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
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Knowledge Management Solutions for the Graying Workforce
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
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
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
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
Monday, February 25, 2008
Knowledge Management and the UN 'Solution Exchange' for India
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
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
Saturday, February 23, 2008
A very new and very old perspective on Knowledge Management & Innovation from the Timeless Wisdom of India.
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
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
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Why not become a 'Leading Collaborator in the Global Knowledge Society '
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
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
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management
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
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
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Web 3.0 Semantic Wave 2008 Report
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
'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
Monday, January 28, 2008
Exploring Web 2.0 and Web 3.0
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
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
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
The Semantic Web 3.0 and The Knowledge Navigator
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
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
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
KM and the 'learning village'
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
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
Monday, December 03, 2007
KM and the 'Attention Age Doctrine' Part 2 by Rick Schefren
On Sunday, I downloaded and read the free ebook 'Attention Age Doctrine' Part 2 by Rick Schefren, founder of Strategic Profits, Delray Beach Florida, USA. I was interested because he talks about solid principles, strategies and methods to successfuly create, distribute and sell your knowledge on-line. This report links some of these principles to the phenomena of Web 2.0. Of course, the initial primary messages are about how to gain attention from a world suffering from a 'chronic case of attention deficit'.
As a European, I normally do not warm very well to the often very direct, and sometimes arrogant claims made by many US companies about creating even greater success with your on-line business on the web. I often find them too much 'in my face'.
Rick Schefren is certainly direct with his claims, that's for sure. But he has a reason to do so.You cannot argue with the fact that his reputation, credibility, growth and success is extraordinary and first class. I always have the time and attention, and great respect, for people who actually produce extraordinary results!
So I read the Attention Age Doctrine and, I have to say, I found it to be inspiring and very reassuring. I had, for several years, suspected that much knowledge content should be free on the web, and that's why I became very interested and involved in Open Source Knowledge initiatives.
Here is a quick summary of the points I noted from Rick's Attention Age Doctrine that particularly inspired and interested me. They cannot possibly do justice to his detailed report so I strongly recommend you take a read too. Some of his messages may simply reconfirm what many of us already know and feel, but some are quite new, and some are quite radical. Here are my noted summary nuggets:
* There is a sea change in the Internet marketing landscape
* There is chronic attention deficit disorder, even more information and interruption overload
* So it's all about ATTENTION. Attention is more valuable than money.
* We need to give free and valuable content just to get attention
(He quotes the innovative example of a Japanese drink vending machine that offers free drinks in return for your attention to a certain amount of advertising'
* Generally, people are becoming less trusting of marketers and advertising and traditional proprietary owned media, so you have to build a bridge of trust with your prospects - from pitcher to partner; from salesperson to sage
* People give attention to those they trust and they trust those who have demonstrated that they are here to help and provide valuable products and services.
* It's all about peer to peer trust (P2P) and 'word of mouth' is number 1!
* Become a Trusted Advisor, always providing great insights
Social interactivity is changing everything. Web 2.0 encourages people to join in conversations. Media has become HUMAN.
We are transforming from simple communication to in depth conversation; from talking at people to talking with people.
Remember, learning is lifelong and you need much more time as a student than as an expert.
So who are the best known names? Who are getting the most attention?
Who are the most trusted?
So Rick's recommended strategic actions, in summary, are:
1. Map your market
2. Monitor your market
3. Join your market
then move towards building your own Community :
1. Build your market
2. Lead your market
3. Sell to your market (by asking them what they really want)
Finally, he suggests the following 4 new rules:
1. Your marketing cannot defeat a Community
2. You can't trick people
3. There is nowhere to hide on the web
4. Your secrets aren't safe
(What comes up when you are Googled?)
"The web is emerging as the biggest lie detector and truth finder"
So the new guiding principle is TRANSPARENCY
"There is a big payoff to being honest, ethical and providing value - and it's huge!"
I really like what Rick says here.
When I started teaching knowledge management through seminars and workshops, I devised a model which had 4 key components
1. Trust - as the foundation
2. Communication - open, frequent and two way
3. Learning - as an ongoing result of open information communications
4. Share - knowledge as far and as fast as you can
So, naturally, I resonated highly with Rick when he finally recommended:
"Trust that by being open with what you know, and by sharing your knowledge and ideas, the world will reward your efforts"
So, if this summary inspires you, I recommend you download his free ebook asap.
