innovation in a radically changing education environment, where the people can now choose and engage with the best in the world and, increasingly, free or very low cost.

Of course, online education and the more traditional physical, social, university campus and school learning experiences are both extremely powerful ways to learn, share, experience, develop and grow.

But I suggest to you that we are learning from the disruptive innovation in creating, distributing and delivering entertainment, like music, video and films, to major disruptive innovation in the education sector. And it is happening now. And I suggest that what I have just described above, is the ‘warm up’ act, with much more radical innovation to follow.

I suggest that effective knowledge management is a disruptive force, supported by new scalable tools and technologies that will contribute greatly to new and better ways to educate, across the world.

Let’s see what people at NIE think about these developments next week.

What do you think about education as the next key sector for major disruption through effective knowledge management? Is it happening in your country?

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

How Steve Jobs inspired me to start working with his vision of knowledge management in 1987

2011-10-07T02:26:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

It was Steve Jobs who greatly inspired me in 1987/8 to start working with his vision in the practice of knowledge management.

Five years later, based on his vision, I founded Knowledge Associates in Cambridge UK. Today, I travel the world constantly teaching organizations ways that Steve Jobs could see in the late 1980's for people to work with information, learning and knowledge in radically new ways globally.

My business involvement with Apple, and Steve Jobs inspiration actually started in 1982 when my software company at the time, Systematics International Microsystems Ltd, was inspired to develop for Apple 'Apple Accounting' on the remarkable and radical Macintosh.

But in 1987, under Steve Jobs inspiration, Apple produced a video vision for the future called 'The Apple Knowledge Navigator' and, even at that time, he saw the prototype of what we now call the iPad. Twenty years later, that part of his vision became a reality.

But for me, he really inspired me the most through his further vision in this remarkable video, to link all the Universities together across the world, with key people communicating, collaborating, learning, sharing and applying knowledge together.

He had a vision for individuals, teams, organizations and communities to be able to practice knowledge management globally through the use of remarkable new mobile information and communication tools.

Ever since then I have been trying, with difficulty, to turn that part of his vision into reality.

What is remarkable for me, is that although KM practitioners had developed some exciting new KM theories, strategies and processes over the years, we never really had the simple to use, and powerful tools needed to support the theory. Then came Web 2.0 social tools in 2004 and, eventually, the iPhone and, especially, the iPad appeared to support knowledge workers in radically new, intuitive, and powerful ways.

So our challenge now is to show organizations how they can use these mobile and web based tools in the way Steve Jobs predicted.

I am currently working and writing this blog post from Singapore and I first heard the breaking news of Steve Jobs death in the morning coffee break yesterday, for the course I am running for the National Institute of Education at the Nanyang University Campus.

We were actually working at that time on the module that discusses the best practical tools to help individuals and teams practice personal and team knowledge management. We were discussing the use of the iPhone and iPad to tweet, blog, work with wiki's, work in social networks, web telephony and video.

I then felt compelled to play to the group the 'Apple Knowledge Navigator 1987' video on youtube. I am so glad this video is still available on the web today.

I would urge you to watch this 24 year old video and reflect on the accomplishments of Apple since.

Steve Jobs was a genius visionary and such an inspirational leader, within Apple, and to so many successful companies in silicon valley, and to so many people around the world.

Ron Young

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Day 1 & 2 of Practical KM Competencies programme at NPC India, New Delhi

2011-08-17T05:39:00.000-07:00

Practical KM Competencies 16th - 20th August 2011, New Delhi, India

I have now completed Days 1 and 2 of a 5 day programme 'KM Competencies' organised by the National Productivity Council of India(NPC), with headquarters in New Delhi, and also sponsored by the Asian Productivity Organization, with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan.

The 5 day programme is available from NPC here.

The reason we launched a practical programme is because we know that people will never appreciate and realise the full power and benefit of KM in their daily lives by simply listening to KM teachers expressing concepts and theories.

Its rather like the vast majority of people who drive cars today. They are only really interested in getting from A to B. They are not interested in how the car or engine works, unless they are enthusiasts and engineers.

However, in the early days of introducing automobiles, they were unreliable and so they needed engineers who understood how they worked to drive them. I often think that this is where KM is today for many. They are not getting the results reliably from many teachers of theory only, but just from the few that have actually succeeded with KM practically themselves.

Furthermore, until people experience KM for themselves, they will never know what it really is. Its rather like flying. Imagine that I am trying to explain to you what it is like to fly in an aeroplane. I can talk about it all week long, but until you actually fly yourself, you will never be able to experience it.

Then you get the 'aha! so does that mean that I can now do ..... in my daily work?'

In Days 1 & 2, of the 5 day programme, everybody started to use the tools and think about them in the workplace in more meaningful ways. We focused on personal knowledge management and started to work with alerts and blogs.

So, first thing tomorrow morning, we will all review and share our new learning's and insights in a totally new way on the web together, and in the workshop.

Then we will work with tweets and personal social networks and wiki's.

But, primarily, tomorrow we will focus on team knowledge management, and we will use team wiki's and collaborative work spaces, and team blogs and generally work through the effective collaborative team process.

I look forward to writing about Day 3.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

10.30pm Sunday evening in Singapore Airlines lounge working on KM 2012

2011-08-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

Its 10.30pm in the Singapore Airlines Lounge in Singapore, waiting for the 2.15am flight to New Delhi, India.

At least the cafe latte is good, and the tuna sandwich is pretty ok too.

So what am I doing?

I am updating all my KM materials and producing a new version which will be ready for publication for January 2012.It encompasses all my new learnings and insights that I get through my KM consulting engagements, workshops and conference speaking around the world.

The great thing about doing this update, which I do religiously every year, is that this very process always triggers new creative and innovative thoughts. In fact, I get so excited by these new revelations that I sometimes forget the original purpose.

This makes me realise, once again, that the creative process of knowledge creation is often a function of time, to reflect, analyse, consolidate, synthesize, and update new thoughts and ideas with established thoughts and concepts.

Imagine how much more creative individuals and organisations could become, if only they gave more time and value to learning, reflecting, creating and applying knowledge?

I was told that Google demand that their employees spend 20% of their work time to learning, reflecting, creating and innovating. I am told that 3M were pioneers in doing this 80/20 time week.

I wonder how many of the really valuable, and maybe even radical,innovations come from this 20% usage of time for more effective knowledge working?

When will management understand and properly value knowledge creation against performance?

Meanwhile, another cafe latte? a glass of wine? 4 hours to go. I need some 80/20 time.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Saturday morning in sunny Singapore

2011-08-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

It's saturday morning in sunny Singapore and, I guess, that's my favourite time here.

Why?

Well, for many people around the world, it's normally because we have all been working hard during the week and its a time to relax. But, in Singapore, even more so because Singaporeans work very hard, very fast, and quite often, very long hours over the weekend too.

For me, my work finished about 10pm on friday night, after a skype videoconference with Kevin and Donovan in their Singapore office, and Douglas in Washington who was enjoying the friday morning, twelve hours behind Singapore.

This saturday morning I sat outside my hotel for breakfast, at Clarke's Quay down by the Singapore river. Just like every morning this week, but this time it was very different. Instead of gulping my breakfast and coffee,and reading notes in a very detached sort of way, about my meetings that day, I was able to sit and listen to the birds chirping away. Across the street, I noticed a guy was watering the plants around the building, smiling, and saying hello to people passing by.He was probably there every morning, but I hadn't noticed before.

What I really loved this morning, was that the beautiful green and lush plants under the palms were full of glistening white water jewels. Pearls of white that looked so fresh for a new day. They were especially magnified by the Singapore sun and bright light.

For me, only on a saturday morning, I had time to just browse through the Singapore Strait Times, and even just read articles I would simply not have the time to do during the week.

And the coffee even tasted so much better today.

Before I knew it, in a flash of timelessness, it was 11.30am and several beads of sweat were making themselves known on my forehead. It was time to go in to the hotel to cool down.

My first thought, back in the bustling lobby was 'how nice it would be if we could enjoy the beauty of our surroundings every morning'. Then I thought, 'but then we wouldn't have special saturday mornings'.

Happy saturday to all, everywhere.

Ron

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Tools and Techniques book launched in Iran in Arabic

2011-07-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

I have just spent 7 days teaching Knowledge Management for the Public Sector in Tehran, Iran.

So I was delighted to be presented there with our latest book published by APO Tokyo entitled 'KM Tools and Techniques' translated in Arabic, for initial launch in Iran

How exciting is that :-)

Ron Young

more at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Australia and Virgin Atlantic humour

2011-07-17T03:03:00.000-07:00

I am flying Virgin Atlantic London to Sydney to speak at KM Australia this coming week and run a workshop 'Understanding the four dimensions of Knowledge Management'

Just before landing at Hong Kong, Matt, in charge of the cabin crew announced, "Aircrew take your stations, this is your last chance to have a seated landing" :-)

Even better, on arrival and whilst taxying to the stand "We need a few volunteer passengers to stay behind and clean the toilets. If you wish to do this please make yourself known by standing up before the seat belt sign is switched off" :-)

Finally, "As you are mad enough to hurtle through space in a metal tube at incredible speeds, if you wish to do so again, please use Virgin" :-)

Thanks Matt for your humour :-)

Ron

more at www.knowledge-management-online.com

From the 'management of knowledge' to effective 'knowledge management and innovation'

2011-06-26T23:27:00.000-07:00

I have been a KM consultant and practitioner since 1993. That's a long time, but I am happy to say that I have helped many clients in different industries, and quite different cultures, all around the world, implement successful and sustainable KM initiatives.

Yet, just last week, I was speaking at the KM UK 2011 conference in London. It was attended by a broad selection of experienced practitioners, consultants and people new to KM. At that conference I attended a Knowledge Cafe, run by David Gurteen, and he posed the question for discussion 'It can be argued that KM has failed to live up to its expectations over the past 15 years and has not delivered the business value promised. Why is this?

As a proud and passionate KM professional, I never like to hear of KM as a failure at any time, especially when it can deliver such extraordinary results to an organization, but I am, at the same time, acutely aware of much 'overselling' of KM as a technology, or KM as a silver bullet, and I do greatly respect the concerns of my fellow practitioners and peers like David Gurteen.

I guess that the biggest mistake that I make is in assuming that we all have the same understanding of KM, as novices and even amongst experienced practitioners and consultants who may choose to specialize rather than generalize.

And I often make the great mistake of assuming that everybody knows what KM is! I forget that, each year, many people are totally new to KM and very keen to learn.

The No 1, most popular section of my website www.knowledge-management-online.com is, by far, people searching from all over the world for an understandable definition of 'knowledge managemen'. This is followed, in popularity, by the section 'What is KM?'. So I should know better.

I gave a quick answer at the Knowledge Cafe that a key problem is the language that we use. Everybody understands and nobody argues about the importance of better managing our knowledge, but as soon as we say 'knowledge management' people tend to say, 'is it a system or software? can you do KM to us? etc.

A simple reordering of the words 'management' and 'knowledge', can change the perception and understanding entirely.

I often get the same confusion from seminar delegates with the words information and knowledge. People still often argue about differences between 'learning organizations' and 'knowledge based and knowledge driven organizations'. And, increasingly today, I get lots of questions asked in my workshops about new knowledge and innovation.

I left the London KMUK 2011 conference somewhat frustrated, as I think there is so much great work that has been done,and so much work yet to be done to bring about effective knowledge driven organizations with increasingly productive knowlede working.

I flew from London to Singapore, to spend a week with clients who are so keen to improve the way they manage their learning and knowledge.

I always start a new client engagement with assessing and developing their common understanding of KM or whatever they prefer to call it, and the words they prefer to use. I use a simple tool to demystify the jargon and start talking about KM in words we all understand.

I offer the essence of it here. This should work for you, if you are experiencing difficulties and misunderstandings. But you may agree or disagree with this. Please let me know your thoughts.

I strongly believe that a key problem for KM is the way we use our language.

So I call this tool 'From the management of knowledge to effective knowledge management and innovation'.

1. We communicate 'information' to one another. We do this verbally and through the use of a variety of information and communication tools and technologies (ICT). We inform others and we become better informed.

2. 'Learning' is the process of turning information into knowledge. The information we receive may be 'intellectual' such as listening or reading, or it may be 'experiential' such as 'learning whilst working/acting. We learn through our senses by filtering, analysing and synthesizing the new learning's with our existing knowledge.

3. 'Knowledge' resides within us. It is a human phenomena. We can call this knowledge within us our 'tacit' knowledge, and when we externalise it through communicating to others, it may be called our knowledge that is made explicit.

4. Our 'explicit knowledge' is information to others, unless they already know. It becomes part of their synthesized knowledge when they have performed the learning process.

5. Information can be communicated in seconds. Knowledge takes time through learning.

6. Collaboration (co-labouring) is working together as a team towards achieving a common mission, goal or objective. We can learn to effectively collaborate.

7. Managing knowledge effectively, which is about identifying critical knowledge areas that will make a 'big difference', capturing and synthesizing new learning's and ideas, retaining knowledge, transferring or sharing knowledge, and applying knowledge to make the best decisions, requires the best communications, collaboration, learning and knowledge strategies, processes, methods tools and techniques.

This may be called 'knowledge management'

8. We must manage our knowledge at the personal, team, organizational and inter-organizational levels, to bring about 'effective knowledge management'. For each of the four levels, we must learn how to effectively communicate, collaborate, learn, share and apply our knowledge. We must learn 'why, what, who, how, where and when' for each of the four levels. For many organizations, this may be called 'extraordinary knowledge management'.

9. The 'Four Dimensions of Knowledge Management' is a framework to bring about extraordinary knowledge management. This can be used to help organizations to 'mainstream knowledge management'.

10. A natural outcome from effective knowledge management is innovation. Mainstreaming knowledge management will bring about 'mainstreamed innovation'.

After presenting the 10 commands in a KM workshop, delegates are then given the opportunity to discuss the use of these words, and my suggested definitions.

So far, many have said that it has helped them considerably to demystify KM and to realise, teach, and bring, about a common understanding of the term Knowledge Management, or another more suitable term for them, based on these principles.

I have no doubt that effective knowledge management will bring about extraordinary results for organizations, and I look forward to the prospect of a Knowledge Cafe in the future that will discuss extraordinary knowledge management and innovation.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

The Era of the Global Individual

2011-06-19T01:47:00.000-07:00

I have written about the 'Global Individual' several times before, but it keeps coming back to me in stronger waves.

In all my work,to help organizations better capture, create, share and apply knowledge to achieve business objectives, I continually see the rapidly increasing empowerment of the individual as the most potent force to bring about the paradigm shift from separate knowledge entities and individuals, to collective knowledge entities in teams, organizations and communities.

Mobile technologies like smart phones, iPads, camcorders and audio recorders are, of course, extensions to our eyes, ears and voices. When connected to the global internet and the world wide web of browsers, contextual search engines, hyperlinked documents, and information resources, it extends our capacities beyond our wildest imagination. Social networking tools that enable us to build web profiles, like facebook, Web 2.0 communication and collaboration tools like tweets, blogs and wiki's enable us to have swirling and swarming global conversations and build new knowledge together.

We have evolved from separated tribal individuals with very little, and very slow, knowledge transfer beyond our immediate village communities, just several hundred years ago, to highly connected global individuals with very fast knowledge transfer,potentially to anybody on the planet.

The implications of being a global individual are just starting to emerge. This is simply massive empowerment.

None of us know the full implications of this, other than it will be simply huge change, and hopefully it will be a positive disruption across our established ways of living and working.

Most importantly for me to consider is that the global individual will be empowered and working with global networks, communities, organizations and teams with new global tools to capture, create, share and apply global knowledge.

And along with this comes the need for 'total transparency'. This may delight you or horrify you.

For example, I know people who are trying to keep their business persona separate from their private persona to family and friends. I actually think this is understandable, but futile. To me, it is simply inevitable that we will soon all become totally transparent global individuals.

In return, we will all gain much richer and much deeper insights of one another. Another major step towards better understanding one another.

What do you think about this? Does this delight or horrify you?

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Gaia and global knowledge ecologies

2011-06-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

Last November 2010, I presented a paper at KM Asia in Singapore which presented some of my thoughts on Quantum Physics and KM.

We really do urgently need a new theory of knowledge and knowledge economics, to better develop and grow as individuals, teams, and organizations, in this global knowledge society, and that paper was my attempt to start a discussion around the global knowledge entity.

I used the metaphors of 'A Sky of Information'(actually that's a truth) and 'An Ocean of Knowledge'.

I really do see and better understand information and knowledge flow in these terms.
I have developed my thinking quite a bit since November 2010 and I hope to produce another paper, perhaps even a new knowledge hypothesis soon.

Well this week I decided to re-read one of my favourite older books from 1979 'Gaia - a new look at life on Earth' by Jim Lovelock. At the time, Jim was an independant scientist who has co-operated with NASA in their space programme, and since 1974 has been a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Of his book, Gaia, others say that Gaia is an intimate account of a journey through time and space in search of evidence with which to support a new and radically different model of Earth. Bringing knowledge from astronomy to zoology in support of his hypothesis, Jim Lovelock explores the idea that the life of Earth functions as a single organism which actually defines and maintains conditions necessary for its survival.

Actually, since Gaia was first published in 1979, many of Lovelock's predictions have come true and his theory has become one of the most hotly debated topics in scientific circles.

Today, global climate change is top of the agenda and Lovelock has some profound views on the implications for Planet Earth and humanity.

You will probably realise, by now, that I was glued to my chair when re-reading his views on the self-regulating information and knowledge transfer functions of the sky and the oceans. My metaphor suddenly took on a much deeper meaning for me.

I have always preferred to talk about knowledge ecologies and even in my first book in 1995, Upside Down Management, McGraw Hill Europe, I talked much more comfortably about getting the most out of knowledge workers in organizations when we remove structured limitations and recognise that people are highly complex organisms.

So I am thinking and looking deeper into similarities between the behaviours of deep ecological systems on Planet Earth and global knowledge ecologies.

Going back to Quantum Physics, I am still most interested in the Quantum Physicists view of an underlying force, deeper and beyond the laws of energy and matter, that is often called the Quantum vacuum or Zero Point, and informs all forms of life.

Again this is rather like a 'sky of information' and an 'ocean of knowledge', and intuition tells me that we all can, and unconsciously do, access some of this knowledge.

So I think some answers for a new knowledge theory may be found in combining new thoughts about the invisible world of quanta with new thoughts about the visible world and deep ecology.

But my brain is starting to hurt. It's saturday and our local SW France village is celebrating a weekend of bands, music and wine.I need the break :-)

Let me know if you have any thoughts about any of this, or your views on a new knowledge theory, as I will be back in deep thinking mode soon.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Celebrating Team Differences

2011-06-02T02:29:00.000-07:00

Today, I was reminded of the work that I did in the late 1990's with Lotus Developments. It was called 'Celebrating Team Differences'

When we work in teams, we naturally find differences. Some differences are appreciated, but on many occassions, people can initially tend towards conflict as a result of the differences.

As many of us have to also work in virtual teams, that can be rapidly thrown together overnight, without any opportunity to get to know one another, and even ever meet one another physically, the problem of team differences and team conflict can become magnified.

Yet, if properly understood, team differences can be a great asset and, properly developed, can even cause us to celebrate these differences, and greatly increase our team performance and productivity.

One of the key contributors to difference, and I mean just one, is that we all use our brains differently. Some people are naturally more logical in their approach to work and life, and some people are naturally more creative in their approach to work and life. We tend to label them 'left brainers' and 'right brainers'.It is not that we have different brain hemispheres, as all healthy people have both left and right hemispheres, but it means that we all tend to predominantly use either the left or the right hemisphere more, to different degrees.

Some say this is as a result of:

Our genetics, and since birth,our religious upbringing,our culture and values,our national society,our schooling,our life and work opportunities, the culture of organizations we work for, and so the list goes on.

So we tend to end up in situations and job occupations that are, say, predominantely logical, like for example, accounting, legal profession, or predominantely creative, like for example, designers and creative advertising, musicians, acting and film.

So this means that some people in a new project team may resonate more towards a more logical and planned approach to work, systems and tools, and some people in a team may resonate more towards a more intuitive and spontaneous approach to work, systems and tools.

Left brainers, generally speaking, are far more time conscious and more punctual to attend meetings, say, than right brainers. I over simplify to make a point.

Within this same spectrum, we have people who, as extreme left brainers are excellent as 'finishers' in a team project (dotting the i's and crossing the t's) and extreme right brainers as excellent creators of new radical ideas and innovators in the team. Some of us are naturally more extrovert and enjoy communicating with many others, and some of us are naturally more introvert and enjoy more our own company. And we all fit in somewhere along this spectrum.

So when we form a work team, and when we do not understand these differences, we can easily lead to conflict.