I would really be interested in knowing what you think about this.
You have my attention, that's for sure.
Ron Young
More information at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
As a European, I normally do not warm very well to the often very direct, and sometimes arrogant claims made by many US companies about creating even greater success with your on-line business on the web. I often find them too much 'in my face'.
Rick Schefren is certainly direct with his claims, that's for sure. But he has a reason to do so.You cannot argue with the fact that his reputation, credibility, growth and success is extraordinary and first class. I always have the time and attention, and great respect, for people who actually produce extraordinary results!
So I read the Attention Age Doctrine and, I have to say, I found it to be inspiring and very reassuring. I had, for several years, suspected that much knowledge content should be free on the web, and that's why I became very interested and involved in Open Source Knowledge initiatives.
Here is a quick summary of the points I noted from Rick's Attention Age Doctrine that particularly inspired and interested me. They cannot possibly do justice to his detailed report so I strongly recommend you take a read too. Some of his messages may simply reconfirm what many of us already know and feel, but some are quite new, and some are quite radical. Here are my noted summary nuggets:
* There is a sea change in the Internet marketing landscape
* There is chronic attention deficit disorder, even more information and interruption overload
* So it's all about ATTENTION. Attention is more valuable than money.
* We need to give free and valuable content just to get attention
(He quotes the innovative example of a Japanese drink vending machine that offers free drinks in return for your attention to a certain amount of advertising'
* Generally, people are becoming less trusting of marketers and advertising and traditional proprietary owned media, so you have to build a bridge of trust with your prospects - from pitcher to partner; from salesperson to sage
* People give attention to those they trust and they trust those who have demonstrated that they are here to help and provide valuable products and services.
* It's all about peer to peer trust (P2P) and 'word of mouth' is number 1!
* Become a Trusted Advisor, always providing great insights
Social interactivity is changing everything. Web 2.0 encourages people to join in conversations. Media has become HUMAN.
We are transforming from simple communication to in depth conversation; from talking at people to talking with people.
Remember, learning is lifelong and you need much more time as a student than as an expert.
So who are the best known names? Who are getting the most attention?
Who are the most trusted?
So Rick's recommended strategic actions, in summary, are:
1. Map your market
2. Monitor your market
3. Join your market
then move towards building your own Community :
1. Build your market
2. Lead your market
3. Sell to your market (by asking them what they really want)
Finally, he suggests the following 4 new rules:
1. Your marketing cannot defeat a Community
2. You can't trick people
3. There is nowhere to hide on the web
4. Your secrets aren't safe
(What comes up when you are Googled?)
"The web is emerging as the biggest lie detector and truth finder"
So the new guiding principle is TRANSPARENCY
"There is a big payoff to being honest, ethical and providing value - and it's huge!"
I really like what Rick says here.
When I started teaching knowledge management through seminars and workshops, I devised a model which had 4 key components
1. Trust - as the foundation
2. Communication - open, frequent and two way
3. Learning - as an ongoing result of open information communications
4. Share - knowledge as far and as fast as you can
So, naturally, I resonated highly with Rick when he finally recommended:
"Trust that by being open with what you know, and by sharing your knowledge and ideas, the world will reward your efforts"
So, if this summary inspires you, I recommend you download his free ebook asap.
I would really be interested in knowing what you think about this.
You have my attention, that's for sure.
Ron Young
More information at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
Monday, November 26, 2007
Personal knowledge management and Twine
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
and he 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
recently, 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 have put myself down for a beta version as they expand the
final testing phase.
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 makemore sense of 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.
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
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
and he 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
recently, 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 have put myself down for a beta version as they expand the
final testing phase.
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 makemore sense of 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.
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
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
A lot to juggle at KM Singapore 2007
I was very glad to be invited by Patrick Lambe of Straits Knowledge, in his capacity as President of the Information and Knowledge Management Society of Singapore (iKMS)to give a keynote speech at the Annual KM Singapore 2007 Conference on 1st November 2008.
This conference immediately followed KM Asia, in Singapore, organised by Ark Group.
I think the two events complimented each other extremely well. KM Asia consisted mainly of presentations and an exhibition, with some interactive discussion panels and David Gurteen's Knowledge Cafe, whereas KM Singapore 2007 was mainly interactive group work, reports and feedback on an iKMS survey of member country status with KM, and how Singapore rated to the rest of the world, and very short case study presentations (6 mins) to enable participants to choose two of the most relevant case studies to explore as interactive groups in the afternoon.