Let me give some examples of team conflict, in ways that we work together:

Some prefer/demand explicit logical and structured ways to work and others hate this and prefer unstructured spontaneous working
Some get upset because others are consistently late or do not keep to their alloted times
Some visit the collaborative team work spaces every hour and get frustrated because others visit once a week.

And so on.

The answer is to start a project team with a mindset that recognises and celebrates these common and natural differences. To then discuss with the team, physically if possible, otherwise virtually, an informal 'team contract' that all the team will buy-in to, that agrees the degree of structured and unstructured approach to the project, and then the best team working tools to support this,

Furthermore, at least, the team contract also includes the agreed minimum time that all members must visit the collaborative team space (say once an hour, day, week, month etc) depending on the nature of the project.

Furthermore, team members are encouraged to create on their profiles, their strengths and weaknesses, and any strong likes and dislikes, concerning their preferred approach to work.

The result, over time, is that team members will not enter into a stage of conflict of differences, but enjoy a celebration of differences.

In team development, we have learned well the four stages of effective team development as'forming, storming, norming and performing'.

Celebrating our differences is just one important way to reduce the 'storming' stage. I suggest that this does not happen enough naturally, so the project team leader needs to facilitate this process at the project start.

More on virtual team effectiveness to follow shortly.

More on effective knowledge working at

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Unstructured Web 2.0 tools and structured systems

2011-05-30T23:49:00.000-07:00

For some time now, I have been using and evaluating different 'Enterprise 2.0' systems.

This has led me to believe that Enterprise 2.0 has, potentially, some very powerful possibilities that go beyond Web 2.0, provided we approach it and think differently to standard web 2.0 usage.

In Web 2.0 we have separate tools, provided by separate providers. We can choose, and mix and match our tools to tweet, to blog, to create wiki's, to search, to be alerted, to collaborate in virtual teams, to conduct social bookmarking, social networking etc.

Because we tend to start with one tool, maybe blogging, we focus on the simple use of this until we gain confidence and understand its full potential. One by one, we may add these tools, initially, for simple reasons. But often, we only want to use one tool for one specific job.

The result is that we have people today on the Web who specialise, for example, as star bloggers with an enormous following and reputation as good writers, or thought leaders, or critics or whatever.

We have celebrities whose tweets are followed by fans.

People tweet from their phones to organize a revolution.

People use wikipedia as their online encyclopedia.

We use the social network facebook to keep connected to friends and their activities.

By and large, in our private lives, we use Web 2.0 tools to perform separate functions that help us communicate, learn and share in those areas that interest us.

They are hugely successful because they are each, very simple to get started, very intuitive, free at entry point, and enable us to participate globally, and to gain recognition to potentially huge audiences.

But now, through Enterprise initiatives, and pressures from private users of Web 2.0 tools, people are developing ways to use the same tools in the workplace, because as knowledge workers, we also need to find ways to better communicate, collaborate, learn and share knowledge and experiences, to help us become more productive, at least.

We start off by using the tools, one by one, in the workplace, for different activities. Frankly, if this improves our communications and ability to work better, in any way, that's simply great.

Eventually, however, some of us reach a stage that makes us think about how we could better use these separate tools by combining them, systematically, to create knowledge flows, perhaps to support our own work processes and knowledge deliverables?

But here, I suggest, we have to think differently from a simple to use and intuitive approach.

Here, we need BOTH unstructured AND structured information, we need to think both in intuitive and logical ways, we need both discovery and serendipity, and logical search and scanning, we need both creativity and innovation and knowledge management.

To me, its like the way our brains best function. Not totally logical (left hemisphere) and not totally creative (right hemisphere) but BOTH / AND. Interestingly, the Oxford Dictionary definition of genius is 'utilizing both the left brain and right brain faculties to the full'

So I suggest that successful Enterprise 2.0, if you are happy with that term, is beyond Web 2.0, and should allow BOTH free intuitive, informal, simple, unstructured, participation from which natural wisdom may emerge from the diverse crowds, on the one hand, AND logical, formal, structured process and review from experts and peer groups, working together towards organizational excellence. An organizational 'whole brain' approach.

What do you think?

Does this delight you or horrify you?

Could we start capturing ideas and blog learnings and insights spontaneously, yet within a framework towards structured knowledge flows towards Good Practices, for example?

In this case, the structure is achieved by chanelling the knowledge flow and knowledge objects towards managed wiki's, as well as self-managed wiki's, as appropriate.

Or should we restrict ourselves to the more unstructured usage only, as a key benefit to our work, and consider it as just one of the powerful tools to be used with other more structured tools in our organizations, to achieve specific objectives?

What's your take on this?

Ron Young

More at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com

My first successful experience of global knowledge sharing

2011-05-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

It was actually in the early 1970's that I had my first successful experience of global knowledge sharing.

It happened by accident and through a great tragedy.

A very good friend and business colleague of mine was, like me, a passionate private pilot. But very sadly, he crashed and died with his wife and friends on board, in the misty hills and mountains of Snowdonia in Wales.

As the only computer programmer around that could understand his COBOL program, at the time, his employees asked me to keep running this main business application, to keep the company running.

This is how it worked.

Quite simply, all the major manufacturers of agricultural tractors, worldwide, all knew each other well. (Ford, Massey Ferguson, International Harvester, John Deere etc.) The agricultural industry was very old and mature indeed. As a result, most people had, at one time or another, worked also in several of the competitor companies.

The problem was that the tractor component manufacturers and the tractor manufacturers themselves were always either greatly overproducing or greatly underproducing to try to meet market demands.

So the manufacturers agreed to share, each month, their total shipments to their dealers and other production and distribution information and knowledge.

This was achieved by submitting their information, in strict confidence, to an independant computer bureau that would then produce the total picture without revealing the identity of the individual contributions. That was what I did each month.

It was perfect. It really helped tractor manufacturers and component manufacturers with their production. It saved lots of money. It increased efficiency and effectiveness.

This global information and knowledge sharing was so successful that within a few years only, we were running lots of global exchanges for all types of agricultural and construction machinery and equipment.

This really was a first successful experience of global knowledge sharing.

There was so much to be gained by collaborating and not just competing.

Eventually, the manufacturers gained enough confidence and trust in the exchange system that they even then started to reveal their identities to one another, and not just anonymous totals.

Unfortunately, this successful evolution of global information and knowledge sharing had to end.

The European Commission decided that there was nothing at all wrong with the global exchanges of information and knowledge, but it had been brought to their attention that the annual meetings we held, with all manufacturers present, could be a potential breeding ground for collusion on prices and market shares etc.

It got so bad that every manufacturer even had to fully report the next day if they even accidentally met a competitor anywhere at, say, a trade fair or any event.

Eventually, the manufacturers had to greatly reduce this activity into remote, anonymous, monthly submissions of broad information only. This was in order to comply with European Commission, Treaty of Rome Article 85, on unfair competition.

But that was a long time ago. And I imagine it was one of the first, if not the pioneering, global exchanges of information and knowledge which had, initially, huge business benefits and success.

Ultimately, it could not be sustained because of issues of 'ethics and trust'

What can we learn from this today in our 21st Century knowledge driven corporates, organizations and institutions?

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Asset Management: two minute video

2011-04-30T07:20:00.000-07:00

In December 2010, I was invited to speak at KM India, held in Bangalore.

During the conference, I was video interviewed.

Here is the first, a two minute introduction to Knowledge Asset Management, that distinguishes between flows of knowledge and explicit knowledge objects.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Mass global collaboration at its very best

2011-04-12T03:41:00.001-07:00

This morning I was blown away. In fact, I was in tears of joy.

I picked up from a tweet, from Don Tapscott author of MacroWikinomics, a link to a YouTube video.

I curiously followed it.

As a knowledge management practitioner since 1995, and particularly since the era of Web 2.0, I have been very interested in examples of mass collaboration that have emerged on the web. Popular examples are, of course, Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia of Life, Genome project etc.

Mass collaborations, in such volumes, and such degrees of diversity, all coming together, can often distil truth, or get very close indeed.

They can break the boundaries of human knowledge to something much bigger, totally disruptive and uncontrollable, like a sort of knowledge tsunami.

Well today I saw for the first time a video from a TED talk from Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong. Each person sang alone to a score and conductor from around the world, and the individual video uploads were edited into one production.

The result is simply wonderful, and truly so much greater than the sum of the parts! A magnificent global mass collaboration.

Take a look at this 14 minute video of the talk and final music video’s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NENlXsW4pM

What truth does this distil for you?

Ron Young

More info at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Job: Knowledge Management Expert, The Netherlands, SABIC

2011-04-11T02:55:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I worked with helping SABIC in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, develop Knowledge Management competencies, and introduce KM initiatives into their research teams.

SABIC are expanding globally rapidly, expanding their KM activities, and now seek a Knowledge Management expert, based in the Netherlands.

Full details for the job application here

Ron Young

More info about KM at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Will Jeju, S.Korea, be the next Singapore as a Knowledge Hub?

2011-04-01T01:56:00.001-07:00

I am sitting in the airport lounge at Jeju airport, South Korea, waiting for a flight to Seoul, and then onwards to London.

After just three days on the island, I ask, will Jeju be the next Singapore, as a Knowledge Hub?

Why do I say this?

Jeju is an island on the southern tip of South Korea. If you look on a map you will see that it is a short flight to Seoul, to Beijing, to Shanghai and to Tokyo, all major capital cities of S.Korea, China and Japan, with very high populations.

Very significantly, in 2002, the Korean Government designated Jeju as the Free International City by recognising its value, and designated Jeju as the Special Self-Governing Province in 2006, the only exceptions being national defence, diplomacy and administration of justice.

There is indiscriminate(no tax) reduction in domestic and foreign capital.

Today, Jeju, like Singapore many years ago, has a relatively low population. Around 600,000 people live there. At the moment, about 10 million people visit Jeju each year as tourists. It is currently the main business. This is because Jeju is a staggeringly beautiful natural island, with a great climate, and a wonderful and majestic Mt Halla soaring high to embrace the entire island. Locals rightfully boast that water flowing from it, anywhere on the island, makes people feel good just by simply drinking it with hands.

The Hallasan Nature Reserve is spectacular, and the ancient volcanoes and Lava Tubes are beyond words. It is no surprise that it is a declared UNESCO World natural heritage area.

But that is now. What about the future?

Well the vision is for a ‘Free International City centering on mankind, environment and knowledge’. The first phase will be completed this year, 2011.

Secondly, South Korea are the most advanced in the world today with internet connectivity and infrastructure investment.

Thirdly, the world class International Conference Centre is within 2 hrs flight from Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo. The international airport infrastructure is world class.

Most importantly, Jeju International City has six core projects:

1. High-Tech Science and Technology Complex

2. English Education City

3. Healthcare Town

4. Seogwipo Tourism Port

5. Resort-Type Residential Complex

6. Myths – History Theme Park

After 3 days on the island, what is my prediction?

I strongly suspect, at least, that Jeju could become the Knowledge Hub of North East Asia, as Singapore has become the Knowledge Hub of South East Asia.

And finally, of utmost importance for success and growth, is the natural hospitality of the people.

Our host, Mr Jun-Ho Kim, Director,International Cooperation Department, Korea Productivity Center, totally surprised us all with a ‘cultural tour’ after meetings. We were introduced to female divers offering fresh seafood with a Korean drink I can only describe as very very good cold saki. I am sure the Koreans consider it better. We were introduced to very local eating. We were sped around the coastline in a jet boat. We attended a Korean circus, we had lunch on a floating seafood hotel, we climbed the peaks, and saw the famous setting sun.

If Jun-Ho Kim is a typical example of hospitality, the rest of the world had better watch out. But I suspect he is extraordinary, by any standards, even though the local people were, indeed, most friendly and kind.

If I get some spare cash I know where I will be investing it!

I think Jeju, S.Korea, is a place to watch carefully in the growing global knowledge and experience economy.

Good luck Jeju.

Ron Young

(PS I will be adding my photographs as soon as I get back to Europe.)

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

From Government to Collaborative Governance

2011-03-31T02:34:00.000-07:00

A great new learning for me this week in South Korea is the notion of transformation that is taking place in the Public sector, from 'Government to Collaborative Governance'.

Working with Dr Shin Kim, Director, Office of International Cooperation and Public Relations, The Korea Institute of Public Administration, he explained:

'In South Korea,we are well advanced and familiar with all the major Knowledge Management theories, concepts, frameworks etc and what we are seeking is more practicality in our KM initiatives. South Korea has made substantial investments in IT and technology infrastructure, but doesn't yet have the application and practical implementation of effective knowledge management.

The Government realised that it has a new paradigm, from governing, from 'government' to realising that it cannot possibly be truly effective unless it fully collaborates with stakeholders in a new paradigm around collaborating ', hence the development of 'Collaborative Governance'.

I do like the notion of collaborative governance of knowledge in the Public sector.

Ron Young

more information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Japan Tsunami and effective Knowledge Management

2011-03-28T02:09:00.000-07:00

I am writing this blogpost from Seoul airport, on my way to the South Korean island of Jeju.

There, I will be spending three days with the Asian Productivity Organisation, Korea Productivity Center, and KM and Innovation experts from Korea, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and myself from the UK.

We arranged this expert meeting in January 2011, and a key objective is to write a book, collaboratively, probably entitled 'KM and Public Sector Productivity' in Asia

I was contemplating this meeting from my home in SW France last week, and I thought, 'If only we could direct our meeting focus to effective KM in public emergency and disaster recovery services'.

Japan clearly leads the world with excellence in planning and managing earthquake emergencies and very advanced building design,but nobody predicted the severity of the earthquake or the devastating tsunami. So I am sure that there will be more lessons to be learned in these critical areas.

My interest in effective KM for such situations started when I was asked to assist the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction UNISDR (2009) with HQ in Geneva, Switzerland and working from Bangkok for the Asia Pacific Region. I was introduced to the 'Hyogo Framework' developed at a meeting in Japan to help national governments and agencies minimize disaster reduction through better knowledge and understanding, strategies and tools, to proactively anticipate, and therefore minimize, possible loss of life and economic loss.

Imagine my attention was immediately drawn when one of the experts from Tokyo, Japan, Mr Naoki Ogiwara, from Fuji-Xerox, commented on Facebook that he was looking forward to the meeting in Jeju and, could not think of a more appropriate topic effective 'KM in the Public Sector' considering the emergency situation in Japan.

It begs the question:

How can effective KM contribute even more to critical Public Sector services such as Nuclear Energy Management, Transportaion, Healthcare, Disaster Management, Emergency Social Services and much more in this area.

It will be interesting to see how our discussions go this week. I will keep posting on any significant developments.

Ron Young

More information at

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Competitive Collaboration in a Global Knowledge Economy

2011-03-24T03:38:00.000-07:00

I presented a paper at KM Middle East 2011, in Abu Dhabi, 15-16th March 2011, entitled

'Competitive Collaboration in a Global Knowledge Economy'.

You may read this paper here

Ron Young

Cairo, Egypt, Mubarak and Knowledge Management?

2011-02-12T06:28:00.001-08:00

Following the historic event that took place yesterday in Cairo, Egypt with President Mubarak stepping down, I feel compelled to write down and share some thoughts that I have about open knowledge flows, trust, open communications, and the power of mass collaboration.

In September last year, for the first time in my life, I had the privilege to travel to Cairo, Egypt to present a keynote paper at the KM Egypt Conference 2010. The theme of the conference was ‘Knowledge Management; a Catalyst for Innovation’.My presentation was entitled and focused on ‘Knowledge Management and Innovation in the Global Knowledge Economy’ The tracks, presentations and speakers can be found here.

The conference was organised by The Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), one of the distinguished think tanks in Egypt, which is primarily tasked with supporting decision-makers overs issues of relevance to economic, social and political reform. There were several hundred delegates with, mainly, a strong representation from government and public agencies. The conference was conducted under the auspices of His Excellency Dr Ahmed Nazif, The Prime Minister of Egypt and the conference keynote was delivered by Ahmed Darwish, Minister of State for Administrative Development, Egypt. It was an excellent conference and there was great participation by all. After discussions with many delegates and speakers, and the organisers IDSC, I left feeling certain that many people were very interested indeed in developing effective knowledge management strategies and implementations in their organisations.

I certainly do not want in this post, in any way, to deflect attention to the tremendous efforts and enormous feelings of the people in this historic revolution, as they have set a truly great example, not only for Egypt, but across the world, of people power and unity, individual human rights and freedom.

They should be very proud of this peaceful achievement and giant step towards a more democratic society, at last, and judging from their celebrations and exuberance in the Tahrir square last night, they are most happy indeed with their achievement.

But because I am a knowledge management consultant, and my primary role is to help individuals, teams, organisation and even nations and world regions, with better knowledge strategy understanding, development, and implementation, I cannot help but strongly see the world through a lens of knowledge and how it underlies and drives everything in society.

So, rather, my blog post today is not aimed to be political, but it is aimed at using these extraordinary historic events as lessons and strong examples, and reminders to us all, to briefly illustrate a few of the key principles of effective knowledge management.

I wish to remind us that TRUST in the lifeblood of any organisation, whether its a two person relationship, a small team, an organisation, or an entire country or world region.

Trust has to be earned. Trust cannot be learned. Trust creates the glue or stickiness of a relationship and when trust breaks down, so does the relationship. Nothing could be more vivid than the clear loss of trust that a critical mass of people had in President Mubarak and I believe that this caused them to stay on in the square with such absolute determination that some said they would even die for this change.

And we will never forget that many did, of course.

This complete loss of trust propelled the people to refuse any level of negotiation from Mubarak. In other words, when trust is gone there is no two way negotiation at all. The relationship becomes irreconcilable.

The opposite of trust is FEAR and great doubt, and people cannot continue indefinitely in a very fearful environment.

But when there is, at least, sufficient trust, people will COMMUNICATE, and when there is good trust, people will COLLABORATE. When people are communicating and collaborating, especially when it is two way and frequent communications of rich information, they cannot help but LEARN and develop so much faster.

It was Jan Carlson, ex CEO of SAS, Scandinavian Airlines, who first taught me in the 1980’s a very powerful principle “people without information cannot take responsibility, people with information cannot help but take responsibility”.

I believe that the new Social Media of today, especially Twitter and Facebook, Blogs and Wiki’s, do now play a very important and vital communications role in informing, and in teaching, and in organising people. So, of course, do mobile phones and texting etc, as they all greatly empower all individuals who have access to the internet, to a global degree never experienced in humanity before.

TV and radio and news media is a one-way ‘broadcast’ to the people.Social media has the ability for massive, collective, almost instantaneous, two way and multiple way shared communications. It has moved us from just a ‘SEND’ or push model to a new ‘SHARE’ or pull model.

Even in my personal example as a conference speaker, I am now very aware that it is simply not any more a one way stream of information from speaker to delegates, but, even more importantly, people are creating live conference tweets and blogging streams so that others connected to the internet can also benefit from the collective wisdom of the audiences, as they listen.

And finally, it is the case that when people sufficiently trust and communicate, and learn faster, and, as a result, they develop their knowledge, skills, confidence and competence faster, they ‘naturally’ want to share with others. This is perfect collaboration and massively powerful. Wikipedia is a great first example of global mass collaboration.

I believe that it is inevitable that all societies and countries in the world, when using these global communications tools and technologies, to better communicate, collaborate, learn faster and share their knowledge, will increasingly demand that the role of Government will be increasingly to ‘facilitate’ these communications of information and knowledge for the good of the whole. Governments will increasingly be expected to produce knowledge commons for its citizens. ‘Knowledge commons’ is about creating and sharing knowledge freely for all, for the common good of all, and for the sustainability of the planet.

What I have just described, I refer to as a virtuous upwards spiral. If you increase and improve any one of the elements of trust, open communications, learning and sharing knowledge, ALL the elements will increase even further.

However,if you suppress and decrease any of the elements it then becomes a vicious downward spiral, and eventually breaks down.

The historic events in Egypt illustrate both the vicious spiral downwards to destruction, based on lack of trust and restricted one way, infrequent communications, and the amazing power of this virtuous spiral upwards based on trust, open frequent two way communications, faster learning, confidence, competence, sharing knowledge and, ultimately effective mass collaboration.

Governments need to remind themselves to practice these principles of effective knowledge management, to facilitate a truly transparent, and virtuous, spiral of development and growth for its people.

What and who is next?

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Annual Lecture at CASS Business School, London, 24th January 2011

2011-01-28T03:02:00.001-08:00

Well, it’s that time of the year again.

For the third year running, I gave my annual Knowledge Management lecture to 2nd year MBA students at CASS Business School, City University.

I always enjoy this time, primarily because it is very refreshing, always, to talk with students who have their lives and careers ahead of them, versus senior management of corporates, who, naturally through life long business experiences, have a more pragmatic, and even cynical business view. But, of course, we need the balance of fresh new, creative, no limits thinking, and knowledge and experiences from practical business realities.

But this year, I was even more conscious of the ‘one way’ channel of lecturing. This is because I am so much more conscious of the added power of more rapid, interactive, two-way, open discussion as a faster and richer way to learn. Of, course, I have no idea how much tweeting or blogging was going on whilst I was speaking (not much, judging from my direct questions to them about personal blogging and tweeting) but, generally, I felt ‘too one way’ and wanted to interact much more.

But afterwards, several students kindly complimented my talk and felt they had learned much, and I know that would not have been possible, to the same degree, if we had a different, and perhaps less focused, conversation.

At least, my lecture objectives for the students, were achieved.

So my new learning’s came at the end of the talk when I was questioned by students individually, and of course, through updating my lecture annually, based on new developments in KM as I travel the world.

My annual update lunch at CASS afterwards, with my long standing colleague Professor Clive Holtham, and lecturer Martin Rich, was a delight as always. Clive and I have one big thing in common, we both enjoy ‘walking meetings’, so much more invigorating, constructive and productive.

I look forward to my next CASS KM lecture.

My CASS lecture slides, and others, are available at:

http://www.slideshare.net/ronyoung/24-01-11-km-at-cass-business-school

More information at my website

http://www.knowledge-management-online.com

Ron Young

Rapid Knowledge Transfer across generations

2011-01-19T06:44:00.001-08:00

So what do you think is happening here? Is grandad teaching grandson maybe?

Well I am the apprentice! My grandson Joel, in my opinion, is a ‘Master of the iPad’. He started as a three year old and he will be four in a few days. He has been using the iPad for several months on a daily basis. I received my iPad a couple of months ago as a present from his mum and dad.

He has been teaching me how to naturally, and intuitively, navigate, interact and play, in ways I do not get in any manual or book.

If you look at the pictures, what do you think we are doing on our iPads?

He is having fun, and learning fast,with an interactive educational game that he plays almost daily. Like all children, he loves fun and games. This is the way to learn. We learn so much faster when it’s fun.

Here is the paradox. ‘Fun is serious business in the 21st Century Knowledge Economy’.

I am landing a Boeing 747 jet into San Francisco airport using instruments. As a past pilot for 20 years, I now love flying the iPad flight simulator, to keep my skills fresh, and, I am having so much fun too. But instrument flying requires both intellectual and experiential skills.

But now, after Joel’s teaching, I can fly the simulator even better!

What can we learn from this in effective learning and knowledge transfer for the future?

Ron Young

http://www.knowledge-management-online.com/

Tools have a major impact on our knowledge creation and transfer

2011-01-18T00:31:00.001-08:00

First of all, I should say that it has been several months since my last blog, primarily because of an intensive honeymoon with Twitter over the past years. I thought it replaced blogging, and to a degree that is true for me. But, nevertheless, I have had a growing feeling inside that I needed to blog again. I realised again, the power and need to capture and organise my learning’s and insights in ways that blogs can do well. The interesting thing is that it has been new developments for me, in technology tools, that have brought me back to blogging (and tweeting). Let me explain a little more.

As a KM consultant, I still get bombarded by people who say KM is not about technology, its about people.

Well they are half right. People create and apply knowledge, but the tools can have a major impact, and make a huge difference to how we create and apply knowledge. In fact, technology has been the fundamental cause of a revolution in information and knowledge throughout the world. I need say no more than World Wide Web and mobile wireless communication and computing technologies.

In the continual pursuit of better tools for myself, for capturing, storing, sharing and applying knowledge, as an intense and passionate knowledge worker, I found a better way this month. This has made a great difference and improvement in my productivity and knowledge creation.

Before, I found it messy and time consuming to integrate my photo’s and words into blogs instantly. So, as a result, I didn’t do it very well.

Now I still take pictures on my iPhone, plug them into my Samsung Netbook while travelling, and using Windows Live Writer, I can simply post pictures and words and links into my blogs, and publish without thinking. I imagine you will say, ‘I have always been able to do that, so what?’. Well maybe the tools were there and I didn’t see them easily, but this one appeared and works for me fine.

Equally, last night, I discovered yet another amazing app on my iPad to draw creatively, called ‘Penultimate’. Together with the app iThoughtsHD, I am creating mindmaps again in a much better and naturally creative way.

My point is that it is these mobile wireless tools, together with global web technology and infrastructure, have made a major impact in my knowledge creation and publishing ability and productivity.

I look forward to more amazing tools for the knowledge worker.

Ron Young

http://www.knowledge-management-online.com/

(PS The above pic is of a simple but miraculous free skype personal videoconference with my daughter Emma and our family)

From Knowledge to Innovation video

2010-11-25T17:22:00.000-08:00

Following my last blog, which included the slides of my presentation and a transcript,
I am glad to say that the KM Singapore 2010 Conference have kindly video'd my keynote presentation here

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Singapore 2010 - my keynote paper and my learning's

2010-10-12T03:45:00.000-07:00

The information and Knowledge Management Society of Singapore held their annual conference KM Singapore 2010 on 16/17th September 2010.At this website you will find full conference details and proceedings.

The theme this year was Knowledge and Innovation.

I had the pleasure to give the international keynote speech 'From Knowledge to Innovation' and a copy is available here

The accompanying presentation slides are available on SlideShare here

I greatly enjoyed the conference this year. The iKMS Awards Presentation for Knowledge Excellence was excellent and Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) were the first to receive a Platinum Award, ever.

As the conference is well blogged and covered well on the iKMS Singapore and KM Singapore websites, I will just add my key personal learning's.

1. I was pleasantly amused in the workshop sessions when one facilitator suggested people could sms their questions to speakers if they fely embarrased. Nice.

2. Arthur Shelley said 'I don't teach. I have conversations with students'. Nice.

3. I am not sure I agree with the speaker from Shell Global Solutions who said Shell do not use the word knowledge management but use knowledge sharing instead. I think better knowledge sharing is only one component of effective knowledge management, and better knowledge protecting is the other.It's about knowing when to better share and when to better protect. But Shell now have knowledge advisors instead of knowledge managers, so let's see what happens.

4. I certainly do like Shells 'ASK, LEARN and SHARE'mantra.

5. One speaker/teacher said her students were too shy to speak so she got in to their world using Virtual Life to engage. Great. I don't think it is just shyness though. I think this is the way the young and future generations want to communicate. Avatars are certainly more fun for them.

6. The Supreme Court of Singapore say 'culture leads and technology supports'. It's interesting how they use wiki's to create legal knowledge repositories. A cautious nice.

7. I really enjoyed the facilitated '3 minute story session' from Nate Allen from the US Army. Each table delegate (4 to a table) tells a 3 minute story about personal experiences with Communities Of Practice. When all delegates have done this, after 12 minutes, everyone changes tables and tells the same stories to new people. After doing this for four rotations, everyone stands together in the room. people then have to go and put their hand on the shoulder of the person who's story was most interesting. A great engagement and a great idea.

8.Professor Eric Chan gave good presentations, as always, and I enjoyed some new perspectives from him on taxonomy and folksonomy. He and I also share the same views about the critical importance of personal knowledge management.

9. I do recommend the KM Aids, a set of KM Diagnostic Cards, Organisation Culture Cards, KM methods Cards and KM Approaches Methods and Tools - A Guidebook, from Straits Knowledge

I enjoyed Nate Allens final remark 'We all leave a wake, what do you want your wake to be?'

I do hope to participate next year in KM Singapore 2011.

Ron Young

More at www.knowledge-management-online.com

Understanding the Four Dimensions of Knowledge Management - personal, team, organizational and inter-organizational

2010-10-06T06:24:00.001-07:00

Recently, I have been running Master Classes in London and Singapore in 'Understanding the Four Dimensions of Knowledge Management'.

By request, here is the paper I circulate before my Master Classes to explain the importance of all four dimensions, before deeper class discussions and knowledge sharing.

My next scheduled Master Class for this is at KM Asia in November 2010. You can download the brochure details here

Do you agree with this?

As always, I would be very glad indeed for any feedback.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Similarities between KM and Quantum Physics

2010-07-08T03:40:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, sitting in my home in the vineyards of South West France, I was thinking again about KM and Quantum Physics.It has been bubbling up inside of me over the past few years.

I have always been somewhat concerned about the polarity that exists between KM practitioners.

For example, the 'people approach' versus the 'process and technology approach' that still exists today. The 'complexity of systems and emergent properties approach' and the 'codified reusable kbase and best/good practices approach'.

I consider knowledge management: the art and science of both invisible knowledge flows and visible knowledge assets, to follow the same laws as classical physics and quantum physics.

The physical world of ‘what we can see’ follows the laws of Newtonian Physics, and we can rely completely on these laws of gravity, thermodynamics, aerodynamics etc.

The sub-atomic world of ‘what we cannot see’ follows the laws of Quantum Physics with both waves and electrons, infinite possibilities, entanglement, and total interconnection etc.

It is not either/or but both/and to give us a complete understanding.

Turning specifically to the area of KM. If you listen to a speaker who comes primarily from the more right brained ‘invisible’ world of complexity thinking, symbols, flows, emergent patterns, apparent fragmentation, you simply cannot disagree with this explanation of this world, because it is right. It follows quantum thinking at the sub-atomic level. Here, there is no real place for the laws and management and measurement of visible knowledge assets.

Actually, whenever I listen to such speakers, I get inspired because they put me in a predominantly right brain mode.

If you listen to other KM speakers, who comes primarily from a more left brained ‘visible’ world of knowledge bases, distilled knowledge from practices and lessons learned, knowledge managers and knowledge areas, you simply cannot disagree with this explanation of this world either, because it is right. In predominantly left brain mode I get equally inspired with good stories.

For example, as a pilot I simply love this eloquent story of the way BA discovered that ice can freeze fuel lines at high altitude and how, within 30 days of the BA crash landing at LHR, all pilots in the world had their flight checklists updated with a new procedure to strictly follow, to cover this learning. Although this distilled universal knowledge in the checklist came from a detailed ‘in context’ accident report, that led to detailed new knowledge creation theory and tests, and then lessons learned and best practices repositories, the pilots were not interested in access to raw source materials of what occurred at LHR, they just wanted the best applicable knowledge to apply now, for safety. A few months later, in USA, a flight had the same freezing occur. The pilots immediately followed the checklist and the passengers were none the wiser.

I see effective knowledge driven organizations needing both effective knowledge flows and techniques, and I see the absolute need for evidence based knowledge creation, knowledge bases, and application.

I see, this both/and approach for each key knowledge area, key knowledge communities/networks and knowledge bases.

So what is my conclusion? There is a key KM principle here:

‘Knowledge Management is SITUATIONAL.’

We need both 'quantum knowledge flows' and 'physical knowledge assets', to be able to understanding both worlds properly. If we live in just one world we may perish, or get mediocre results, at best.

A holistic approach to invisible tacit and visible explicit knowledge, supported by understandings like both Newtonian and Quantum physics, will ensure more effective knowledge management.

In 2003, a team of us working on a European Commission funded project project called Know-net tried to express this, as best we could, from our research and findings in our book Knowledge Asset Management - beyond the process centred and product centred approaches.

There is also another brain principle here, I think.

You will think or feel like you are listening to the truth, depending on whether you are predominantly in your left or right brain hemisphere, and its associated laws, but the whole Truth requires whole brain thinking .

That’s my vineyard inspired philosophy for today.

What do you think?

Ron Young

More at
www.knowledge-management-online.com

My new KM learning's and insights in Tehran, Iran

2010-05-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

It was certainly a great privilege and pleasure to be invited to Tehran, Iran, to present and facilitate a six day in-depth Knowledge Management programme during the period 8th - 13th May 2010. Whilst there, I gained some very valuable and new learnings and insights into KM which I believe are unique to Iran. This aspect I wish to share and discuss here.

The event was hosted by the National Iranian Productivity Center (NIPC), as part of an 'Expert KM initiative' organised by the Asian Productivity Organization, Tokyo (APO).

APO have National Productivity Centres in each of the 21 Asian member countries. Although I am based in Cambridge, UK, I have been intensively working with APO for three years, and this trip to Iran has now taken me to 11 Asian member countries, so far, in their mission to increase the productivity, quality and profitability of Asian organizations through effective knowledge management.

My greatest new leaning and insights came from an organised study trip on day 5 to the Iranian Research Institute for Scientific Information & Documentation (IRANDOC). IRANDOC is the main national and governmental center for accumulating, organizing, processing and disseminating scientific and technological documents. Its main activities are in Research, Training, Information and Knowledge Management services.

As a national organization, established in 1968, it has created and maintains a directory and database of all University theses in Iran. It is mandatory for each student to submit their thesis, through their University, to this organization.

To date, 126,000 theses have been captured, of which 110 are related to Knowledge Management. This is a systematic and collective process.

The first 15 pages of each thesis are freely available to all online in PDF format and, in total, up to 30 pages can be made available for a small nominal cost. IRANDOC maintain the national archive. A recent law in Iran is concerned with publishing all information and IRANDOC are currently discussing copyright with the students.

I am not an expert in such education systems internationally, but to my knowledge, I have not heard of similar national new knowledge collective systems in the USA, Europe, other parts of Asia and the rest of the world?

Through this blog, as a KM practitioner and consultant, I ask experts in government and education around the world if similar systems exist in their countries? To my knowledge this only occurs at a University level?

IRANDOCS advised us that there is not as much collaboration between Universities as they would like to see (as I have experienced also in the rest of the world) but I think this central archive and repository is an excellent inter-organizational infrastructure to help building increased collaboration across Universities.

So I was further impressed by the process whereby each University must make a proposal, at the moment by letter and later online, to ensure that each new thesis is non-repetitive and true new knowledge. (I have often doubted the existing University procedures around the world that just 'do a critical review of the literature' as I am certain that this could be error prone, on occasions, and this could lead to academically 're-inventing the wheel'.

Imagine, educational politics aside, a global repository of theses across all Universities, from a global knowledge management perspective.

The next initiative that greatly impressed me, at IRANDOCS, is how they also capture nationally a 'Who's Who' list of experts. Each University is the main input, and submits a bio and information which is indexed to affiliates, associates, advisors, readers, projects worked on etc.

Furthermore, from each national and international conference held, further keynote speakers, speakers and workshop leaders are added to this national expert locator and database. It is new and very popular.

Again, through this blog, I ask experts in government and education around the world if similar national expert systems exist in their countries? To my knowledge this does not occur, either? Please let me know.

I thought to myself that if you combine the national explicit repository of theses together with the national expert directory of tacit knowledge, and mix them together with robust collective and systematic knowledge processes, as they are starting to do, you have a very powerful national knowledge leadership and edge.

Finally, we were presented with an update of a new initiative to integrate all the libraries across Iran, to start with. There are no integrated systems as yet, and many are incompatible, but the vision and aim is clearly there, based on inter-library law to maximise the use of all documents. In this system, today, it is possible for an individual to ask IRANDOC for any book, which they will locate and send, on a temporary basis. I think this system of national library integration is proceeding across the world right now.

Politics aside, imagine a worldwide digital integration of libraries, which is a clear aim of organizations like Google, for example.

IRANDOC concluded by advising us that their next research project has gone beyond the Universities to 'Organizations'. The public sector must report, and gain full access, and the private sector is commencing with summary information, not as detailed.

Back in the KM in-depth workshop that I was leading, we discussed this new learning and KM initiative against the progress each participant organization was making in KM.

Of the 24 delegates, we had KM practitioners and representatives from 4 national banks. The Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in particular, was well advanced over several years implementation, in developing 'learning objects' in the training division, and turning them into 'knowledge objects' in the organization as a whole. Other representatives, from other Banks, Industrial Development and Renovation, Chamber of Commerce, Mines and Mining Industries, Ministries of Science, Research and Technology, Education, Road and Transportation, Government Strategic Planning and Control, and NIPC, were embarking on their KM implementations. Many were using the APO KM Framework and KM Implementation methodology as central components of their KM strategies.

Towards the end of the 6 day event, inspired by my friend and colleague, David Gurteen, I introduced a Knowledge Cafe, which was most refreshing, successful, and gave us all the time and an opportunity to reflect and share more deeply, what we had all learned during the week.

The people I met during the trip were so kind and courteous, very inquisitive indeed, and a joy to work with.

If you have the opportunity to visit Tehran, Iran, make sure you try the ice cream too ... its beyond words.

Ron Young

more at

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Tokyo - the sunny pink city

2010-04-06T05:17:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures captured on my iPhone on arrival in Tokyo.

1. Arrival at Narita Airport, 9.30am Tuesday 6th April 2010

2. I love this one. Could be the Japanese version of Beatles 'Abbey Road'
Note the lovely avenue of cherry blossom :-)

3. Japanese taxis have lots of technology

4. More Cherry blossom on the way to the hotel

5. View over the Royal Palace from my hotel

More later ..

Is genius a natural gift or can it be developed?

2010-03-26T04:23:00.000-07:00

In the pursuit of methods, tools and techniques for developing higher or 'extraordinary' knowledge, I came across this definition of genius:

'a person who has discovered how to increase the vibration of thought (consciously or unconsciously) to the point where they can freely communicate with sources of knowledge not available through the 'ordinary' rate of vibration of thought'.

There is a suggestion here of 'keying up' to higher rates of vibration, for example, when in highly enthusiastic states, intensive desires and passions, high levels of creative imagination etc.

Another definition of genius I have come across is:

'using the faculties of the left and right hemispheres to the full and in unison'

Both definitions suggest that we can all personally develop conditions that lead to genius, as opposed to the common belief that genius is natural for the gifted few.

We can agree that genius is exceptional natural ability, but what are your thoughts on this? Can genius be cultivated at schools, in the workplace?

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Principle: Be BOTH a learning organization AND knowledge driven

2010-03-11T03:55:00.000-08:00

Having recently returned from a conference in Indonesia on the subject of learning organizations, author Ron Young, director and principal consultant of Knowledge Associates International, and founder of www.knowledge-management-online.com, considers how these entities differ from knowledge-driven organizations and asks whether the two approaches can coexist.

Learning is about the acquisition of knowledge, he says, while KM should be about having access to, and applying, that knowledge. So are learning and KM two sides of the same coin?

REAP THE REWARDS FROM COMBINING LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Is yours a learning organization, a knowledge driven one, or both?

In June 2008, I had the great privilege and pleasure to be a keynote speaker and facilitator at a study meeting held in Bali, Indonesia, which focused on the subject of “Learning Organizations”. This event gave me an opportunity to critically review recent developments in organizational learning that have taken place all around the world, and especially throughout Asia, since the concept was popularized in the early 1990s.

But while reflecting on these developments from the luxury of my hotel balcony, I couldn’t entirely forget a prediction that I made back in 1995. As co-author of the book, Upside DownManagement: Revolutionizing Management and Development to Maximize Business Success1, I claimed, at that time in my thinking, that the learning organization, although vitally important, was merely the “warm-up act” for the “star turn” that was about to take the stage – KM for knowledge-driven organizations.

At the time, I saw the knowledge-driven organization as the natural evolution from the learning organization

So it was great to spend four days in Bali studying the principles and characteristics of learning organizations alongside those of knowledge-driven organizations – and to compare their associated concepts, developments and benefits.

As a management consultant who specializes in organizational learning and knowledge management, I’m often asked what the differences are between these approaches; what benefits they bring, both individually and together; and whether KM can help in becoming a learning organization? More importantly, I’m often asked, “Why should we become a learning organization and practice effective KM?”

In this article, I will attempt to answer these questions and draw some conclusions. Before I launch into that discussion, however, I have a word of warning on the subject of labels. As Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, said: “If you label me, you destroy me.”

In an age of holistic organizational development, we know that if we consider just one perspective, we run the risk of losing sight of the whole picture. The label “learning organization” is very useful to help us study and improve an aspect of our working environments, but most workplaces are far more than just learning organizations. So beware of making learning too much of a focus, to the point that you start to lose sight of your organization’s true meaning and purpose.

Getting back to basics

When this topic is up for debate in the boardroom, the first question should be: “Why do we want to become a learning organization?” The only answer should be: “To help us better achieve or exceed our objectives.”

In fact, I would go a step further and suggest that, unless it will make a significant difference to achieving your objectives, becoming a learning organization may not be worth the effort.

The case for becoming a learning organization must be based on value creation and measurable results.

Over the years, I’ve been taught some sound, evergreen business principles. For example, ask yourself the question, “For how long have senior management been interested in increasing productivity, improving relationships, developing quality, innovating and making better decisions?’

The answer, of course, is forever.

And for how long have they been interested in increasing sales or growth, reducing costs and increasing profits or value creation? The answer, again, is forever.

These are perennial items on the boardroom agenda. But what is it that fundamentally underpins productivity, relationships, quality, innovation, better decision-making, increased sales, reduced costs, increased profits and/or value creation?

The answer is the acquisition of knowledge and its wise application.

Organizations are, and always will be, as good as their knowledge, and their ability to transform that knowledge into valuable and successful competencies, products and services.

This knowledge might take the form of new and revolutionary ideas, or it could be knowledge of competitors and industry sectors. It could be process knowledge and good/best-practice knowledge. It could be knowledge of a change in the environment, or knowledge that demands a change in the environment.