My keynote presentation, entitled 'How to Build KM Competencies' was just 30 minutes to put a global KM competence development perspective into a better context for Singapore and to assist and enable the workgroups to better identify and develop, from well prepared archetypes by iKMS and Straits Knowledge, KM competencies relevant to their needs.
The conference and workshops ended with a good discussion on the role that a Professional Society should play for KM practitioners / members in developing personal and organisational competencies.
I think this event is a must for serious KM practitioners. I am sure the participants felt that the highly interactive discussions and participative workshops were of high value.I learned a great deal and made some great new contacts and friends from around Asia.It was great to see David Gurteen actively participating with much enthusiasm during the day.
One new contact for me was Naguib Chowdhury, who runs, in Malaysia, KMTalk.
Naguib has blogged this event well and includes pictures too, so I will not repeat his comment on the event, apart from one thing - juggling!
When I worked with Patrick Lambe in Kuala Lumpur is September 2007 I casually mentioned that I taught many workshop delegates, over the years, to juggle in their refreshment breaks and lunchtime. So many delegates have told me how refreshing and exciting it was to do, during an otherwise very cerebral day! I also use the metaphor of juggling to teach the three components of competence - knowledge, skills and attitude. (Those in the group that have the attitude 'Yes, I can, and I will juggle by the end of the day, normally do)
I thought no more of it until I arrived in Singapore and Patrick said, 'I have got all the juggling balls ready for everyone!' Naguib's blog has the pictures.
Seriously, it was a great day with much discussed. Total participation of all, some good conclusions, and great fun.
I would highly recommend iKMS Membership to all serious KM practitioners and Organisations.
Ron Young
www.knowledge-management-online.com
This conference immediately followed KM Asia, in Singapore, organised by Ark Group.
I think the two events complimented each other extremely well. KM Asia consisted mainly of presentations and an exhibition, with some interactive discussion panels and David Gurteen's Knowledge Cafe, whereas KM Singapore 2007 was mainly interactive group work, reports and feedback on an iKMS survey of member country status with KM, and how Singapore rated to the rest of the world, and very short case study presentations (6 mins) to enable participants to choose two of the most relevant case studies to explore as interactive groups in the afternoon.
My keynote presentation, entitled 'How to Build KM Competencies' was just 30 minutes to put a global KM competence development perspective into a better context for Singapore and to assist and enable the workgroups to better identify and develop, from well prepared archetypes by iKMS and Straits Knowledge, KM competencies relevant to their needs.
The conference and workshops ended with a good discussion on the role that a Professional Society should play for KM practitioners / members in developing personal and organisational competencies.
I think this event is a must for serious KM practitioners. I am sure the participants felt that the highly interactive discussions and participative workshops were of high value.I learned a great deal and made some great new contacts and friends from around Asia.It was great to see David Gurteen actively participating with much enthusiasm during the day.
One new contact for me was Naguib Chowdhury, who runs, in Malaysia, KMTalk.
Naguib has blogged this event well and includes pictures too, so I will not repeat his comment on the event, apart from one thing - juggling!
When I worked with Patrick Lambe in Kuala Lumpur is September 2007 I casually mentioned that I taught many workshop delegates, over the years, to juggle in their refreshment breaks and lunchtime. So many delegates have told me how refreshing and exciting it was to do, during an otherwise very cerebral day! I also use the metaphor of juggling to teach the three components of competence - knowledge, skills and attitude. (Those in the group that have the attitude 'Yes, I can, and I will juggle by the end of the day, normally do)
I thought no more of it until I arrived in Singapore and Patrick said, 'I have got all the juggling balls ready for everyone!' Naguib's blog has the pictures.
Seriously, it was a great day with much discussed. Total participation of all, some good conclusions, and great fun.
I would highly recommend iKMS Membership to all serious KM practitioners and Organisations.
Ron Young
www.knowledge-management-online.com
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
One Global University? - radically new ways to teach
It's the spontaneous insights, that can occur when casually networking at conferences, that can sometime's produce some valuable knowledge nuggets!
Concerning knowledge creation and sharing, everything is moving on the Web towards One!