The list goes on.

Knowledge fundamentally underpins everything we do in organizations.

Larry Prusak, a KM thought leader (and member of the KM Review editorial board), put it better when he said: “The only thing that gives an organization a competitive edge, the only thing that is sustainable, is what it knows, how it uses what it knows and how fast it can know something new!”

And you may also appreciate the perspective of Jack Welch, when at General Electric, who said: “Learning inside must be equal to or greater than change outside the organization – or the organization is in decline and may not survive.”

What is a learning organization?

So what is a learning organization?

In simple terms, it is one that is able to effectively tap into peoples’ commitment and capacity to learn, at every level in its hierarchy.

At the recent Bali study meeting, Arnold Chan, chief learning officer for Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore, told me that his company’s learning agenda involved:

• Aligning learning and development strategies/initiatives to business strategies through the Bank’s “strategic people agenda”;

• Implementing a strong engagement model to solicit commitment from stakeholders;

• Integrating high-impact learning processes into the Bank’s people-development program;

• Creating a seamless learning portal to offer a wide range of learning opportunities, catering to different learning styles;

• Transforming to sustain the Bank’s competitive advantage in the marketplace.

And Praba Nair, director of consultancy company KDI Asia, and my colleague and fellow keynote speaker at the event, defines some key characteristics of a learning and knowledge organization as one that is committed to:

• Lifelong learning;

• Creating a learning environment;

• Fostering a climate of openness and trust;

• Encouraging free exchange and flow of information;

• Learning & personal development.

The five learning disciplines

But an article on becoming a learning organization would not be complete without mentioning the five learning disciplines described by Peter Senge in his landmark 1990 book, The Fifth Discipline: 'The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization'.

The five learning disciplines outlined by Senge are:

1. Personal mastery – Learning to expand our personal capacity to create the results we most desire and creating an organizational environment that encourages all its members to develop themselves toward the goal and purposes that they choose.

2. Mental models – Reflecting upon, continually clarifying and improving our internal pictures of the world, and seeing how they shape our actions and decisions.

3. Shared vision – Building a sense of commitment in a group, by developing shared images of the future we seek and the principles and guiding practices by which we hope to get there.

4.Team learning – Transforming conversational and collective thinking skills, so that groups of people can reliably develop intelligence and ability greater than the sum of individual members’ talents

5. Systems thinking – A way of thinking about the forces and inter-relationships that shape the behavior of systems. This discipline helps us see how to change systems more effectively and to act more in tune with the larger processes of the natural and economic world.

What is learning?

So what is learning?

Personally, I like simple definitions that are easy to understand. The best definition of learning for me came from KM specialist Hubert Saint-Onge who, at a KM conference in London in the mid-1990s, simply, but profoundly, said that “learning is the process of turning information into knowledge”.

There we have it:

Effective information management, together with embedding the best learning processes and culture throughout the organization, will inevitably lead to the much better creation of organizational knowledge.

But is it really that simple?

Whilst consulting with General Motors (GM) in 1993, I was struck by the company’s approach to transforming its culture into a more collaborative and knowledge-sharing one. Executives at GM asked themselves the question, “Is it possible to bring about a more ‘naturally’ flourishing knowledge-sharing culture?”

In other words, are there any natural principles that we can apply to learning and knowledge driven organizations? We concluded that:

• Trust is the lifeblood of any organization, and when sufficient trust is developed, people will “naturally” want to communicate.

• Open and frequent, two-way communication will develop even more trust and people will “naturally” want to collaborate and work better together.

• More open and more frequent communication of information “naturally” brings about more rapid, more accelerated learning.

• Increased and continual learning will “naturally” increase peoples’ levels of confidence and competence.

• Confident and competent people “naturally” want to share their knowledge.

• Sharing knowledge, naturally, is enjoyable.

Building a virtuous KM cycle

We also concluded that these principles all build on one another and interrelate to form a “virtuous circle” . That is to say that, if you improve in any one area, it will impact and improve all the others. Conversely, if any one principle is neglected, it will also impact all the others, to create a vicious circle of doubt, fear and distrust.

A virtuous circle, will lead to much better “knowing what we know”. A vicious circle, by contrast, leads to “not knowing what we know”.

So GM tried to implement the principles to naturally bring about more trust, improved communications, faster learning and natural knowledge sharing. They sent me and members of their senior management team, to outdoor experiential learning camps in Europe, Asia and the USA where we set about learning how to trust one another more through exercises such as “trust falls” and team activities.

Although we were all blood brothers and sisters in the bar each evening on these trips, that bonding didn’t last in all cases. After returning to work for just one month, it was “business as usual”.

Trust must be earned, not just learned. It develops over a long period, but can be destroyed in seconds.

The next principle was to improve communications by implementing the best communications and information technologies.

But if there is not sufficient trust, this won’t work either. People must want to learn and share knowledge. They cannot be forced to do this.

What worked best, and remarkably well, at GM were the initiatives undertaken to help people learn faster and develop their own personal competencies. And why did these work best? Ithink it’s because this approach answers the key question that most people involved in a KM project ask:

“What’s in it for me?”

Everybody, or certainly most people, want to improve themselves, to develop and grow and to become more marketable and successful. Capturing new learning and ideas as they occur (through both direct work experience and formal training) transforms an organization from an environment of 'episodic learning and innovation' to one of 'continual learning and innovation'.

People are also far more likely to naturally share their knowledge in that environment. As a result, making the principle of improved learning the primary focus was the most successful approach at GM.

Without doubt, learning organization initiatives can work extremely well and can reward individuals, teams and organizations handsomely.

So where does KM fit in?

I claimed earlier that the key contributor to organizational success is the acquisition of the best knowledge and its wise application. The two key words here are “acquisition” and “application”.

Learning is about the acquisition of knowledge, turning information into knowledge. KM should be about having access to, and applying, that knowledge.

So I see learning and KM as two sides of the same coin.

If we look at the roots of the learning organization, it is predominantly about enabling individuals and teams to learn. It began as a bottom-up approach and is primarily a people-centric one.

If we look at the roots of KM, it is predominantly about categorizing, storing, sharing and applying organizational knowledge in a collective and systematic way. It started as a top-down approach and was, initially, more technology centric.

Both complement one another. In fact, they’re highly synergistic. So much so that, over the years, the learning organization has made significant and natural inroads into KM, and vice versa.

Today, I look at mature and highly successful learning organizations, such as Standard Chartered Bank, and see the principles and characteristics of KM embedded throughout the organization.

There’s no doubt in my mind that organizations with strong learning-organization roots will wish to continue their initiatives and efforts in that direction, perhaps under the direction of a Chief Learning Officer (CLO). And organizations that have strong KM roots will similarly wish to continue their initiatives and efforts in their chosen direction, perhaps led by a Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO).

Some organizations may wish to continue initiatives and efforts that embrace both disciplines. It doesn’t matter at all. These are simply useful labels, and maybe one day, someone will invent a new label that embraces both.

What does matter is that we constantly remind ourselves of the evergreen business principles that will naturally lead to organizational success and then apply the best strategies, processes, methods, tools and techniques available at any given time to bring those principles fully to life.

Summary Key Points

The case for becoming a learning organization must be based on value creation and measurable results.

Organizations are, an always will be, as good as their knowledge and their ability to transform that knowledge into valuable and successful competencies, products and services.

Learning is about the acquisition of knowledge. KM should be about the wise application of that knowledge. In that sense, both complement each other and are highly synergistic.

What do you think?

Ron Young

More information at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com

(The above was first published as an article in KM Review,UK, September 2009.)

KM Principle: Naturally trust, communicate, learn and share knowledge - it's a virtuous circle

2010-03-08T04:07:00.000-08:00

One of the most frequent questions people ask me at knowledge management conferences, seminars, and workshops, all over the world, is ‘How do you create a knowledge sharing culture?

It’s a key issue and we are told that over 70% of the knowledge management effort is cultural. That is not to say that KM strategies, processes, methods, tools etc are 30% value, but to say that they are, relatively speaking, much easier to develop and implement.

In response to the question of creating a knowledge sharing culture, I developed a model in 1995 that I still teach, as an effective solution to this key issue. Many people find it to be of great value, and it has certainly stood the test of time, so I consider it to be a timeless principle of effective knowledge management. I describe it here and I welcome any feedback that you may have. I will certainly include all improvements in this article, so please keep posted from time to time.

This article proposes:

1. Seek 'virtuous circles'.

2. You do not start with trust.

3. You do not start with improved communications.

4. You start with learning.

5. Knowledge sharing naturally follows learning.

6. How to put the virtuous circle together.

Seek Virtuous Circles

There are four primary components to this model and I would like you to consider it as a ‘virtuous circle’. That is to say, like a spiral staircase, it leads to higher levels. But unlike a spiral staircase, the improvement of any step in the model will improve all the others, simultaneously. A virtuous circle brings about improvements, as diametrically opposed to a ‘vicious circle’ that is a downward and worsening situation.

You do not start with Trust

The four steps in this virtuous circle are:

1. Trust

2. Communicate

3. Learn

4. Share

But, interestingly, I recommend that you do not start with Trust. Rather, you will see how trust ‘naturally’ builds. I recommend that you start with ‘Learn’ but let me explain, first of all, how the virtuous circle builds, and then why I initially focus on step 3.

As far as Trust is concerned, there is much literature on the importance of this in a knowledge driven organization. Much has been said about Trust. I first remember Stephen Covey teaching me that ‘Trust is the lifeblood of the organization. People work together so much more effectively when they trust one another.’ That is so right, and, in our own private and work relationships, we know this to be true and fundamental.

So how do we build Trust? Well one thing is certain, you are very unlikely to build trust by telling or teaching or even, paradoxically, coercing people to trust.

Trust has to be earned.

Interestingly, trust may be built over a long time, many years even, and trust can be lost in just seconds.

My best personal example of this is when I was part of a team of consultants and facilitators engaged by General Motors in 1993. At that time, GM were very concerned indeed that, due to past management practices, the overall culture within GM and, especially, between GM and its Dealerships and Distributorships worldwide, was very ‘fear based’. It was considered to be very coercive. Generally, Dealers feared that if they didn’t ‘shift enough metal this quarter’ their franchises were at risk.

GM developed their own model to explain this. They called it, at the time, the 6C’s. Three C’s of fear and three C’s of Trust. They knew that people, if continually pushed too hard in ‘Conflict’, would eventually lead to ‘Confrontation’ and if that was prolonged or unresolved, it would end up in a state of ‘Co-existing’. That is to say, people would just ‘keep their heads down’ and get on with their work. This is the typical behaviour of a predominantly large fear based culture.

In a fear based culture, people are generally:

Protective of ideas & knowledge

No Loyalty

Short Term & impatient

Disrespect & political

Individual & isolated

Independent

Non communicative - and 'one way from the top'

Uninformed

Feel no responsibility

Disempowered

Scarcity mentality

GM also developed the 3C's of a trust based culture. That is, 'Cooperation' leads to better 'Collaboration', which leads to 'Co-ownership' (responsible partnering together). They knew that if the culture could be transformed into a ‘trust based’ one that they then could expect people to be more inclined to:

Open and sharing ideas & knowledge

High Loyalty

Long Term & patient

Respect & supportive

Inter-connected by networks & teams

Inter-dependent

Open, frequent communications and 'two way‘ feedback

Informed

Feel responsible

Empowered

Abundance mentality

As you would expect, the characteristics of a trust based culture are diametrically opposed to the characteristics of a fear based culture.

A trust based culture is a ‘win/win’ culture where people all work together for the benefit and common good of all.

A fear based culture is a ‘win/lose’ culture where people focus on getting the best deal as winners, regardless of others.

But GM was certainly not alone with this situation. At least GM became aware of the problem and constructively tried to do something about it.

The problem is simply that in large, dispersed, organizations people cannot possibly know everyone and everything. This will inevitably breed doubt, which is the first shade of fear. In small organizations, people tend to know everyone and everything of importance (not always) and this results in a far more trusting environment.

So, getting back to the importance of trust, and GM, what did they do about it?

It seemed a great idea, at the time, for GM to build several outdoor experiential learning sites. One was in South Spain, one in Indonesia, and one in the USA, to start with. Japan came later.

As a facilitator, my job was to welcome senior management teams, equally from GM and from car dealerships and distributorships, side by side, throughout the Region. My job was to work with them for several days, to teach some fundamental principles through experiential means and debriefs. Increased trust, better teamwork, increased enthusiasm and motivation, were key components of the training.

As a facilitator, I was also expected to complete the exercises myself.

I remember the ‘trust fall’. We had to stand on a six foot high wall and fall backwards, blindly, into our team members arms. Sounds simple, but it was incredibly hard for many of us. We could only do it if we trusted, and let go.

I remember the ‘trust poles’ that were 30 feet high. Harnessed and held by ropes from our team members, we had to climb the pole, stand on a small disc on the top, and jump off. We had to trust our team members completely.

I remember the 50 feet high ‘trust team wall’ which was designed for three people to be chained together and, again supported by ropes and harnesses from our team members, we had to ‘all together’ climb that high wall. No room for leaving any weak members behind. We had to help each other, or else we failed, as a team.

For every exercise, once completed, we had to go back to camp for a thorough debrief. This is where all the feelings and all the new learning’s surfaced. What could we learn from this and take back to the workplace?

I could go on with more descriptions of even more, very effective, experiential learning from team challenges, but I have described enough to make a fundamental point.

Back in the camp, at the evening pre-dinner drinks, the bar had an electric atmosphere that is difficult to put into words. We were all so glad to be alive, and proud of ourselves. We all agreed that we were now ‘blood brothers and sisters’ for life. It really seemed so at the time.

But one month later, away from the exotic locations and back in our normal office environment and routines, we realised that it was ‘back to work as normal’.

We ‘knew’ that trust was important but somehow it didn’t overpower the status quo. We learned that you couldn’t just teach a ‘trust’ course, however well intentioned, and expect sustainability. We knew that the answer was not simply ‘Trust one another! ‘. There was something more. That became clearer later.

You do not start with improved Communications

GM, like many large organizations at the time, could afford to deploy the latest communication tools and technologies. GM had an admirable global technology infrastructure for its time. I remember the enterprise deployment of Lotus Notes groupware, which was probably the most leading information communications technology at the time (I am still very fond of Lotus Notes). Many of us, who were early pioneers of knowledge management, saw Lotus Notes as our saviour, with replicated databases of ‘the whole’ on everyone’s desktop and laptop personal computer. We enthusiastically built nested discussion forums, networks and community spaces, collaborative virtual team workspaces, and key knowledge bases.

I even set up a company in Cambridge on the strength of these developments.

But we learned, over the painful years to follow, that giving people the best information communications tools at the time, discussion platforms, collaborative workspaces and knowledge bases, does not mean that they will use them! The mantra was ‘give them the best technology and tools to share information and knowledge’. Technology certainly provides the great potential to do things better, but we have to turn that potential into reality. And that is not as easy as it sounds.

At least, Lotus Notes can become the most expensive email system in the world, but going beyond that, in new extraordinary ways, was more of a failure than a success. Maybe it was because people were not taught how to properly use these tools, (many of them were left to discover how to use them for themselves) which is a key factor of course, but I strongly feel that the key reason was that people have to naturally want to share information and knowledge, to use these tools effectively, and that does not happen in a fear based culture.

You start with Learning

So, if you do not start the virtuous circle with trust or communications, why start with learning?

This is what I strongly believe. I am convinced that people have to ‘naturally’ want to do things. People cannot be coerced, however mildly, or however sophisticated the initiative to change may be.

I use the word ‘natural’ because I have discovered the following:

When there is sufficient trust present, people ‘naturally’ want to communicate more openly and more frequently and more two-way.

Following on from this, when people communicate information more frequently and openly – they cannot help themselves but to ‘naturally’ learn faster. Also, more open ‘two-way’ communications and better collaboration builds even greater trust.

A simple definition of learning for me, is to turn information into knowledge, whether it’s intellectual learning, or experiential learning, or a combination of both. The Japanese talk about ‘mind knowledge’ and ‘body knowledge’. This I like. Through all our external senses, of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting etc we are learning in the body (example: Don’t put your hand on that hot stove!). Through our inner sense of thinking, we are learning in the mind.

Knowledge sharing naturally follows learning

But learning is far more important than just gaining new knowledge and skills. When we learn faster, we naturally increase our confidence, our self esteem, and our competence, at least.

Now my main point in this article is this. People who are both confident and competent ‘naturally’ enjoy and ‘naturally’ want to share their knowledge with others. They have nothing to fear, but they understand that they have everything to gain by sharing.

It seems to me that people are wired up to ‘have to share’ what they know as part of their continued learning. I am a teacher. But I do not just teach to teach others. I teach to learn too!

To many, the real reward from learning faster, and from becoming confident and competent, is to ‘enjoy the sharing’.

I do recall a Japanese manufacturing company that had a competence system that only had, originally, three levels of competence as follows:

1. Aware of the competence to be developed

2. Able to demonstrate the new competence on occasions, but inconsistently

3. Consistently competent

To my delight, they introduced a fourth level of competence:

4. Consistently competent and ‘able to teach others’

This one level of competence, introduced, created a ‘culture of teachers’. It created a culture of knowledge sharing. And what’s more, people are rewarded and recognised for their levels of competence and teaching others. So it pays to become a level 4 teacher, for both emotional and financial well being!

Let me give you one more example of the importance of the ‘Learn’ step, and then I will pull it all together, and explain the working of the Trust – Communicate – Learn – Share’ virtuous circle.

I was called into the office of the CEO of a major UK Utility company. It employed over 10,000 people. The CEO had a problem. He had attended a breakfast session for CEO’s that I gave in London about building trust in a knowledge driven organization.

He said, ‘Ron, how can I possibly think about building trust when I am now having to downsize our organization considerably? How will people trust the organization again when we have to do that? What do we do?

We analysed the incredibly difficult situation the organization faced in order to survive. We first considered the survivors. That is, those people left, that would not be leaving the company.

We concluded that there would be an initial period of despair and lack of trust. We concluded that some people would lose loyalty to the organization, after so many years of loyal service. We concluded that some people would be looking around for more secure employment. We concluded that the organization would probably move into a ‘fear based culture’ until trust could be earned again.

We also knew that, because of this, people would be very receptive to new learning and competence development. Why? Because this is a ‘heads you win – tails you win’ situation. That is to say, if, at worst, the organization continued a downward spiral, at least the individual would be more marketable and employable elsewhere. Nothing to lose, everything to gain.

In the best situation, if the organization invested in developing people’s confidence and competence, then the likelihood of growing again, successfully, would be much greater.

It’s a win / win situation. More importantly of all, it worked! The organization grew out of the crisis and into positive growth. It became, not only a successful learning organization, but it became more competent in applying its knowledge more wisely.

Putting the virtuous circle together

Getting back to the virtuous circle, I propose that one of the best starting points, that one of the best interventions, is at the ‘Learn’ step. This is because:

a) people will willingly welcome this investment in themselves, most of the time

b) as people become more confident and competent, they will naturally want to share more information and knowledge

c) this will lead to a major increase in trust

d) this will lead to a natural need to communicate better

e) This will lead to even more information exchange, faster learning, even more trust and more collaborative working

f) This will naturally lead to more enjoyment in learning and sharing…which will naturally lead to even more increased trust, more open communications, faster learning, sharing etc etc

It’s not just about teaching people the importance of trust. It’s not just about giving people the best information and communication technologies. It’s about developing new confidence and competence through learning, which will then increasingly spark and fuel the other steps in the process, simultaneously.

Can you develop a knowledge sharing culture? No.

Can you develop people to then develop a knowledge sharing culture themselves? Certainly yes.

This is the virtuous circle that will contribute significantly to naturally developing a knowledge sharing culture.

What do you think?

Ron Young

More at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Principles: Applying knowledge and effective knowledge management is 'situational'.

2010-03-04T01:15:00.000-08:00

I received this key question from a reader in the USA to my article 'Knowledge Management - Back to Basic Principles' a few days ago.

"Great article. Like with many new technologies or ideas, we often get caught up in the novelty and forget the basics. This is a good reminder.

Question: Your point 6 on Using Knowledge is key. How do we ensure that people actually use and apply knowledge to their jobs?

Do you know of any research or examples of how people and organizations actually put the knoweledge to use? "

Here is my first quick response to his question. I would appreciate your comments too, and I will gladly pass them on.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I agree. The essence is 'applying' knowledge. For example, for many years I have accumulated some great knowledge about the best foods to eat, and the right exercise, and techniques to relax and meditate. But after all this, I am still overweight and unhealthy and its a very slow improvement process.

I consider myself very knowledgeable in this area, but very 'unwise in applying knowledge'.

I have been a KM consultant since 1995 and I have worked across the world, in corporates, public sector and government, development institutions.

I see the same lack of knowledge application.