One Planetary Encyclopedia of Life, inspired by one global Wikipedia etc, and the list will rapidly grow, I am sure.
Whilst in Singapore, two weeks ago, I casually met in a coffee break with David Gurteen, from Gurteen Knowledge, and Roger Smith from the National University of Singapore.
Roger inspired me by telling us how many University students these days take their laptops into lectures. Whilst a lecture is proceeding, some of the students may also be chatting with other students through the Web and comparing notes. Even with lectures in the same building.
Apparently, one student hadn't turned up for a lecture as he had too much to drink the night before, and was feeling fragile. A student sent him a link to an Ipod of the best rated lecturer in the world on the same lecture subject.
I thought - why attend mediocre lectures when you can have world class experts at your fingertips in the global knowledge space? Why not One Global University with the best teachers in the world?
Well, I guess of course that we still prefer many other social ingredients like physical interaction, wherever possible, and a sense of community, I am sure.
But I am also sure that radical and better ways to teach and transfer knowledge in social networks, and what I would call 'best of breed streams', will certainly emerge into the final mix too. Like music producers, students will become increasingly capable, and personally responsible, for mixing, mashing and producing their own educational recipes!
Ron Young
For more information on Open Source KM:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
Concerning knowledge creation and sharing, everything is moving on the Web towards One!
One Planetary Encyclopedia of Life, inspired by one global Wikipedia etc, and the list will rapidly grow, I am sure.
Whilst in Singapore, two weeks ago, I casually met in a coffee break with David Gurteen, from Gurteen Knowledge, and Roger Smith from the National University of Singapore.
Roger inspired me by telling us how many University students these days take their laptops into lectures. Whilst a lecture is proceeding, some of the students may also be chatting with other students through the Web and comparing notes. Even with lectures in the same building.
Apparently, one student hadn't turned up for a lecture as he had too much to drink the night before, and was feeling fragile. A student sent him a link to an Ipod of the best rated lecturer in the world on the same lecture subject.
I thought - why attend mediocre lectures when you can have world class experts at your fingertips in the global knowledge space? Why not One Global University with the best teachers in the world?
Well, I guess of course that we still prefer many other social ingredients like physical interaction, wherever possible, and a sense of community, I am sure.
But I am also sure that radical and better ways to teach and transfer knowledge in social networks, and what I would call 'best of breed streams', will certainly emerge into the final mix too. Like music producers, students will become increasingly capable, and personally responsible, for mixing, mashing and producing their own educational recipes!
Ron Young
For more information on Open Source KM:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
Knowledge Transfer - World's leading conference organizer using Second Life
Yet another radical way to transfer knowledge has emerged!
'The world's leading conference organizer,Institute for International Research (IIR), have recently announced plans to organize, promote, and run events in the virtual 3D world Second Life.
IIR's hard launch into Second Life will take place in November 2007 at the Inaugural conference on Managing Virtual Distance (www.iirusa.com/virtual), where they have secured the Founder and CEO of Linden Labs, Philip Rosedale, to deliver a keynote presentation on the topic of Virtual Worlds Technology. Mr. Rosedale, who was recently named one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People on the Planet, will be delivering his presentation in Avatar form at the IIR island in Second Life.
Additional information can be found at www.iirusa.com/secondlifeevents.
Well, for the past year and a bit, whenever I have visited my eldest grandson in the UK (5yrs), within minutes he immediately wants me to connect my laptop and spend the next few hours with him endlessly exploring in Second Life. We both share the same Avatar.
His generation are naturally becoming very skilled in navigating the virtual world and I am sure we will see even more radical ways to better enjoy communicating,collaborating, learning and sharing knowledge!
I must check if there is a virtual community of km practitioners and consultants in Second Life. Anyone interested?
Ron Young
More about Open Source KM at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
'The world's leading conference organizer,Institute for International Research (IIR), have recently announced plans to organize, promote, and run events in the virtual 3D world Second Life.
IIR's hard launch into Second Life will take place in November 2007 at the Inaugural conference on Managing Virtual Distance (www.iirusa.com/virtual), where they have secured the Founder and CEO of Linden Labs, Philip Rosedale, to deliver a keynote presentation on the topic of Virtual Worlds Technology. Mr. Rosedale, who was recently named one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People on the Planet, will be delivering his presentation in Avatar form at the IIR island in Second Life.