No one nation or culture stands out as being better at applying the best knowledge, although I am observing that those cultures that use strong ritual/habits in their daily lives may have a good advantage.

If you look at certain cases, they have to apply knowledge. I always talk in my KM seminars and workshops about the Air Accident Investigation Board. This is because I am a self confessed passionate ex-pilot and love to teach some principles through flying stories. Last year at London Heathrow airport, a British Airways flight crash landed due to both engines shut down on final approach. It was discovered that there was ice in the fuel lines, caused at very cold temperature flying over Russia. New knowledge, to solve this problem, resulted in reducing the power to zero, on engine failure for a few seconds. (The opposite of what a pilot would instinctively expect to do).

Within a very short period of time, this safety directive was with every same type airplane and engine in the world and every pilots checklist was updated for this emergency. This year in a flight in USA, exactly the same icing up happened. The pilots immediately applied the emergency checklist, the problem was immediately solved, and no passenger was even aware of the incident.

This is an example of applying new knowledge effectively because human life is at stake. So you would think that all areas that involve safety of human life would be the same. Not so.

I have been working with the National Health Service in the UK because, although they have very good creation of 'evidenced based knowledge' they are still repeating mistakes because they do not apply it effectively. Several hospitals in the UK are under constant attack for very bad application of knowledge that involved loss of human life. I am working with the United Nations International Disaster Reduction, to find better ways to 'proactively apply' knowledge beforehand to, at least, reduce loss of life and economic loss with better building laws, planning, poverty alleviation, early warning and evacuation procedures etc. But, time and again, we hear from many agencies that lessons are not being learned properly and transferred into readily applicable knowledge from past disasters, tsunami's, earthquakes, typhoons etc.

The daily news is constantly littered with political parties, institutions and organizations not applying knowledge effectively.

The legal profession are trained to abide by precedent. For each case, lawyers ask first 'what do we know about this' rather than much later. There is some good KM examples of effective knowledge application in Law.

But many organizations, teams, individuals are, to be polite, very bad at applying knowledge, even though they may be better at creating knowledge.

(I just read a blog that said Toyota knew about the problems with the car accelerator a year earlier in Europe. Allegedly, this was codified in a database but people didn't know where to find it? If this is true, this is a prime case of failed knowledge application, and car manufacturers need to review their KM systems and processes to include knowledge application practices, like the Air Accident Investigation Board, for example.)

I have strongly suspected, for some time, that it's because most organizations do not have the rituals/habits ingrained in their daily work. They do not have the knowledge leadership, processes and tools to help them do this.

They do not need/desire or have the equivalent of a pilots checklist for their work. Nor the strong need to comply to law.

And this is understandable to a degree. After all, in the daily office, these checklist procedures, for example, would seem very robotic and a deterent to natural creativity. (We want pilots to fly us safely from A to B based on the best safety knowledge and skills, and we want investigative journalists to seriously challenge apparent best practices).

So I agree with the question. It is 'the key issue', and it is the key challenge to KM practitioners. We need to help individuals, teams, organizations and global networks and communities, more effectively APPLY knowledge.

But I also propose that there is no one solution for all. There may be common principles but effective KM implementation is situational, depending on your industry sector, and very key factors like, life saving and human safety, healthcare, climate change etc to take just a few examples.

I wish the Financial sector would learn to apply best knowledge too!

What do you think about 'applying' knowledge?

Ron Young

For more KM Principles (click here)

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

The East have a major advantage with Knowledge Management

2010-02-21T03:01:00.000-08:00

My travels to the East continually reveal new knowledge insights to me. Whenever I am asked to speak in a country I have not visited before, I try to learn as much as I can beforehand about their culture and major religious beliefs, so that I can be more meaningful in my presentations about knowledge management, and so that I can be more open in my own learning.

Being a yoga teacher, over 25 years ago, I instantly took to the culture and religious beliefs of India in my five trips there over the past two years. I already knew that the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita etc are the basis of Hinduism, and are the oldest recorded books of knowledge. I have had some truly fascinating discussions with my Indian friends and we have reconsidered this 'timeless wisdom'in an age of global knowledge. In fact, in the last few years, I have enjoyed many more discussions with Asian friends also looking at the perspective of knowledge for Muslims, Buddhists and Christians too, across Singapore, Malaysia,Indonesia, Phillipines and Fiji. I have also had discussions with Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese about knowledge and Confusianism and the Tao.

What fascinates me about the East and Middle East is the very very high value that all religions and beliefs place on knowledge. There is divine revealed knowledge and the acquisition of daily knowledge of living a good successful life.

And in all of this, most importantly, there is no doubt at all about the value of knowledge.

This is why I am of the opinion that the Eastern perspective to knowledge management will develop much faster, and reveal much richer insights into global knowledge management than those of the West.

Don't get me wrong. I am still a great advocate and, hopefully, a good ambassador for the discipline of knowledge management, as developed in the West.

I do not wish to simplify, but for making the point that I am simply amazed at the major contributions that have come from the USA, especially, at least the openness, and the new enabling knowledge technologies we all enjoy across the internet. And I am indebted to our friends in Scandinavia and across Europe who are still, in my opinion, thought leaders in intellectual capital management, processes and reporting, but I am now really looking forward to the fresh developments and practices that will, undoubtedly, come from the Eastern perspective.

I have no doubt that, at this point in time, the East have a major advantage with knowledge management.

I take great comfort that absolute knowledge is the common unifier across diverse beliefs.

Ron Young

More at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Management moves from the Corporate World to Development Organizations!

2010-02-18T02:51:00.000-08:00

Naguib Chowdhury contacted me a few days ago and said, ‘Ron, what do you think is happening with Knowledge Management today, as there is much going on with KM in Development?’

That was a good and timely question to ask me as I was reading a report I had recently finished for the United Nations, Asia Pacific Regional office in Bangkok, when I received Naguib’s question.

Here is my reply to Naguib on his popular blog - KMTALK Asia
I hope it starts an interesting discussion.
What do you think?

Ron Young

More at www.knowledge-management-online.com

The World in 2025 - Rising Asia and Socio-Ecological Transition

2010-02-04T03:19:00.001-08:00

I am indebted to the European Commission, Directorate-General for Research Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities for allowing me to reproduce extracts from their report 'The World in 2025 - Rising Asia and Socio-Ecological Transition'.

In my work to better understand global knowledge management trends, current performance, and future scenarios, I find the research work from the World Bank, United Nations, Asian Development Bank, NASA, and the European Commission most informing.

Here are, from a global knowledge management perspective, some extracts that particularly resonate with me from this European Commission Report, 2009, ISBN 978-92-79-12485-3.

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The Asian Century

In 2025, nearly two thirds of the world population will live in Asia.

According to the UN, between now and 2025, the world population will increase by 20% to reach 8 billion inhabitants (6.5 today). 97% of this growth will occur in the developing countries (Asia, Africa).

In 2025, 61% of the world population will be in Asia.

In 2025, the population of the European Union will only account for 6.5% of the world population.

The European Union will count the highest proportion of people of more than 65 years old in the world (30% of the population).

The cities in developing countries will account for 95% of urban growth in the next twenty years and will shelter almost 4 billion inhabitants in 2025. The number of inhabitants of slums at world level will double between now and 2025 to reach more than 1.5 billion.

Asia, with increasing inequalities, becomes the first producer and exporter of the world

In 2025 world production will almost have doubled (in relation to 2005). The USA-EU-Japan triad will no longer dominate the world, even if the United States preserve their leadership. A more balanced distribution will take shape. The energing and developing countries which accounted for 20% of the world's wealth in 2005 will account for 34% of it in 2025.

The centre of gravity of world production will move towards Asia. The group made up of China-India-Korea will weigh as much as the European Union. With the addition of Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia..., the share of Asia would in 2025 reach more than 30% of the world GDP and would surpass that of the EU, estimated to be at slightly more than 20%.

In 2030 the "global middle class" (with an income between 4000 and 17 000 dollars a year) could account for 1 billion people, of which 90% will be living in developing countries.

(In 2025)The positions of Asia and the European Union are reversed. The EU is no longer the first world exporter. The exports of the EU (39% of the world volume in 2005) could account for 32% while the share of Asia increases from 29% to 35%.

In an increasing knowledge society,a question remains on the growth of intangible assets (like human capital or use of ICT) and the share of these investments among the EU, US and Asia.

Asia catches up with (and overtakes?) the United States and Europe in the area of research

If the recent trend continues, in 2025, the United States and Europe will have lost their scientific and technological supremacy for the benefit of Asia. (China and India will have caught up with or even overtaken the Triad) even if they will still appear among the principal world powers as regards R&D.

In many crucial areas to Europe's future welfare, such as energy saving technologies, research on sustainable development and climate change, health and the spreading of diseases, food safety, security, social sciences and humanities, etc., it is the global access to such knowledge, the development of joint global standards and the rapid world-wide diffusion of such new technologies which is at stake. Ensuring access to knowledge in global networks also means being attractive for researchers and investment from abroad.

...one can imagine that we will move from today's "brain drain" (mainly towards United States and the Anglo Saxon countries) to a more balanced "brain circulation" of young researchers between regions of the world.

Asia will be the main destination for the location of business R&D.

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I simply love 'from brain drain to brain circulation' as this paints such a healthy picture for our collective planetary brains, and I am already seeing this brain drain reversal taking place in my work travels in Asia.

I may be over simplifying but I think we are slowly getting it - it's not just about competing for knowledge in a predominantly private and state capitalist society, as this will not produce the best results for the good of all, but its about a new order of global knowledge economics that better recognises and values the highly interconnected and collaborative knowledge society that has already emerged.

What do you think about these EU report extracts?

I recommend that you get the full report which discusses trends, tensions, and major transitions, all very interesting indeed.It's available as a free pdf.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Future Centres and knowledge hubs

2010-01-29T08:09:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday 26th January 2010, I was given the opportunity to join a study tour, which had been organized by a team of Japanese companies, to visit two Future Centres in the UK. Actually, the complete study tour visited 5 Future Centres in UK and Netherlands, in total.

As a knowledge management consultant, I am particularly interested in ways to encourage knowledge creation and innovation.

I visited Innovation Works, part of the University of Reading, and Future Focus in London, part of the UK Government Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS).

My first impression was very good and I could easily see how dedicated spaces can encourage new, more open creativity and innovation. I was shown in Innovation Works how labs could be designed to take you away from work and think differently. Even the transition from an 'old outside/exterior' building to a completely different 'very new interior' was designed deliberately.

I could see, through the techniques used in both centres, how these centres help organizations to the next big thing. I enjoyed working on innovative white glass walls with 'rich picturing' and I especially enjoyed learning how this technique connects you directly to your feelings/emotions.

I was reminded in both centres about fun, smiling, being less judgemental and relaxing.

I was already familiar with the techniques of 'divergent and convergent' thinking to expand ideas and then focus them on particular areas, and in both centres I enjoyed working with 'anonymous software' for idea creation and even voting.

My japanese friends remarked how anonymous brainstorming etc was so powerful in an otherwise quite heirarchical japanese society.

Emphasis was placed on the importance of proper 'problem definition' in the problem solving process. Apparently, Einstein said "Give me 20 days to solve a problem and I will take 19 days to define it".

At Future Focus in London, we experienced how they had created future scenarios and presented them in films. They viewed this as a purpose built space in Government to explore the future and how this could influence Government and policy development.
I also liked their desire to help Government turn problems, threats and key issues into opportunities.

In both centres, they underlined the importance of good facilitators, and how difficult it was to find them.

I was impressed by the desire to link Future Centres together in an international network and how Future Centres could become important hubs to encourage wider knowledge sharing. Maybe a global pool of facilitators would help.

I learned how there must be a proper balance between 'leading and pushing with new ideas' and 'properly responding to customers needs'.

I left with the impression from both centres/labs that even a Future Centre can have a lifecycle of, say, 7 to 10 years, and then it must renew itself. But I was left in no doubt that they will renew themselves, continuously, with new strategies, methods, tools and techniques.

After all, if a creative and innovative Future Centre can't renew itself - who can?

The day broadened my perspective on creativity and innovation and its fusion with knowledge management.

I thoroughly recommend you visit a Future Centre(s) if you get the opportunity.

Ron Young

more at www.knowledge-management-online.com

Key Knowledge Spaces in 3D - a new work paradigm

2010-01-03T02:02:00.000-08:00

Following my last blog post on knowledge sharing in 3D workspaces, I am now developing further thoughts about this new experience.

To remind you, I have been experiencing virtual team collaboration meetings in Teleplace, a Software-as-a-Service that combines collaboration with a Second Life type interface.I have used this to conduct a virtual team meeting with members from Europe, Singapore, Tokyo and USA.

Now I am evaluating the experience of building workspaces. In just four hours, using the templates provided, I built a virtual Knowledge Academy. It contains, at least, a reception/lobby area to orientate new visitors, a training centre on three floors, with auditorium, private and public team break out rooms etc, as above.

These are standard templates based around todays work space paradigms, and I intend to demonstrate how they will radically increase the productivity of virtual knowledge working. But I also have the facility to develop fully customized work spaces myself. So now I am thinking 'What are the perfect virtual knowledge working spaces that can go beyond the limitations of physical workspace paradigms'.

What will they look like and can we now go into totally new ways of knowledge working? Should there be a 'knowledge asset space'for the organization or even a space for each key knowledge area and knowledge asset?

How can I better use these virtual 3D workspaces for 'knowledge asset management and reporting' in knowledge driven organizations?

It seems that we can now build, test and experience new knowledge spaces that are only limited by our imagination.

Ron Young
www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge sharing in 3D virtual meeting rooms

2009-12-16T00:16:00.000-08:00

Up until now I have been using videoconferencing tools on the desktop and laptop, like Skype and ooVoo, to communicate and collaborate with virtual team members. They are located in New York, Tokyo and Singapore. I still find these tools amazingly good.We are collaborating to write a manual, courseware, and a wiki of essential and highly desirable KM Methods and Tools for the Asian Productivity Organization.

Yesterday, Andy Burnett, a team member from KnowInnovation.com based in New York State and Cambridge UK, invited me to try a virtual meeting using Software-as-a-Service that combines collaboration with a Second Life type interface, from Teleplace.

It was awesome!! Immediately,I started thinking about how this could improve effective knowledge working, through its very rich environment.Even though it was meant to be a simple introduction and walk through tour, we started to look at and use project information, in new ways, handling more complexity more naturally.

Teleplace promotes this as a tool/service for collaboration in virtual meeting rooms. That it certainly is. It has an intuitive environment that, to quote teleplace "combines VOIP, Chat, Video, a robust Virtual Operations Command Centre, and can be deployed either behind a firewall or in the cloud."

In terms of effective knowledge management, at project, programme, team and organizational levels, I see much more.

For a start, knowledge working productivity could dramatically increase with faster and smarter decision making. And this should significantly accelerate knowledge transfer. And that is just the beginning, after a 30 minute introduction.

So, our global virtual team of 5 people, across Asia, USA and Europe, will take advantage of the 30 day evaluation period for our next virtual meeting, this Thursday 17th December.

I will share my learning's and experiences after that.

Ron Young

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Capturing and sharing the best new Knowledge Management learnings

2009-12-14T03:14:00.000-08:00

I have decided to start and publish a monthly 'Best New Learnings Digest' for me as a KM Consultant, and KM Practitioner for 2010.

As I work with my KM research and KM client engagements, I will capture the key new learnings in this blog, as they happen during the months. Naturally I will respect fully client confidentiality, but will distill all generally applicable learning principles. At the end of the month, I will send out and share this 'Best New Learnings Digest' as a free emailed newsletter, to all interested parties. It will link each new learning to the blog posts.

I will also summarize what are the most important new learnings for me.

I will then use this monthly digest to update my knowledge base on being an effective KM Consultant.

All feedback and further contributions will be most welcomed.

If you are interested in receiving this monthly free digest from January 2010, please go to the website and subscribe to the free newsletter.

Subscribe here

Ron Young

Knowledge Management for SME's - free ebook

2009-11-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

I am glad to let you know that a new free ebook has been published today called 'Knowledge Management for SME's. I am one of the co-authors and the book was a collaborative effort from KM practitioners in London, Tokyo, Singapore and Taiwan.

The book is published by the Asian Productivity Organization, in Tokyo, and they describe the book below.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Knowledge management (KM) has generated considerable interest over
the years. Numerous books and articles have been written on the subject,
and many conferences on KM have been convened.

In our attempt to understand how KM may enhance and promote productivity, the APO has also organized three international conferences and several study meetings, seminars, workshops, training courses, study missions, and research on KM practices in member countries. Through these endeavors, we noted that while KM is well entrenched and practiced among large organizations, this is not the case in the vast majority of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Our own research indicated that SMEs are far behind in terms of KM implementation in most member countries and that KM is either poorly understood or understood differently by SMEs. Our experience also suggests that while it is easy to talk about KM, it is not necessarily easy to practice it. This in a sense is compounded by the fact that there is no one “right” way to implement KM. Likewise, there exists very little literature on KM implementation at the SME level.

With a view to assisting SMEs in member countries in applying KM, the APO thus developed an APO KM Framework, as well as a practical and simple approach for implementing KM in SMEs. Knowledge Management: Facilitators’ Guide for utilizing the framework was published thereafter. This casebook is an accompaniment to the Facilitators’ Guide. It describes real-time experiences of SMEs that have successfully implemented KM to provide guidance and inspiration to SME owners and managers and stimulate them to follow these exemplary cases.

The free ebook may be downloaded here

Ron Young

More information at www.knowledge-management-online.com

Disaster Risk Management and effective Knowledge Management

2009-11-05T00:14:00.000-08:00

I have been engaged by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction UNISDR to assist them with more effective knowledge management.

As a first step, I am very keen to make contact with those KM practitioners and KM consultants who have experience in this area and/or who have a very strong interest.

The first step is to find out what work is being done already with KM and DRR.
Are there any communities of KM practitioners in this area?

If one doesn't already exist, I would like to create a forum/community of KM practitioners to help move forward faster with effective KM for disaster risk reduction.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Ron Young

More at www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Transfer through a free Global Videoconference on the internet

2009-09-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

Its 2pm in Europe, 8pm in Singapore, 9pm in Tokyo and 8am in New York, the same day, 10th September 2009.

I fire up my ooVoo. I click and call the four team members and we all appear on the computer screen in high quality. It looks like the video links that you see everyday on the television news.

Because I can see everyone, it is a very similar feeling to all sitting around a meeting table.

We talk naturally most of the time.

For 50 minutes we work our way through an agenda that includes, as a main topic, an overview of a collaborative work space that we have just set up and all need to start using. As a team of knowledge management and innovation experts and practitioners, we are going to compile a manual and courseware with a list of essential and highly desirable KM Tools, Techniques and Technologies.We aim to complete the first draft by the end of this year.

I think that, for fast and cost effective knowledge transfer, videoconferencing like this must be top of the list for me, as an essential tool.

After the video conference on the internet, I got myself a cup of coffee and reflected for a few minutes. Just a couple of weeks ago we were all together, as a team for the first time, in Singapore. In just a few days, we got to know one another and we started to build relationships, trust and respect, and a sense of optimism in working together. Now, two weeks later, I feel like I have physically attended a further meeting with them all. We agreed to have our second meeting, and first learning review, in two weeks time.

Please follow this blog, labelled 'Planetary Knowledge' and watch this space if you wish to follow my experiences in attempting to develop effective virtual knowledge working.Your feedback is most welcome.

(from the book under development
Planetary Knowledge - effective knowledge working in a global knowledge economy)

Ron Young

PS I have absolutely no financial interest in the tools I will describe in this book. I simply wish to openly share my experiences of those that work well.

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Global videoconferencing using ooVoo

2009-09-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

Today was my first experience of a 5 way
free video conference using ooVoo.

We were from New York, S.France, Singapore and
two from Tokyo.

The quality was excellent and, because we each had
4 other team members on our PC and Mac screens, it
was a true sense of being together. So much so that
the video/audio conferencing protocol I was used to,
to stop people butting in, or avoid long period of
silence, was simply not necessary, as we could all
naturally scan each other as if sitting around
a meeting table.

And if thats free video conferencing on the internet
today, totally acceptable, I certainly look forward
to the future developments too.

Ron Young

More information at

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Assessing and Developing the Global Knowledge Economy

2009-08-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

I am doing some further research into the growth of the Global
Knowledge Economy, for a paper I am presenting at the
International Conference on Knowledge Economy in Johannesburg,
South Africa in October 2009.

I base much of my primary assumptions on country growth and effectiveness, within the Global Knowledge Economy, on the World Bank Institute 'Measuring Knowledge in the World's Economies' and also their book, Building Knowledge Economies: Advanced Strategies for Development.

I would be most grateful to receive any further links, suggestions and/or feedback
that you may have to help me develop an even richer understanding of the Global
Knowledge Economy.

Thanks

Ron Young

More at: www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Management for SME's in Jakarta - some learnings

2009-08-20T02:16:00.000-07:00

For the week 10th - 14th August 2009, I was one of three KM consultants / facilitators working with a group of participants from over 20 Asian countries for 5 intensive days of learning, knowledge sharing and practical workshops.

The event, organized by Asian Productivity Organization, APO focused on KM for SME's. My co-consultant/facilitators were Praba Nair, Director of Knowledge Drivers International (Asia) Pte Ltd, based in Singapore, and Naoki Ogiwara, Senior Consultant and "Ba Conductor" for Knowledge Dynamics Initiative, Fuji Xerox Co Ltd, Tokyo, Japan.

There were many new learnings for me, but I thought I would share some of the key principles and learnings, focused on SME's.

1.Generally, the KM education and literature available does not focus enough
on SME's so I congratulate APO for this significant initiative.

2. SME's are likely to be very interested in joining 'Knowledge Clusters'
as a KM strategy.

3. SMEs are more interested in new knowledge creation and innovation,
as they better know 'who and what they know' than larger fragmented organizations

4. SMEs can more readily start 'personal KM and team KM' initiatives

5. SMEs can take much better advantage of the use of (often free) Web 2.0
tools and do not have the same usage problems as large organizations

6. The APO is publishing a book of eight case studies 'Knowledge Management for SME's' in the Autumn and I will provide the link through this blog and website when available (I was one of the team writing the book for APO)

7. I like “Knowledge is sticky – it will not move without a process". Most SMEs need to improve or implement better knowledge processes.

My favourite learning for the week in Jakarta from the opening speech from the DG for Manpower Transmigration for Indonesia was "Our goal is to move from unemployment and earning a wage, to gaining an income through knowledge".

My favourite paradox, when I teach KM is, 'Fun is serious business'. We learn so much more when we enjoy the learning process.

There was certainly much fun and learning by all over the five days.

The group of participants present in Jakarta, Indonesia, have taken the initiative, led by Viki, to 'practice what we have learned' and create a KM forum using the social network NING.com at KM-ONEWORLD.

Why not join us?

Ron Young

more at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Google Knol has an automatic audio facility !

2009-06-12T01:16:00.001-07:00

I normally check my Google Knol articles once a month.

Today, I noticed that Google have introduced an automatic
audio facility that speaks the article. So people can now
read the article or listen to it or download an mp3 file. Cool.

It's quite a strange feeling to hear an automated voice read
an article I have written.

My article 'Knowledge Management - back to basics' has taken
on a new form of life.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Boiling frogs, or is the world restructuring around Knowledge

2009-04-25T08:41:00.000-07:00

I have been unable to blog this past few weeks, as I have been totally preoccupied with updating my KM 2009 seminar and workshop materials.

During the KM seminar update,I once again considered the annual report from the World Bank Institute 'Measuring Knowledge in the World's Economies'. The report considers, for each country, the application of knowledge, as manifested in entrepreneurship and innovation, research and development, and software and product design, as one of the key sources of growth in the global economy. It also states that many developing countries fail to tap the vast stock of global knowledge and apply it to their needs, but they can build their strengths and can capitalize on the knowledge revolution.

Countries such as Finland, Korea, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, Chile and more recently, China and India illustrate the rapid progress that can be made.

Then I started thinking again, more deeply, about the way that work around the world is increasingly being organized far more around the knowledge, as an end in itself, and not just the product or service provided.

For example, General Motors do not employ people any more, directly, to manufacture a single car. They employ people to develop and apply GMs 'knowledge' about design, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, service etc. The manufacturing is outsourced and the profits are to be made in applying their knowledge. Shell International tell the same story. Once they said their core business was oil exploration, oil refining and distribution. Now they tell us that they have the best 'knowledge' of oil exploration, refining and distribution and are organizing themselves around the value that this knowledge provides. Airbus Industries have said that they can make more money licensing their knowledge on aerospace to China, for example, than actually building aircraft.

It didn't take long for Accounting Firms to realize the higher value and profitability in offering financial and management consulting services through effective knowledge management.

Banks are far more interested today in high value added knowledge financial services than making money to keep your money safe (that is - unscrupulous traders and dealing, and lack of applying knowledgeable regulatory best practice, aside).

It seems very clear, and very obvious to me that the world's major industries and institutions have all realized that there is more money to be made from restructuring around the highest knowledge available (the best recipe)and outsourcing the lower value core activities elsewhere.

I am so reminded of 'the boiling frog' syndrome that I learned twenty years ago from Professor Charles Handy, London Business School, and I guess that it is this that has compelled me to write this blog today.

Charles Handy taught me that it is a fact that you can put a frog in a saucepan of cold water and slowly heat it up. The frog will continually adapt to the increasing heat and, eventually, die in the pot of very hot water. On the other hand, if you first heat a pot of water to, say, less than the temperature that will kill the frog, and if you drop a frog in it, the frog will immediately leap out of the water.

We all seem to be boiling frogs around the world. For several years we have had the increasing climate change to boil in. We are boiling in world pollution and so on.

But my point today, is that we are experiencing an unprecedented and exponential increase in information and knowledge around the world, and we are restructuring our businesses and our institutions and our daily work more and more around knowledge. Furthermore, the World Wide Web is fundamentally and radically restructuring our businesses around higher knowledge and better ways to create and apply knowledge.

This major change in redesigning our work around knowledge, major growth, and major disruption, will undoubtedly bring massive new global opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation, growth and profitability, on the one hand, and certain death to those businesses who sit as boiling frogs and do not see the change taking place.

Too many politicians are boiling frogs too, and are still talking about fixing things, back to the way they were, as opposed to recognizing the global restructuring around knowledge that is taking place day by day.

Let's not be boiling frogs but, instead, let's leap into this new paradigm of one highly interconnected global knowledge economy.

What do you think?

Ron Young

More at www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM in Defence and KM in Government

2009-04-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

I am running two three day KM events in Singapore in May 2009 as follows:

21 - 23 May KM in Defence
25 - 27 May KM in Government

For further details of these and other events go to the K2B website.

Ron Young

More information at
www.knowledge-management-online.com

Facebook Youtube & Myspace

2009-04-11T04:06:00.000-07:00

On my flight back from Delhi, India to London yesterday, I read 'The stories of facebook, Youtube and myspace - the people, the hype and the deals behind the giants of Web 2.0' by Sarah Lacy. Sarah is an award winning journalist and writer for Businessweek.com and lives in San Francisco.

I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for some great insights into the Web 2.0 workings of Silicon Valley. I read it non-stop.

Here are just a few snippets that inspired me, and maybe they will resonate with you too:

- we are now dealing with proven Internet business models, dramatically lower costs of doing business, and the now billion-person-strong Web audience.

- Blogging, Sharing videos. Sharing news clips. Sharing restaurant reviews. Sharing photos. Sharing friends. Every single one of these sites is about meeting people, staying in touch, or witnessing people's own personal quirky forms of self-expression.

- Eyeballs, then cash.

- to get Digg up and running. A thousand bucks went to a coder, who actually built it. Server space, rented online, was going to run him $99 a month. The domain set him back the most, $1,200. Ouch.

- But most important than entertainment, self-expression, or ego-boosting is the human need to connect...sites are frequently described as addictive.

- No other place has mastered and utilized community the way the world of open source software had.

- Both Linux and Mozilla succeeded because they made people feel they were a part of a movement, something bigger than themselves.

- By August 2003, Niklas sent some text messages to his friends telling them to check out Skype.com. They told their friends. That was the extent of their marketing. Within a month they had 1 million users.

- The Web would know you, and as a result what you would like

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

What Would Google Do? Global Knowledge!

2009-02-28T06:48:00.000-08:00

Although I have just reached page 82 only, of a 250 page book entitled What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis, I strongly recommend the book already.

I have already learned so much and it has given me many more new and very powerful insights into the New Economy.

Jeff Jarvis reverse engineers Google and shows how the internet challenges us all with amazing new opportunities based on abundance thinking, and at the same time, how it is destroying organizations who thrive on scarcity.

Free is a business model and it certainly made me think 'What business are you really in?'

I think this book is an absolute must read, for anybody who is serious about the global knowledge economy.

Ron Young

For more information:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Not just knowledge management, but really achieving corporate objectives

2009-02-10T02:29:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, I had a meeting with an organization
who wanted to review their knowledge management progress
over the past 12 months.

They recalled that a first principle of good knowledge management
is to develop a strategic plan which links knowledge management
activities to the corporate objectives. Although they
had done this in the development of the km strategy, they
had not set up any effective ways to measure this and, in fact,
had forgotten to properly focus on this as a first principle.

In reality, they had become too immersed and too engrossed with
the notion, and within the boundaries, of the practice of knowledge
management.

The key question to ask ourselves is 'Are we in the business of helping
the organization better achieve, or even exceed, its corporate
objectives, through implementing effective knowledge management,
or are we in the business of effective knowledge management?

There is quite a difference in focus and implementation.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Management and the power of a simple search

2009-01-31T02:04:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, I amaze myself with simple things!

My website www.knowledge-management-online.com
is three years old and, this morning, I was reflecting on future
directions, topics and themes for knowledge management.

I have always had a simple Google search on the home page,
both to search the web, and to search within the website.

Because the website contains all the structured input, as well
as all the unstructured, or less structured blog content from
my KM consulting blog this past three years, and it contains
Directory details and comments from KM practitioners around
the world, I was simply amazed at the results I received from
several interesting internal searches of the website.

The searches gave me far far more information than I will ever
remember or recall. Even the content that I wrote myself!

How powerful, and yet, so simple. Or is it really that simple?

Think of all the advances that humanity has had to make to get
to the stage of offering us all simple searches on the World Wide
Web using a laptop computer, or even now, a simple search
using my iPhone!

I would call it simply marvellous.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

New free KM ebook from Asia

2009-01-29T04:42:00.000-08:00

I was very pleased to hear from my good friend and work colleague, Dr. Serafin D. Talisayon, this morning.

He announced that The Asian Productivity Organization today released a new free KM e-book entitled “From Productivity to Innovation: Proceedings from the Second International Conference on Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management.” The conference was held in New Delhi, India last 12–14 February 2008. Dr. Serafin D. Talisayon of the Philippines served as the conference rapporteur and volume editor.

I started session 1 'Setting the Tone' with my paper 'Back to Basics: Strategies for Identifying, Creating, Storing, Sharing and Using Knowledge.

You can download the e-book for free by clicking HERE.

The book has 20 chapters, plus Q&A and technical sessions:
1: Back to Basics: Strategies for Identifying, Creating, Storing, Sharing and Using Knowledge (Ron Young)
2: Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management (G. S. Krishnan, Arundhati Chattopadhyay and Avadh Yadav)
3: A Strategy for Library Networking in the Knowledge Economy (Dr. Prema Rajagopalan, Prof. M. S. Mathews and M. Kavitha)
4: Global Knowledge Management Trends (Dr. Rory Chase)
5: HAWK-i: Holistic Analysis for Working Knowledge and Implementation (Anne Chappuis, Luc de Golbéry, Paramita Sen, Nirbhay Sen and Sanjay Gupta)
6: Case Study: Knowledge Management in Wipro (Ved Prakash)
7: The Knowledge Economy Project: The Experience of IIT Roorkee (Prof. Harsha Sinvhal and Prof. Vinay K. Nangia)
8: Knowledge Management Framework: An APO Perspective (Praba Nair)
9: The Status of Knowledge Management in Asia: Results of an APO Survey of Nine Member Countries (Dr. Serafin D. Talisayon)
10: Critical Factors Constraining the Growth and Development of the Indian Economy: A Sectoral Study (Dr. Prema Rajagopalan, Prof. M. S. Mathews and M. Kavitha)
11: Knowledge Management in the Food and Nutrition Community in India: The UN’s New KM Initiative (Gopi N. Ghosh)
12: Participation of the International Management Institute in the Knowledge Economy Project (Prof. Ashoka Chandra and Prof. M. K. Khanijo)
13: Innovation and Knowledge Management: An Indic Play Ethic and a Global HR Model (Dr. Prem Saran)
14: Dimensions of Knowledge Management Projects and Leveraging Technology in Higher Educational Institutions (Dr. M. S. Rawat)
15: Service Quality in the Supply Chain: A Knowledge Gap Perspective (Gyan Prakash and Kripa Shanker)
16: The Intellectual Property System (N. N. Prasad)
17: Knowledge Management Systems in an Engineering Consultancy Organization (Sanjeev Kumar)
18: The Transformation of Innovation into Technology, Economy and Society (K. Kalaiselvan)
19: A New Infrastructure for Managing Knowledge in High-Value Outsourcing (Avinash Rao)
20: Knowledge Management for Competitive Advantage in the Steel Industry (Y. Bhaskara Rao and J. V. S. Sarma)

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

The Intersection of Ethics and Knowledge Management

2009-01-27T01:46:00.000-08:00

I am so pleased to see that the Southern California Knowledge
Management Forum have set a very powerful theme for this year's
conference.To my mind,'Ethics and Knowledge Management' are the
key issues before us, whether it's developing a KM strategy for
Human Rights, Extreme Poverty, or simply increasing the level of
trust within the organization.

Third Annual Meeting, August 5 - 6, 2009
Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA

Conference Theme

The theme of this year's conference is "The Intersection of Ethics and Knowledge Management." The global business and economic landscape has seen many recent changes and firms are being faced with new challenges each day. But can all of the efforts to manage the knowledge of the firm be considered ethical and socially responsible? The conference seeks to explore the development and application of corporate knowledge practices and issues emerging in the knowledge economy from a social/ethical perspective. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Social, cultural and ethical impact of Web 2.0
Advancing privacy, security and trust in a knowledge-driven economy
Advancing globally responsible practices through knowledge management
Ownership, collaboration and digital rights management
Individual rights vs. Collective rights
Legal (and illegal) implications
Stewardship, mentoring and succession management
Multi-generational learning and knowledge-sharing
Return on investment and corporate social responsibility (CSR)
Establishing values-centered employees

For more information about the conference go to:

http://bschool.pepperdine.edu/newsevents/kmforum/

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

New Global Knowledge Order - New Rules?

2009-01-26T07:27:00.000-08:00

This morning our UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, talked from
Downing Street about the global financial crisis and suggested
a new global order with some new rules.

Although he was talking about the global financial economy,
in the main,I could not help but relate it to the global knowledge
economy.His words would not be amiss in a discussion about
global knowledge management.

He said we need a new way of thinking and governing.

He talked about the high interdependence and connectivity of
the world, and global flows.

He stated that we cannot bring about better global security control
with only national regulation. We need an open global economy and we
need a global coordinated response.

He proposed a new global order, with some new rules.

He proposed an 'early warning' system, or an early alerting system
to prevent systemic imbalances.

In discussing a global regulatory system, he talked of the
importance of establishing a common set of principles, best
practices and common standards across nations.

He stated the need for 'agreed transparency'.

I am not saying that I agree or disagree with his talk
and proposals, at this stage, but I did think to myself,
as he was speaking:

'I have seen and heard these same words, so many times,
in many KM blogs, KM articles and KM books, including my own.
But I do not like the thought of ,say, a new global knowledge
order,with its emerging new rules, working with global regulation?
I thought also, what risks do we take with sub-prime knowledge?'.

But, is there anything here, between money flows and
knowledge flows, that we can learn and use?

Ron Young

More at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com

Book - Knowledge Management for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

2009-01-09T01:48:00.001-08:00

I am working with a global km practitioner team to develop a book
on KM for small and medium sizes enterprises, to be completed by
April 2009.

In part of the book, we are researching and writing KM for sme
case studies, probably 8 - 10 good cases across industry sectors
and geography.

Please let me know if you are interested in our developing a
case study for your organization, or if you know of a good sme
implementation to nominate.

We would probably define an sme as an organization with less
than 200 employees and / or sales turnover of less than
US$ 10 million pa.

We intend to finalise the list of case study companies by the
end of January 2009.

Please, also, let me know if you are interested in receiving
details of the book/ebook when published.

You can contact me directly at: ronyoung@young-int.com

Ron Young

More at:www.knowledge-management-online.com

Book - Personal knowledge management in a global knowledge economy

2009-01-02T08:18:00.000-08:00

I have set my New Year goal to finish my latest book which has the working title "Personal knowledge management in a global knowledge economy". It should be ready as an ebook within the first quarter of 2009.

Naturally, I would be so grateful for any interest shown or feedback given, so I enclose a description of the book, as at today, as a soft pre-release.

I do hope to get your feedback and interest, or email me directly ronyoung@young-int.com.

Happy New Year

Ron Young

Planetary knowledge with personal knowledge management.

This book is written to change lives and organizations around the world. It provides substantial opportunity in a rapidly emerging global knowledge economy, despite global recession in traditional economies. We are at the dawn of a revolutionary era where the means of production is not with the capitalists who own the land, buildings, plant and machinery etc, but with the individual, wherever he or she may live. We are entering the era of the individual knowledge capitalist, who owns the means to knowledge production! This book describes in simple steps the means to effective knowledge working.

It is a book that contains one of the most critical and essential life skills for the 21st Century – how to become an effective knowledge worker - in a rapidly growing global knowledge economy. It is for those who wish to become Web citizens.

The book is inspired by the Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, who said

“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That is our commitment“

This book shows you how to much better develop your ability to create, capture, store, share, apply and sell your knowledge by applying the best personal knowledge management disciplines, process, methods and tools. It provides you with a very fast, convenient solution, immediately downloadable, and it has been written by one of the thought leaders in global knowledge management today.

It is a book where you will learn how to:

* Create personal income and wealth in a rapidly growing knowledge economy

* How to develop a perfect business with no financial capital and turn your personal knowledge into digital income.

* How to avoid stress and ‘information overload’ and save time and effort, by organising and accessing your information and knowledge effectively in a personal goal and results focused way

* How to develop valuable sought after knowledge working skills and competencies

* How to save time and money by less ‘reinventing of the wheel’ and ‘repeating the same mistakes’

* How to use your brain more effectively to provide you with the events, circumstances and opportunities you need to succeed in a knowledge economy

* How to successfully participate in global knowledge community web services

* How to develop a knowledge based livelihood that significantly contributes to a more sustainable and ecologically friendly planet

For the past fifteen years, Ron Young has been giving presentations, running seminars, workshops and conferences all over the word in knowledge management. He was also inspired to write this book following his introductory quote from the late Professor Peter Drucker who said

“The greatest contribution that management has made in the 20th Century was to increase the productivity of manual working fifty fold. The greatest contribution that needs to be made in the 21st Century is to similarly increase the productivity of knowledge working fifty fold”.

This book aims to dramatically increase personal knowledge working skills, competencies, productivity and income.

Whether you are working in a large organization in a developed economy that could benefit from your increased knowledge working skills, or an individual in an under-developed nation that wishes to fully participate in a global knowledge economy, this book will most certainly change your life.

The book has been written as a result of Ron Young personally ‘practising what he preaches’.

1. A day in the life of a global knowledge worker
2. Trust the system and start using the knowledge tools today
3. The practical personal daily knowledge management process
4. The principles of personal knowledge management
5. The global knowledge community
6. The global knowledge web services

Copyright Ronald Young 2009 - All Rights Reserved

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Capital, Knowledge and Transparency

2008-12-24T02:21:00.000-08:00

This resonated with me:

McGraw-Hill aligns with three enduring global needs:

• the need for Capital
• the need for Knowledge
• the need for Transparency

These are the foundations necessary to foster economic growth and to allow individuals, markets and societies to reach their full potential.

Cool - Ron Young

More at www.knowledge-management-online.com

Learning and Knowledge creation is Super

2008-12-22T00:23:00.000-08:00

I am certainly glad to be back blogging my KM Consulting learnings and experiences after a few very hectic months of writing a series of KM articles, which you can read as Google Knols and, also, writing several KM reports and recommendations for clients with pretty tough year-end deadlines. But life is now back in balance for a while.

I hope to soon share some incredible new learnings and experiences that I have had, and some of which I believe will literally turn the KM world upside down, and, I am glad to say, for the better. Just as an interesting aside, I had a fun experience whilst travelling to a client last week.

Whilst travelling from New Delhi to Ghaziabad in a car, I noticed a large billboard on the main road. It was advertising a forthcoming spiritual event promoting the peak of well being, and there was a great quote I wanted to capture and share.

"It's not about becoming Super Human

Its about realizing that being Human is Super"

Sadhguru

Not only do I like this quote, but it inspired me to spontaneously think

"Its not about becoming a Super learning and knowledge creating organisation
but its about realising that learning and knowledge creation is Super"

Enjoy

Ron Young

more at www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge and wisdom are my passion and my work

2008-08-11T05:51:00.000-07:00

Today I have created my third Knol article on Google entitled ' Knowledge and wisdom are my passion and my work'.

Throughout my life, I have always been extremely passionate about knowledge and wisdom

At one end of the spectrum, I am extremely passionate about knowledge management for individuals, teams, organizations and global communities and networks. It became my profession, as a knowledge management consultant, since 1995.