Additional information can be found at www.iirusa.com/secondlifeevents.
Well, for the past year and a bit, whenever I have visited my eldest grandson in the UK (5yrs), within minutes he immediately wants me to connect my laptop and spend the next few hours with him endlessly exploring in Second Life. We both share the same Avatar.
His generation are naturally becoming very skilled in navigating the virtual world and I am sure we will see even more radical ways to better enjoy communicating,collaborating, learning and sharing knowledge!
I must check if there is a virtual community of km practitioners and consultants in Second Life. Anyone interested?
Ron Young
More about Open Source KM at:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
Sunday, November 11, 2007
A review of KM Asia 2007
I was very glad of the opportunity to visit Singapore, to attend the KM Asia conference and exhibition, and to deliver a keynote and participate in KM Singapore, during the week of 29th October through 2nd November. This blog will focus on KM Asia and I will follow with KM Singapore separately and later in the week.
It’s a rather long blog and I must confess I found writing it of great benefit in organising my thoughts. I have focused firstly on the state of KM in Asia, secondly my views on the KM Asia 2007 conference, and thirdly I focused on some key points and new learnings and insights for me from each of the four keynote speakers, Verna Allee, Jeff Kelly, Bob Buckman and Dave Snowden.
Coincidentally, I found the brochure of KM Asia 2001 that I participated in, before my trip, and I found it interesting to compare speakers, themes and topics and new developments.
Of course, International conferences, whatever the subject, are very great contributors to new knowledge creation, through presentations, papers, debates, networked conversations and, not least, the renewal and building of relationships and communities.
But conferences are also a very visible barometer of the health of the subject of the conference, the degree of new knowledge creation, and the growth and sustainability of the discipline, practise or profession. Also, the number and type of delegates that attend is very informing. If the same delegates choose to return, year on year, as well as attracting new delegates, and especially if there is that ‘buzz’ that ‘sizzle’, that is indeed a sign of a healthy and valuable subject.
Unfortunately, I didn’t see very much of this at KM Asia this year. There wasn’t that much excitement for me. When I knew I was to attend, I called up my contacts and friends, some of which are very influential in KM circles in Singapore and Asia, to see if they were attending this year, so that we could meet up. For a variety of more pressing reasons, they were unable to attend.
So I asked myself and a few colleagues that I met in Singapore, the normal questions:
Has KM reached its peak in Asia? Was it the quality of presentations and content? Should it have been organised differently?
Certainly, Singapore Government and Singapore Organisations, and the Asian Region have been working very hard with KM for many years, and other parts of the Region are just becoming very interested and active in the subject. I know this from personal experience of working with them on developing KM strategies, embedding KM processes and developing KM competencies.
I consider knowledge to be a perennial and an evergreen, and it should always be high on the agenda for innovative organisations to discover and learn new and better ways to create, transfer and apply new knowledge to enable them to better achieve, or even exceed, their objectives – be they for profit, for service, for value creation for stakeholders and/or for the common good of humanity and the planet.
Certainly the new wave of web based social tools has demonstrated some radically new ways to communicate and collectively create knowledge, radically new ways to collaborate and innovate on a mass scale, and radically new ways to learn and share knowledge. We now have radically new instruments to license knowledge through creative commons and knowledge commons, and I am sure there will be much more to come as we grow and globalise our knowledge exponentially.
I would go as far as to say that the web has radically and fundamentally changed the economics of knowledge.
So I cannot believe, at all, that there is a reduction of interest in knowledge as a subject. The evidence is still that more and more people around the world are increasingly even more interested in participating in the global knowledge economy.
And now, of course, we are starting to see a proliferation of new conferences, seminars and workshops on Social Computing, Web 2.0 and even the emerging new Semantic Web 2.0 or Meaningful Web/Computing. Activity and interest and growth and buzz in this area are exponential right now.
So knowledge is very alive and well, and of course, always will be, but the perception of the new wave of web services and tools, and their implications for knowledge driven individuals, teams, organisations and communities seems, for many, to be that it is a different subject, or I have even heard some say, the death of knowledge management.
Then we regularly read about organisations that say they are doing KM through implementing these social tools, especially wiki’s and blogs. There is some truth here, and they are making a great contribution to better knowledge management, of course, but when I consider the complete processes that practitioners and consultants have developed over the years, for creating, transferring and applying knowledge effectively, these Organisations still have a long way to go.