At the other extreme, I am passionate about what you might call 'higher knowledge', philosophy, especially moral and spiritual philosophy and/or ethics. I am passionate about both the ancient wisdom, especially eastern philosophy and modern scientific knowledge, whether it be about quantum theory, neuroscience, nanotechnology or even molecular biology and molecular computing.

If you are interested in my thoughts and my work with knowledge and wisdom, whether it is about practical daily issues and challenges of knowledge management, or whether it is about my perspective and experiences about the meaning and purpose of life, or both, you can find my books, articles and blogs listed.

As always, I would highly value your comments, feedback and any reviews, so that I may continually improve this Knol.

Ron Young

For more information:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Updating the Future of Knowledge Management - a second Knol

2008-08-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

Today I have created my second Knol article on Google entitled ' Updating The Future of Knowledge Management'.

In 1999 I published an article entitled 'Future of Knowledge Management' in the European American Business Journal. Today, 9 years later in August 2008, I decided to review and rewrite this article.

Where is Knowledge Management (KM) going in the next ten years? What did I get right in 1999? What did I get wrong and what have I learned from this? What are the challenges for knowledge driven organizations if they are to thrive in the global knowledge economy in the next 10 years?

I find it exciting to write about the future of knowledge management in 2008 on a Knol, as I fully embrace the Knol as a great addition to the knowledge management toolkit.

As always, I would highly value your comments, feedback and any reviews, so that I may continually improve this Knol.

Ron Young

For more information:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Leading Knowledge Management and Communications at Hewlett-Packard, India

2008-08-05T07:47:00.001-07:00

Sameer Agarwal from India has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

Sameer works with Hewlett-Packard - Decision Support and Analytics (DSAS) and serves as the leader for Knowledge Management and Communications. At HP, he has been responsible for setting up an integrated KM, information and communications program based on contextual KM techniques.

He spent close to 4 years at A.T. Kearney learning the various nuances of Knowledge Management – from technology to strategy to operations. Post this, Sameer moved to Genpact where he led the corporate knowledge management initiative at a global level.

Sameer can be tracked on his blog at www.sameeragarwal.com/blog

If you are interested, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with Sameer directly.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knol from Google versus Wikipedia?

2008-08-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

People are asking me, 'So what is the real difference between a Knol and Wikipedia, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of the two?'.

Well, here is a Knol by Reginald Patterson, 'Knol versus Wikipedia' which I think is a good start.

What do you think?

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Management in the 21st Century - a first Knol article

2008-07-31T07:42:00.000-07:00

Well today I have created my first Knol article on Google entitled 'Knowledge Management in the 21st Century'. Its my current point of view on the state of KM, where it might be going, and some challenges over the next years. It's good to see other Knowledge Management Knols appearing already. Google define a Knol as a unit of knowledge.

My first article is far far from complete, but because it is a Knol, it can be rapidly developed, continually improved, and I can refine and develop it further over time and experience. What I urgently seek now is comments and even reviews. Any sort of feedback is very much welcomed.

So I see the blogsphere as a marvellous fragmented or loosely connected global space which is ideal for capturing and developing opinions, ideas, insights, learnings, comments etc chronlogically, and often spontaneously, and I see the knolsphere (if it can be called that for the moment)as a space to develop ideas, opinions, insights, learnings and comments into articles that can be peer reviewed and further developed.

If we wish to, we could then develop several Knols into book chapters, and/or website themes and so on. Of course, the Knol can accomodate collaborative authoring in public and private modes, so, together with blogs and, say, ebooks it could be used as part of a progressive authoring suite.

Coincidentally, or maybe not so, I first heard of the Knol through using my 'Google alerts', learned more about it through 'Google Groups' and 'Search', of course. I use Google reader to better aggregate and track what I am reading, and I am now sharing my thoughts on a Google blog.

I think I badly need a vacation!

Ron Young

For more information:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Understanding the dynamics of knowledge and know how is crucial to employee engagement and performance management

2008-07-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

Anjana Doshi (Anj) from the UK has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

Anjana passionately believes that understanding the dynamics of knowledge and know how is crucial to employee engagement and performance management. She uses the value of diversity, inclusive working, and collaborative partnering to help ambitious management teams operate as high performance teams whilst executing robust, profitable and yet complex business transformations.

She states that "Sustainability of change and growth hinges on how people interact, behave and collaborate. Facilitating the best dynamics to ensure sustainability and engagement is a fascinating key dimension for me. Process and system changes are relatively easy in my assessment and get too much priority."

"I would very much like to share my thoughts with others who are practitioners like myself and those who may have experiences to share as executives and managers responsible for difficult transformations."

If you are interested, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with Anj directly.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KNOL - a unit of knowledge from Google

2008-07-24T05:15:00.000-07:00

Today, I claim that knowledge management has taken a great step forward towards a more inclusive discipline.

I was so pleasantly surprised to see the launch of KNOL by Google. For me, it marks a significant step towards more inclusive and more Open Source Global Knowledge Management. Whereas Wikipedia may be considered to be an incredibly powerful resource for the creation and dissemination of knowledge, there are some limitations, that I believe Google have addressed.

As a key principle of effective knowledge management, it is now possible to have more choice in the information and knowledge you are presented with. With KNOL, you can choose to have an 'author-centric' and a more 'fully inclusive' series of authoritative articles with the same name, for example 'knowledge management', if you wish, as opposed to having just one authoritative article that is managed with that name. There is great merit in both approaches and, if you so wish, you can now choose both.

As a result, Global Knowledge Management is about to move to the next incredibly exciting step, and KNOL is certainly a part of that.

I am now far more motivated, enthused and committed to continually extending and improving KNOL articles and contribute more, starting with some links to more inclusive approaches to knowledge management, new perspectives on knowledge asset management, the inevitable drive to more open source knowledge, and the impact of rapidly emerging knowledge tools to support new and disruptively innovative knowledge processes, that will take us all to the next level of knowledge management. The Semantic Web 3.0 is just one example of this.

Thanks to Google and KNOL, we can now all add our voices, articles and perspectives, and choose to be more inclusive, for the common good of effective global knowledge management.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

National Library for Health Knowledge Management Specialist Library

2008-07-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

Caroline De Brun from the UK has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

Caroline is responsible for finding content for the National Library for Health Knowledge Management Specialist Library .

The aim of this site is to provide National Health Service staff with the resources required to embed knowledge management into their daily practice, with a view to improving the patient experience.

If you are interested, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with Caroline directly.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

The Hong Kong Knowledge Management Forum witnesses the changes

2008-07-16T05:42:00.000-07:00

Waltraut Ritter has made and entry in the KM Global Directory for the Hong Kong Knowledge Management Forum (HKKMF)

Waltraut founded the HK Knowledge Management Forum in 1998, which is quite influential in growing the awareness for knowledge-based economy issues in Hong Kong and beyond.

The forum engages in advocacy of areas such as knowledge economy, intellectual capital, innovation, knowledge management across different sectors in the society. The forum is independent and receives no public/government funding. It operates thanks to volunteers, private donations and receives sponsorships and participation fees for public events and community-based activities.

This year will be the HKKMF 10th Anniversary!

If you would like to know more about the work of the Hong Kong Knowledge Management Forum, you may view more here.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

'Mapping Social Connectivity and Artefact Relationships to Improve Knowledge Productivity'

2008-07-15T05:20:00.000-07:00

Graham Durant-Law has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

Based in Canberra, Australia, he is the principal and director in a boutique consulting company called Knowledge Matters, which specialises in business network analysis(BNA) and knowledge management solutions. He maintains a website and blog at http://www.durantlaw.info/ . This site has many papers and presentations, which are freely downloadable.

At the moment, he is a doctoral candidate at the University of Canberra where he is researching part-time the subject 'Mapping Social Connectivity and Artefact Relationships to Improve Knowledge Productivity'.

If you would like to know more about the work of Graham, you may view more
Graham directly.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM for poverty eradication and knowledge-based development

2008-07-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

Professor Serafin "Apin" Talisayon has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

He advocates knowledge-based development and KM for poverty eradication, in addition to developing appropriate KM tools for clients in the international, public and private sectors.

"I believe that KM can help policy-makers and decision-makers better understand and manage organizations, networks and national economies amidst the changes in the global knowledge economy."

Current positions:
> Director for R&D, CCLFI.Philippines, a non-profit NGO dedicated to personal and organizational learning and change, knowledge-based development, knowledge for poverty alleviation and knowledge management
> Chair, Knowledge Management Association of the Philippines
> Vice-Chair, Society of Knowledge Management Practitioners
> Professor, Technology Management Center, University of the Philippines

He has written a book and edited three others in KM, and is a senior author of a book on knowledge for poverty alleviation. He was lead writer of a technical note on knowledge-based economies in Asia

If you would like to know more about the work of Professor Talisayon, you may contact Professor Talisayon directly.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

International Association of Knowledge Auditors

2008-06-19T06:19:00.001-07:00

Dr Ann Hylton has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

She says, "I have it in mind to form the 'INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF KNOWLEDGE AUDITORS'.

I am proposing the formation of this professional body for Knowledge Auditors and asking that interested parties make their interest known to me. This will help me to determine if Knowledge Audit Specialists and Practitioners:

(a) want such a Knowledge Auditing professional body
(b) would like to be founding members of this association.

If you are interested in this initiative, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with Dr Hylton directly.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM at the Singapore Civil Service College

2008-06-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

Mr Gopinathan has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

Mr Gopinathan is the Deputy Director with the Civil Service College of Singapore. He is experienced in developing and implementing information and knowledge management systems for Private and Public Service organisations.

He is a part-time lecturer for the Master of Science (Knowledge Management) programme jointly launched by Nanyang Technological University of Singapore and Civil Service College. He is also a certified knowledge manager by The Knowledge and Innovation Management Professional Society (USA) . He is trained and mentored by Dr Etienne Wenger on Communities of Practice (CoPs) and have helped launched CoPs in the Singapore Public Sector.

If you are interested, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with Mr Gopinathan directly.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

A KM framework, methodology and a toolkit which has been filed for patent in the US.

2008-06-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

Nirmala Palaniappan has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

Nirmala (NP) is passionate about Knowledge Management (KM) and has been into it for close to 9 years now. (Her other areas of expertise and interest include Business Analysis, Process Improvements, Branding/Advertising and Strategic Planning.)

NP has conceived a KM framework, methodology and a toolkit which has been filed for patent in the US. She has also designed a KM system that has blogs as a single window to knowledge. She is currently a Senior KM Manager with Oracle and is responsible for KM strategy and implementation for Oracle, Asia Pacific Regions.

She was earlier a lead KM consultant at Wipro and was a key player in a strategic KM consulting assignment win.

She has authored and presented several KM papers at national and international conferences on KM implementation, Collaboration, Toolkits, and Blogging.

One of her goals is to be an influential KM thought leader and she also hopes to write a book on KM...

If you are interested, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with NP directly.

I am also an avid reader of Nimmy's unique and popular Aa..ha! [Thinking Inside The Blog!]blog.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Patrick Lambe and "KM Method Cards"

2008-06-12T01:27:00.000-07:00

Patrick Lambe has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

Patrick Lambe is a two-term President of the Information and Knowledge Management Society and founder and Principal Consultant of Straits Knowledge, a KM consulting and research firm based in Singapore. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Knowledge Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

In 2008 he published "KM Method Cards" a deck of 80 guide cards covering a wide range of approaches, methods and tools that are useful in implementing knowledge management.

Patrick is a prolific writer, international keynote speaker and teacher,in knowledge management and has an eminent worldwide professional standing in KM.

If you are interested, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with Patrick directly.

I am very keen to examine the KM Method Cards and I intend to review this great KM initiative shortly.I am also an avid reader of Patricks very popular KM blog.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Management for SME's

2008-06-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

Lanlan Cruz has just made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

Her work at the Center for Knowledge Management at the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP), a government-owned-and- controlled-corporation affiliated to the Asian Productivity Organization (APO), entails promoting KM and assisting organizations in using knowledge to improve their productivity and competitiveness.

Lanlan is currently "working on refining the KM Readiness Check to make it more appropriate for SMEs and also developing a case study on KM for SMEs. I want the case study to be able to depict the concern of those SMEs who already have TQM, which is, what need do they have for KM that TQM is not already doing for them? They want to know how it figures in the House of Quality. Is KM something that needs to be highlighted because it enhances their TQM or is it something that is already mainstreamed in the organization and therefore there is no need to spell it out?"

If you are interested in KM for SME's you may like to read more and/or contact Lanlan Cruz directly.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Stan Garfield and Global Knowledge Management

2008-06-10T02:17:00.000-07:00

Stan Garfield has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

He led the Worldwide Consulting & Integration Knowledge Management Program for Hewlett-Packard Services, and has an eminent worldwide professional standing and career in Global KM.

If you are interested, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with Stan directly.

I am also an avid reader of Stans very popular weekly KM blog.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Standards in India

2008-06-09T01:55:00.000-07:00

Mr G.S.Krishnan has just made and entry in the KM Global Directory.

He is heading the Information Technolgy and Knowledge Management Group of National Productivity Council(NPC), New Delhi in India with the designation of Director (IT).

He is also the convenor member of the KM Standards expert panel formed by the Bureau of Indian Standards.

If you are interested in KM Standards you may like to contact Mr Krishnan directly.
His interests are also in learning and teaching about KM applications in diverse fields and sectors.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Synergies and complementaries between Web2.0 paradigm and KM

2008-06-08T02:27:00.000-07:00

Roxanna Samii is a knowledge practitioner working for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized United Nations agency and an international financial institution.

IFAD are concerned with enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty.

Roxanna has created an entry if the KM Global Directory and is particularly interested in the social aspects of KM, therefore really interested in creating synergies and complementaries between Web2.0 paradigm and KM.

If you have the same interest, you may like to enter into a discussion with Roxanne.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Moving Kenya into the Knowledge Economy 2010

2008-06-06T01:57:00.000-07:00

Dr Ann Hylton has entered a very interesting KM initiative
in the Global KM Directory for Kenya, entitled 'Moving Kenya
into the Knowledge Economy 2010'.

She says, "For Africa's sake, and for KM growth in Africa, it is hoped that this 'Moving Kenya into the Knowledge Economy 2010' initiative will be a success and that Kenya by 2010 will really have given birth to, (started), a New Economic Life truly driven by its people's knowledge."

You may like to read about this important initiative and, if you can help,
please contact Dr Hylton directly.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Global KM Directory continues to develop...now 68 countries

2008-06-05T01:44:00.000-07:00

As at the end of May 2008, we have 64 key countries in the KM Global Directory, and more will be added during June.

Some great KM practitioners and consultants have added their details during May, and much more is promised for June.Check it out, as it happens, by subscribing to the 'What's New' section.

So far, we have entries from the following countries:

USA, UK, India, Malaysia, Spain, Canada, France, Bulgaria, HongKong, Singapore, Norway.

We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, policy makers, students, organizations and other interested parties.

So please let us know your KM capabilities, needs and offerings.

If your country is not listed yet, and you wish to register now, please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.

We will announce new countries and entries through this blog.

We hope you will register in the KM Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities, needs and interests, comments and opinions, the more benefit to us all.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Global Directory...capabilities, needs and challenges are coming in

2008-05-27T05:43:00.000-07:00

Continuing the launch of a free service, a KM Global Directory of Practice on
the website added ten more countries to the KM Global Directory yesterday.

So far, we have received details of KM capabilities, needs, challenges and issues from USA, UK, India, Malaysia, Spain, Canada, France, Bulgaria.

We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, policy makers, students, organizations and other interested parties.

So please let us know your KM capabilities, needs and offerings.

We expect to launch at least 5 new countries per day, and all the key countries should be completed by the end of May 2008.

If your country is not listed yet, and you wish to register now, please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.

We will announce new countries each day through this blog.

We hope you will register in the KM Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities, needs and interests, comments and opinions, the more benefit to us all.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Global Directory...25 more countries added last week

2008-05-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

Continuing the launch of a free service, a KM Global Directory of Practice on
the website added twenty five more countries to the KM Global Directory last week.

People are now starting to add their own KM capabilities, needs, issues and challenges, around the world. You can check this out automatically, as it happens, by creating an RSS feed to the 'What's New' section, or checking it out when needed. The 'What's New' section will highlight new people and new countries added, as well as other important website changes.

The KM Global Directory will enable you to create your own web page, upload and edit picture and information about your KM capabilities, interests, wants and needs. Others will be able to submit comments, share knowledge, contacts, services, methods and tools and even make ratings of KM professionals, where appropriate.

We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, policy makers, students, organizations and other interested parties.

There will be a section for each country in the world, categorized according to the United Nations World Macro Regions.

1. Africa
2. Asia
3. Europe
4. Latin America
5. Northern America
6. Oceania

We expect to launch at least 5 new countries per day, and all the key countries should be completed by the end of May 2008.

If your country is not listed yet, and you wish to register now, please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.

We will announce new countries each day through this blog.

We hope you will register in the KM Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities, needs and interests, comments and opinions, the more benefit to us all.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Global Directory of Practice..more countries launched

2008-05-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

Continuing the launch of a free service, a KM Global Directory of Practice on the website adds eleven more
countries today.

It will enable you to create your own web page, upload and edit picture and information about your KM capabilities, interests, wants and needs. Others will be able to submit comments and even ratings, where appropriate.

We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, students, organizations and other interested parties.

There will be a section for each country in the world, according to the United Nations World Macro Regions.

The first seven countries were launched yesterday. Today we launch:

1. Germany
2. Denmark
3. Norway
4. Finland
5. Sweden

6. Canada

7. Hong Kong
8. Singapore
9. Thailand
10.Philippines

11.New Zealand

Yesterday we launched:

1. United States of America
2. United Kingdom
3. Australia
4. Japan
5. Spain
6. Malaysia
7. India

We expect to launch at least 5 new countries per day, and should be completed by the end of May 2008.

If your country is not listed, and you wish to register now (first listed will appear at the top of each country page) please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.

We will announce new countries each day through this blog.

We hope you will register in the Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities and interests, comments and opinions, the more benefit to us all.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM Global Directory of Practice launched

2008-05-12T02:43:00.000-07:00

By popular request, we have just launched a free service, a KM Global Directory of Practice on the website.

It will enable you to create your own web page, upload and edit picture and information about your KM capabilities, interests, wants and needs. Others will be able to submit comments and even ratings, where appropriate.

We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, students, organizations and other interested parties.

There will be a section for each country in the world, according to the United Nations World Macro Regions.

The first countries launched today are

1. United States of America
2. United Kingdom
3. Australia
4. Japan
5. Spain
6. Malaysia
7. India

We expect to launch at least 5 new countries per day, and should be completed by the end of May 2008.

If your country is not listed, and you wish to register now (first listed will appear at the top of each country page) please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.

We will announce new countries each day through this blog.

We hope you will register in the Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities and interests, the more benefit to us all.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Twine and Knowledge Management - I started my beta test yesterday and wow!

2008-03-13T02:47:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, whilst catching up on my favourite blogs, I read 'Do you want early access to the Twine beta', from Nova Spivak, at Radar Networks.

As I have been following Twine for a while, it really was no problem for me to blog why I wanted an early access, which was the condition Nova had set, and then email him.

I hoped for a reply sometime in the following week.

Two hours later, I received a reply from Nova from his Blackberry!
"Thanks, nice to meet you - we will let you in next week"
That's extraordinary service.

Yesterday, Wednesday morning, I was let in to Twine.

Three hours later I had created three Twines of my own. I thought I had better keep them private, and not make a fool of myself, until I understood what Twine was really about and how to use it properly. Well I needn't have worried. It is quite intuitive.

In just one hour I had added into my first Twine, which is a project with a small team that started three months ago, all the associated team emails, an MS Powerpoint presentation, an Excel spreadsheet, several Word documents, my Blog, several Websites and some notes.

That alone made me feel better organised. Especially having the emails for the project all together in one place. (Twine allocates an email address for each Twine, so you can email them in).

Next thing I know, Twine reads all of this and starts to auto-tag. It starts to tell me the 'people' it came across in the project, the 'organisations', the 'places' and 'other tags' or concepts too. Already the list is impressive. If Twine gets better at learning what your interests are, the more you use it, and I get results within a couple of hours from 49 items, I cannot wait to see more.

The sad thing is that I now have to go to some intense project meetings for a couple of days, and I will not be able to get to know Twine better until I return. But I will be able to find time to show the people I am meeting what Twine already knows about them, and the project, after a couple of hours!

I feel much more organised too! I think tools like Twine are starting to show us what Web 3.0 is really about. I am pretty sure that my personal and team knowledge management work practices are in for a radical change!

So far, I have had extraordinary service from Nova Spivak, and an extraordinary experience in starting to use Twine.

Much more on my beta testing of Twine later.

It's certainly worth following Twine. Check it out and please let me know what you think.

Ron Young

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Better Personal Knowledge Management and Twine

2008-03-09T04:13:00.000-07:00

I have been an interested follower of the writings and work of
Nova Spivak, CEO of Radar Networks in San Francisco.
If you haven't yet come across him, he is the grandson of the late
Professor Peter Drucker, one of my all time heroes,
and Nova has a very enviable track record in founding and
developing web companies to successful IPO's over the years.

Radar Networks have been in stealth mode for quite a while but
in October 2007, they launched an invite-beta version of Twine at
Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco in October 2007.

From their press announcement:

"Radar Networks, a pioneer of Semantic Web technology, today announced the invite-beta of Twine, a new service that gives users a smarter way to share, organize, and find information with people they trust. Twine is one of the first mainstream applications of the Semantic Web, or what is sometimes referred to as Web 3.0"

I immediately put myself down for a beta version as they expand the
final testing phase. I am hoping for an early beta version as I believe Twine could start to change paradigms, both as a teaching tool, and, most importantly, as an effective personal knowledge management tool. I hope that Twine will greatly accelerate my ability to teach, consult and help individuals, teams and organisations, and move more people into the more meaningful Web 3.0 world, to use the Web as a resource to achieve even greater results.

Nova Spivak believes that we can combine the best of the
people focused social web 2.0 tools together with the
semantic technologies that aim to make more sense of documents and the connections between people, and people and documents.

Watching a video from Web2.0 Summit, I respectfully chuckled at
Nova's remark that he is combining the 'wisdom of crowds' with
the 'wisdom of computers' and that Web 3.0 is Web 2.0 with a brain!
Cool!

It's certainly worth following Twine. Check it out and please let me know what you think.

Ron Young

More about Open Source Knowledge Management at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Share, comment and rank your Knowledge Management (KM) Definitions with us all

2008-03-05T00:43:00.000-08:00

Over the next few weeks, we are rolling out a new collaborative website that will allow us all to publish, discuss, review, improve and rank knowledge management topics at www.knowledge-management-online.com.

Today, we launch the first collaborative feature, which is to invite you to share with us all, your definition(s), comments and ranking of knowledge management definitions.

'KM Definitions' is the most popular page on the website, and we are keen to help students, practitioners, consultants and organisations more easily understand, develop and further improve their own meaning and definition.

We will announce further features through this blog, as they become available, in the following days.

Ron Young

More information at www.knowledge-management-online.com

Fuji Xerox - 'Creative Routine', Knowledge Management and Innovation

2008-02-28T03:44:00.000-08:00

It was great to hear Naoki Ogiwara, Consultant, Fuji Xerox, Tokyo present a paper at the 'Technology for Innovation and Knowledge Management' Conference in New Delhi, 12-14th February 2008 entitled 'Knowledge Management for Innovation:- Embedding “Creative Routine”to Build an Innovative Organization'.

What's very interesting indeed about Naoki Ogiwara is that he is a Consultant "Ba" Conductor, based on his work with Professor Nonaka. He is also currently working, for some time, with Professors Tom Davenport and Larry Prusak at Babson College, USA until his return to Japan in July. So Naoki has a very interesting and rich perspective on KM indeed.

I enjoyed several discussions with him off and on-line and I guess the notion of identifying and embedding the 'Creative Routine' in an organisation is the most intriguing for Innovation. This came out of a very strong International collaboration over the years, and the work of a community of 60 Japanese companies sharing together.

The researchers looked for common characteristics of the best companies globally. Was it advanced IT?, Customer Knowledge?, Supplier / Partner Collaboration?, Strong Top Leadership?.

The answer was none of these were completely common, except one thing - they all had a 'Creative Routine' - a pattern of knowledge creation (called a Creative Routine).

It was found that in the best companies all systems (HR,IT, work process, work environment) supported the Creative Routine, which was shared by people throughout the organisation.

After presenting several case studies, Naoki concluded:

Find out your organizations own “creative routine”

- Look for “legends” or “stories” shared among the organization. It usually contains the essence of your own pattern of knowledge creation.

- It can be built on current one.

- It might need to be build from scratch.

Assess people’s ability and current systems if they fit your ideal creative routine

- Many systems (hiring, promotion, compensation, IT, workplace, business process) often conflict with each other.

Small Start, Achieve Success, and then Expand the Story

- The story has the power to change behavior of many people.

Over the three days presentations, panel discussions and individual questions and culminating in an APO workshop, I found that Naoki has this great ability to present some key messages in a very clear, very understandable, and very powerful way.

He has some good mentors / teachers too - Professors Nonaka,Davenport, Prusak.

Ron Young

More information at:

www-knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Management Solutions for the Graying Workforce

2008-02-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

I hear increasing concern around the world, these days, about how to best capture and retain some of the critical knowledge that organisations are losing, following the loss of baby-boomers as they near retirement age - the graying workforce.

IBM Business Consulting Human Capital Management group have stated that "the aging population will be one of the major social and business issues of the 21st Century, and companies worldwide are starting to examine what this means in terms of skills, knowledge and growth" says Mary Sue Rogers, global leader of this group.

I say give everyone a blog! Teach them how they can help both the individual and the organisation! Teach them how to capture learnings, ideas and insights in a blog, and give them the worktime to write it daily, or at worst weekly!

Teach them how to capture these daily or weekly new learnings, insights and new ideas as a worthy habit. Show them how blogging actually helps them better create, organise, synthesize, and develop their knowledge, as well as capture and retain the rich tacit knowledge gems for themselves and others.

A year of blogging will simply outstrip any other techniques I know to capture, retain, rediscover and reuse this valuable knowledge. Two years, five years, ten years plus of blogging and phew....

I started this blog in January 2006 and I am already constantly amazed, when searching it, at some of the useful insights I have captured and have completely forgotten, concerning some of my professional km consulting activities.

One day, the blogging of personal learnings, ideas and insights will be recognised by the more enlightened organisations as a critical skill for the individual, team and entire organisation.

Blog on. I feel so much better now that I have got that off my chest.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Management, leading KM organizations and leading KM countries

2008-02-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

It was good to meet Rory Chase, MD of Teleos and founder of the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE Awards), again at the 'Technology for Innovation and Knowledge Management' Conference in New Delhi, India on 12-14th February 2008.

I think he has got one thing very right. It's not necessarily about which Nation is leading in the global knowledge economy. What also really matters is how well an Organization is performing in the global knowledge economy.

Example: The Indian Minister of Trade and Industry will say, quite rightly from his perspective, how important it is to bring India into the global knowledge society.
However, WIPRO, headquartered in Bangalore, India, is certainly world class today in the global knowledge economy, and is leading in KM, compared to many other organisations around the world. In fact, WIPRO's two presentations at the conference, from Mr Ved Prakash on 'KM Initiatives in WIPRO', and from Mr Avinash Rao on 'KM for High Value Outsourcing', gave outstanding and quite leading edge presentations on their work with knowledge management. WIPRO are recognised as one the the 'Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises' by many around the world, whatever criteria you choose to recognise and measure this.

So its about developing both strong Nations and strong global organisations. Now this might delight you or horrify you, depending on your standpoint.

Ron Young

More at:
www-knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Management and the UN 'Solution Exchange' for India

2008-02-25T07:56:00.000-08:00

I was really taken aback by a passionate and highly credible presentation from Gopi N Ghosh – Assistant FAO Representative, Food & Nutrition Security Community, at the Second International Conference on Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management in New Delhi on 13th February 2008.

What a pleasure it is to see some really excellent KM work being done in India in food and agriculture, aiming at improving literacy levels and life expectancy, as well as reducing poverty. However, despite the gains, Gopi Gosh stresses that still much remains to be accomplished in the key thematic areas under the framework of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s).

With mounting enthusiasm, Gopi Ghosh described the launch of the UN knowledge sharing platform in India branded as ‘Solution Exchange’. Solution Exchange connects development professionals in similar fields from diverse organizations ranging from Government, bilateral and multilateral development partners and non-governmental organizations to academics, corporates, and the media. It is building ‘Communities of Practice’ through moderated electronic mail groups and also face-to-face interactions and a website. Solution Exchange seeks to empower practitioners by offering them “knowledge on demand” based on solutions from their peers.

Problems and challenges are put as a query and posted to all community members. Members offer advice, experience, contacts or suggestions, within a well thought out framework. A consolidated reply is prepared by the moderator team with a synopsis of original responses, additional resources and links.

True knowledge sharing!

These are available on the website http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in

So far the group has 11 thematic Communities of Practice and 12,000 members, and growing rapidly.

This is a nice way to leverage the knowledge, experience and energies of development practitioners towards the common worthy objective of problem-solving in areas that could make a big difference.

I have never heard a speaker with such positive energy before! At one stage, Gopi was so enthusiastic that he sort of took off ! The success of his great presentation was evidenced by many people keen to exchange business cards with him immediately.

I simply had to join his Solution Exchange and I hope I can share some useful knowledge with the Community. Take a look at the website and please help if you can.

Related link: I had the privilege to be part of a KM and Innovation consulting team for the UN Agency IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) based in Rome last year, in the development of a KM Strategy, which followed on with an Innovation Strategy to assist in the eradication of global extreme rural poverty, within the context of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Free downloads of the KM and Innovation Strategies are available at www.ifad.org links above.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

A very new and very old perspective on Knowledge Management & Innovation from the Timeless Wisdom of India.

2008-02-23T05:17:00.000-08:00

Although I have much to say and write about the Second International Conference on Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management held in New Delhi 12-14th February 2008 in New Delhi, over the next few weeks, I feel compelled today to immediately write about a new perspective and, especially, some new insights I gained from one paper presented by Dr Prem Saran, entitled: ‘Innovation and Knowledge Management: An Indic Play Ethic and Global HR Model’.

The main reason I feel compelled to write about this is that I have always intuitively felt that the spiritual heritage of India, the Vedas, Vedanta, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita for example, are true gifts of timeless wisdom to the world, and it is really only during the last two hundred years that Western thought has been increasingly influenced by this. What I intuited about KM and Indic thought suddenly came together with a simple clarity.

Naturally, I do not wish to pre-empt the publication of this excellent paper in the Conference proceedings, so I will only broadly discuss my immediate thoughts about some of his proposals around Indic thought and my views on effective ‘personal knowledge management’.

Dr Prem Saran proposed that because the Indic is one of the five or six major civilisations of the world, with its own traditional knowledge systems, that by revisiting three of its main cultural traits or values, they would provide the building blocks for a new approach to Innovation and Knowledge Management.

He suggested that it would “open up the possibility that the Indic cultural ethos may actually subsume both modernity and post-modernism, and that it may also thus provide inputs for a pedagogical paradigm shift. In other words, by using certain liberal and humanistic themes of Indian culture, one may be able to promote learning that is contemporary as well as cross-culturally replicable”.

He talked about his simple adaption of ancient yoga and meditation techniques, albeit after he had personally researched and experimented with this over three decades, as functioning as a state-of-the-art tool for superlearning, a meta-learning tool that can promote “generative learning” or “learning how to learn”. I do like this, and again, I refer to the late Professor Peter Drucker who first introduced me to the notion of ‘proper education’ many years ago, by stating that it was not so much the content of what we learn, but learning the best process for accelerated learning which he thought was true education..

Dr Prem Saran’s presentation at the Conference resonated deeply with me because, twenty five years ago, I trained to be a Yoga and Meditation teacher with the British Wheel of Yoga. As part of the Diploma syllabus, all teachers had to become aware of the ancient Indian texts, not least, the Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita.

It was then that I first understood that Veda means knowledge, and it was then that I first learned how the documented ancient rituals and practices, which were in the context of local customs and traditions, were turned into more distilled and universally applicable and timeless knowledge in the Vedanta.

So when Dr Prem Saran talked about yogic disciplines to bring about a much more relaxed state of mind, more receptive to accessing the right brain, more systematically, and very compatible with contemporary neuroscientific findings. When he talked about techniques that bring about mental states that are powerfully conducive to accelerated learning, and move towards greater ‘worldwide outreach’, he had my full attention.

Of course, what is still hotly debated by spiritual and philosophical thinkers, is whether new knowledge is there to be revealed and discovered, or developed through experience. I have never seen this as an either / or argument but a both / and situation.

That’s for another time. But for this blog post, I am so pleased, and excited to be able to say that the Indic traditional knowledge systems have revealed to us that there are some timeless principles and wisdom that can be applied to more effective personal learning and knowledge management.

I look forward to the publication of the Conference proceedings and more blogs. Let me know if you wish to know more about this, and Dr Prem Saran.

(He describes himself as a technocrat (i.e. Engineer-cum-MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, with HR specialization) and Indologist-cum-Anthropologist (with degrees from Universities of Pennsylvania and California)
With about 30 years of experience in the Indian Administrative Service)

You can view a free video of this technique, by Dr Prem Saran, on the main server of the Government of India at www.assam.nic.in

Ron Young

For more information:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Why not become a 'Leading Collaborator in the Global Knowledge Society '

2008-02-21T02:35:00.000-08:00

I do not wish to be disrespectful to any Nation that is seeking to become a key player in the Global Knowledge Economy, but whenever I attend International Conferences on KM, anywhere in the world, I hear the same, and somewhat disturbing, intentions. They are, to become 'Competitive leaders in the Global Knowledge Economy'.

The first work I did for the UK Government Department of Trade and Industry, in the late 1990's was to assist a team develop for the Prime Minister Tony Blair, at the time, to produce a White Paper 'UK Competitiveness in the Global Knowledge Economy'.

Then, whilst working for the European Commission in 2001, the EC declared its intention, through the Lisbon Summit, to make 'Europe Competitive Leaders in the Global Knowledge Economy'.

In 2000, The Singapore Government declared its intent to be the 'Leading Competitive Knowledge Hub for Asia'.

Then, especially at International KM Conferences all around the World, over the last ten years, I have heard every Nation declared its intention to become 'competitive' leaders.

Last week, in New Delhi, India, the Minister for Trade and Industry, Government of India, declared in the Inaugural Address at Second International Conference on Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management the same intention.

As I said earlier, I do not wish to be disrespectful, especially to my hosts, and I certainly know that there are times when it is absolutely right to compete, but, for me, I have always felt that knowledge management is about successful 'collaboration' across teams, business units, companies, countries and regions across the world. The intention of knowledge management, of course, is to break down the silo's (business unit or country) and benefit from open global knowledge exchange. We seem to be missing this point, apart from John Lennon!

How nice it would be to hear a country or world region declare its intent to become the 'Leading Collaborators in the Global Knowledge Society within the next few years!

I haven't heard any country in the world declare that intention yet, have you?

Ron Young

For more information:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management

2008-01-31T05:42:00.000-08:00

I shall be giving a keynote presentation at the Second International Conference on Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management, on 12th-14th February 2008 in New Delhi India.

The conference is jointly organised by:

National Productivity Council,(NPC) New Delhi, India and
Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), Tokyo, Japan.

"Technology and Innovation are becoming the vital tools as well as the outcome of Knowledge Management efforts. The Emerging Global Knowledge Economy will increasingly depend upon the harnessing of Technology and Innovation efforts to derive quantum productivity gains in the new millennium.

Participants from twenty APO member countries have already been confirmed.

The Conference thus will provide a forum for delegates and participants from the Government, Industry, Business, Researchers, Social Institutions and Academics from around the world to discuss and evolve the future prospects for Knowledge Management, and with it, other key aspects, including ICT, Productivity and Innovation."

My keynote is entitled 'Back to Basics, Strategies for Identifying, Creating, Storing, Sharing and Using Knowledge'.

I shall be discussing the importance of combining the best emergent tools and technologies, with the best innovation processes, and, most importantly, aligning them with the best underlying, and timeless, business principles.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Web 3.0 Semantic Wave 2008 Report

2008-01-29T03:30:00.000-08:00

I have just finished reading the free download 27 page Executive Summary of the report by Mills Davis, Managing Director, Project 10X, entitled:

'Semantic Wave 2008 Report:Industry Roadmap to Web 3.0 &
Multibillion Dollar Market Opportunities'.

Project10X is a Washington, DC based research consultancy specializing in next wave semantic technologies and solutions.

Mills Davis served as principal investigator for the Semantic Wave 2008 research program. A noted consultant and industry analyst, he has authored
more than 100 reports, whitepapers, articles, and industry studies.

I would certainly recommend that you read this well researched and well thought out summary. It has four parts:

1. What is the Semantic Wave?

2. How is Web 3.0 different from previous stages of Internet evolution?

3. Semantic Wave Technology Trends

4. Semantic Wave Markets

I found the Summary Report to be inspiring and very revealing. It certainly underlines the ongoing research I am conducting concerning Semantic Web 3.0 trends, tools and opportunities, and their roles in more effective Knowledge Management. I would be very interested to know what you think?

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Exploring Web 2.0 and Web 3.0

2008-01-28T07:37:00.000-08:00

I am running a one day post conference workshop in London on March 7th, organised by Unicom Seminars entitled 'Exploring Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 ' to Achieve Personal and Organisational Results.
I shall also be attending the 2 day conference 'Web 2.0 and Beyond' on 5-6th March.

David Gurteen is running a one day pre-conference workshop 'Effective Knowledge Working' on 4th March.

Here are the details of my workshop:

"Just knowing and using the best emerging tools is not enough to achieve effective personal and organisational results. With web 2.0 and beyond, it is now critical to re-visit and then combine, both the timeless principles of achieving results, together with applying the best emerging tools, to gain success.

This workshop will take delegates through a practical framework and process that links the new rapidly emerging and rapidly changing web services, tools and web phenomena to the non-changing, even timeless principles of achieving better results as individuals, teams, networks, organisations and communities. It also explores future web scenarios, intelligence and better sense making towards a more meaningful global web.

Designed for information and knowledge workers, the workshop will cover:

• Achieving personal and organisational goals and the Semantic Web 3.0
• The more effective use of time management in a global 24hr day
• Developing and managing dynamic relationships using web 2.0 social networking tools
• Working together with wiki's in virtual teams and through mass collaboration spaces
• Avoiding information overload and managing personal and organisational knowledge

The Presenter: Ron Young, Knowledge Associates

Ron Young has been an avid daily user and researcher of the emerging web and results tools, and has combined them with his experience of teaching time, task, information and knowledge management, since the 1980's.

He will build on the conference 'Web 2.0 and Beyond' by sharing his personal experiences, presenting new concepts and tools, facilitate the shared experiences and discussions from the workshop, and facilitates a unique process to help participants, as individuals and organisations, achieve better results."

I hope to see some of you there.

Ron Young

More information at: www.knowledge-management-online.com

The Semantic Web 3.0 and The Knowledge Navigator

2008-01-08T00:49:00.000-08:00

Over the next two weeks, I have a series of meetings in London where I will be discussing with colleagues the state of the art of the Semantic Web 3.0 and some recently launched web services and tools.

My earlier blog talked about twine.com, from Radar Networks, which is now in its first beta phase, and I will be talking about a few more promising tools over the next weeks.

But today, I was so pleasantly surprised to find the video from Apple Computers, made in 1987 (Happy 20 years anniversary) called The Knowledge Navigator.

It had a big impact on my thinking then, and it is so interesting to see it again in the context of the more meaningful semantic web developments.

If you haven't seen this 5 minute video, take a look.

What do you think about these developments?

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM and the 'learning village'

2007-12-04T06:20:00.000-08:00

I have just spent three days visiting 'the learning village', in Cotignac, Provence, South France. It is about one hour from St Tropez and one and a half hours from Cannes and Nice. It reminded me of the importance that inspiration, atmosphere and environment makes to the learning and knowledge sharing process.

The learning village is actually a 'village within a village' and was developed by two very good friends and work colleagues of mine, Claus and Viveca Moller.

Whereas I have always known the power of good storytelling to transfer knowledge by, not least, engaging all of our senses, to create a 'high and very rich bandwidth',
I had never quite thought about creating the same experience, to 'touch all of our senses' by embracing and combining beautiful natural surroundings, works of art and a more natural and laid back atmosphere.

As Claus and Viveca say 'it is as if time stands still - an experience to be savoured by body and soul'. Claus is an internationally renowned keynote speaker, consultant and management guru. He is a superb natural story teller and educator.

So I now see the learning village as an environment very conducive to creativity and to sharing knowledge.

I am sure that there are some strong principles here that we can take back into our workplaces to make us even more effective knowledge workers. I would recommend their learning village "Les 4 Moulins" as the ideal corporate retreat, seminar and meeting venue.

Meanwhile, I will enjoy the spectacular views, the vineyards, the olive groves, the sculpture park and the art, inspired by Hundertwasser and Gaudi amongst others. The wine is very good too!

I look forward to attending Claus's 6 day 'Practical Leadership' retreat in late March 2008.

Views - nature - art - inspiration - atmosphere - recreation

A great, and very pleasant formula for knowledge creation and knowledge transfer.

Any other thoughts and ideas about inspiring learning environments?

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com