Even worse, I see even less knowledge driven organisations feeling the need for a knowledge strategy. But this has always been a worry of mine. A concern that senior managers do not seem to see the need of a wise investment in some strategic thinking that can make a big difference, and even radically transform the organisation for the better. There is still a sad lack of strategic thinking at all levels, whether it be for the strategic use of time, information, relationships or knowledge, to name a few.
People like novelty. People like new and refreshing perspectives. People like to be associated with exciting new developments. Otherwise, people get bored. That’s why we have ‘fashion’ and that also explains, to a degree, why we have fads. But the problem with this is that we tend to rush into the next search for the quick win, the silver bullet, or even the next holy grail, and repeatedly ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. Such good work has been done in helping us all to better manage our time and our lives, our work, our relationships, more innovative processes, our information and, of course, our knowledge. But I hear too many people saying that these fads are over. They say that time management was a fad of the 1980’s, process reengineering and CRM were fads of the 1990’s that didn’t work, and now knowledge management is a fad.
I would like to make an appeal to conference organisers. I would like us to be better reminded, through conference, of the underlying and even timeless and unchanging principles of our subject, and the need to combine BOTH the timeless principles AND the ever changing, naturally emerging knowledge, methods, tools and techniques. Just focusing on the new emerging and rapidly changing tools, or indeed, just the principles, is not enough. Put them together in new combinations and the extraordinary emerges naturally!
As far as KM Asia is concerned, I heard criticisms from several delegates about the model that favours financial sponsorships of different levels of vendor speaking and of chairing the conference. The Chairperson for the conference was Gary Szukalski, Vice President, Field Marketing, Autonomy Inc and I thought he was an excellent Chairperson in the way he conducted and facilitated the conference and the way he distilled key points. But even Gary said on the platform on day two, in the afternoon, that ‘the good news is that there are no more vendor presentations and we know you want more objective presentations from organisations and practitioners’. I was told, at dinner later in the evening, that in Australia people now increasingly walk out of vendor presentations in conferences as a principle.
Let’s not forget the hard facts of commercial business life and if it were not for organisations like Ark Group, who take all the risks and who need to be funded adequately, we would not be able to enjoy events like KM Asia. But the challenge I put to commercial conference organisers is to continually examine better alternative ways to fund models that will bring about more objectivity.
David Gurteen brings enormous enthusiasm and objectivity to any conference, but I arrived in Singapore too late to attend his Knowledge Café. I would have liked to do that.
But all the keynotes were from organisations and practitioners and were very objective. And there was some good new learning, insights and new knowledge for me here.
Unfortunately for me, I could not get to day 1 keynotes but I studied the presentation slides from both Verna Allee, Verna Allee Associates, on ‘Knowledge, networks and value creation’ and Jeff Kelly, Director of Knowledge Strategy, Hinchcliff & Co on ‘Enterprise 2.0 and knowledge management. I also talked to delegates about the day 1 keynotes. We all concluded that they were very informing indeed and we thought they added very great value to the conference.
From Verna, in particular, I liked the way she describes ‘Three Meta Capabilities’ – Business Innovation, Social Innovation and Technology Innovation and also her thoughts on ‘Dialogue vs Critical Thinking’ and the art of dialogue. I rather liked
‘An Emerging Value Model’ that describes broadly accepted categories of Intangible Assets. This led her to a Value Conversion Strategy Model and a Value Network Strategy Model that make very good sense to me. One of her concluding slides entitled ‘Increasing Prosperity’ has an excellent quote from Alan Briskin ‘The capacity to honour the collective consciousness and to act on behalf of the whole is truly the work of the next 100 years’. That’s cool.
From Jeff Kelly, I learned the working definition for Web 2.0, from their Web 2 University perspective to be:
“Web 2.0 is networked products that explicitly leverage network effects.”
His presentation confirmed many of the discussions I have been having recently about the disruptive effects and challenges that Web 2.0 poses for the established Enterprise and he has some good recommendations for an E2 strategy, not least ‘Start small and keep expectation low on a small budget’ You can see the work of Web 2.0 University at www.web20university.com
I did attend both keynotes on Day 2 from Bob Buckman and Dave Snowden.
Bob Buckman never fails to inspire me. I have heard him several times before and I had the fortune to have a few words with Bob in the VIP breakfast just before he kicked off Day 2.
It is not so much that I learn new things from Bob, although I have certainly learned from him from time to time, but, as I said earlier, he never fails to inspire me. And that is what Leadership is all about. I would certainly and completely trust Bob to ‘pack my parachute’.
How encouraging to hear a successful leader of people say ‘ I believe we should establish the cultural paradigm of creating unlimited opportunities for our associates to grow and to be the best that they can be’ and ‘We need to invest in knowledge systems like any other investment that will redefine an organization if we want improved collaboration and innovation’.
He reminded me, when discussing collaboration, networks and Metcalf’s Law that ‘the value of a network increases as the square of the number of users on the network that we are all building’. I realised again, that we are building a huge new neural network out there on the web with increasingly new and massive flows of thoughts, ideas, insights and valuable conversations.
I liked his powerful statements on collaboration, firstly to ‘reduce the number of transmissions of knowledge to one, to achieve the least distortion of knowledge’
And secondly, to ‘focus on changing the speed of response to any need toward instantaneity’.
But what I resonated with the most was Bob’s presentation of a ‘Community of One’.
Mentally, emotionally and spiritually, he has a powerful point here. I believe that he is also talking about the emergence of the global individual and not just the global organization.
Whereas Bob inspires me emotionally the most, Dave Snowden never fails to inspire me intellectually the most. He gets me to think, whether it’s through challenging my thoughts and beliefs, and certainly challenging the status quo, or whether it is through excellent new thinking.
I haven’t heard Dave for a while, so I was not sure in which direction he was moving.
He started by repeating his challenge that he said he first made in 2004/5 that ‘KM is at the end of its life cycle’. I have made my views on that too, earlier in this blog.
I certainly liked ‘Switch from fail safe design to safe fail experimentation’ and his comment that the IT profession is stuck in an old age. His messages on creating evolutionary environments and his criticisms of the SECI model and the data/information/knowledge spectrum are well known.
But the greatest new insight for me was the way he talked about “knowledge in the human brain as ‘fragmented’ and is reassembled in the context of need” I resonated with his explanation of fragmented patterns and especially “the way we know is not the same as the way we describe what we know”
It is quite a compelling argument to talk about fragmented narrative and not structured knowledge bases, although I see a need for BOTH/AND albeit much more fragmented and, as Dave calls it ‘messy knowledge’ rather than structured.
I think Dave is an ‘upside down thinker’ which I mean as a compliment, as he tends to favour opposites from standard perception, like ‘tolerated failure’ and one tolerated failure can be better than 20,000 successes.
Generally, I am quite familiar with his good work on Complexity and Narrative Development.
He advised:
Make it all available
Learn in the sandpits of Wiki
Consolidate blogs into Wiki’s
Allow freedom
Ban email attachments and
Hotlink into document repositories
For the first time, I heard Dave say that the new technologies of Social Computing are matching the theory of KM.
His best theory for me was simply ‘order – mess – order – mess’
His truism that ‘facebook creates an allergic reaction on Management’ made us all chuckle. I have just leaped into Facebook, thanks to David Gurteen's prompting, and together with my personal experience of blogging, wiki's, youtube etc I realise the fears and concerns that many, less enlightened, managers will have.
I remember giving an after dinner talk on KM in Hong Kong several years ago, focusing on the true power of knowledge sharing. Afterwards, the Chief Executive from a large mainland China business said to me 'I love KM, I want you to come to China and teach me everything you know about KM, but don't tell any of my employees!' I realised that either I had not communicated very well about knowledge sharing and/or he may have had a great hidden fear to lose control. I see lot's of this all around the world in many management teams today.
But, getting back to Dave Snowden's keynote at KM Asia, although I have heard it from him before, it was still refreshingly provocative and entertaining for Dave to tell the audience, especially in Singapore, that ‘you know when you have reached the end of a cycle when Government adopt as Industrial Best Practices what traditional Industry has abandoned already’
Generally, in KM Asia 2007, I would have liked to have heard more discussion in the conference on Open Source Knowledge, Knowledge Commons and other emerging instruments, which are my special interest at the moment, and which I think will make a big impact and contribute to even more radical KM developments in the future.
Talking about Knowledge Commons, I could not get to KM World in San Jose, but Stuart Henshall has done a great job in blogging it and he refers to a talk by Richard McDermott – Tragedy of the Knowledge Commons – which didn’t do much for him. I hope to be able to talk about the developments and implications for Open Source Knowledge in KM conferences next year.
I feel that we need more than one Dave Snowden, we need a few actually, to keep challenging us on everything from BOTH underlying timeless principles, to knowledge policy, knowledge strategy, knowledge processes, new knowledge technologies AND naturally emerging properties, complexity, chaos and messy knowledge. We need some more new blood too. No disrespect to the oldies, and I am one of the senior members that’s been around for a long time, but we need some new stars to inspire us and move us forward with new thinking, alongside the established thinkers.
The big question. Will I go to KM Asia next year?
If I were living in Asia – most certainly
As I live in Europe - If I am working in Asia at the time – most certainly
As I live in Europe - If I am invited as a speaker, certainly.
If not invited, and it is at my cost from Europe just to attend the conference, maybe, unlikely, but totally depending on the speakers, the themes and topics.
Good luck Ark Group and congratulations on running successful conferences over many years.
Ron Young
For more information on Open Source KM go to:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
It’s a rather long blog and I must confess I found writing it of great benefit in organising my thoughts. I have focused firstly on the state of KM in Asia, secondly my views on the KM Asia 2007 conference, and thirdly I focused on some key points and new learnings and insights for me from each of the four keynote speakers, Verna Allee, Jeff Kelly, Bob Buckman and Dave Snowden.
Coincidentally, I found the brochure of KM Asia 2001 that I participated in, before my trip, and I found it interesting to compare speakers, themes and topics and new developments.
Of course, International conferences, whatever the subject, are very great contributors to new knowledge creation, through presentations, papers, debates, networked conversations and, not least, the renewal and building of relationships and communities.
But conferences are also a very visible barometer of the health of the subject of the conference, the degree of new knowledge creation, and the growth and sustainability of the discipline, practise or profession. Also, the number and type of delegates that attend is very informing. If the same delegates choose to return, year on year, as well as attracting new delegates, and especially if there is that ‘buzz’ that ‘sizzle’, that is indeed a sign of a healthy and valuable subject.
Unfortunately, I didn’t see very much of this at KM Asia this year. There wasn’t that much excitement for me. When I knew I was to attend, I called up my contacts and friends, some of which are very influential in KM circles in Singapore and Asia, to see if they were attending this year, so that we could meet up. For a variety of more pressing reasons, they were unable to attend.
So I asked myself and a few colleagues that I met in Singapore, the normal questions:
Has KM reached its peak in Asia? Was it the quality of presentations and content? Should it have been organised differently?
Certainly, Singapore Government and Singapore Organisations, and the Asian Region have been working very hard with KM for many years, and other parts of the Region are just becoming very interested and active in the subject. I know this from personal experience of working with them on developing KM strategies, embedding KM processes and developing KM competencies.
I consider knowledge to be a perennial and an evergreen, and it should always be high on the agenda for innovative organisations to discover and learn new and better ways to create, transfer and apply new knowledge to enable them to better achieve, or even exceed, their objectives – be they for profit, for service, for value creation for stakeholders and/or for the common good of humanity and the planet.
Certainly the new wave of web based social tools has demonstrated some radically new ways to communicate and collectively create knowledge, radically new ways to collaborate and innovate on a mass scale, and radically new ways to learn and share knowledge. We now have radically new instruments to license knowledge through creative commons and knowledge commons, and I am sure there will be much more to come as we grow and globalise our knowledge exponentially.
I would go as far as to say that the web has radically and fundamentally changed the economics of knowledge.
So I cannot believe, at all, that there is a reduction of interest in knowledge as a subject. The evidence is still that more and more people around the world are increasingly even more interested in participating in the global knowledge economy.
And now, of course, we are starting to see a proliferation of new conferences, seminars and workshops on Social Computing, Web 2.0 and even the emerging new Semantic Web 2.0 or Meaningful Web/Computing. Activity and interest and growth and buzz in this area are exponential right now.
So knowledge is very alive and well, and of course, always will be, but the perception of the new wave of web services and tools, and their implications for knowledge driven individuals, teams, organisations and communities seems, for many, to be that it is a different subject, or I have even heard some say, the death of knowledge management.
Then we regularly read about organisations that say they are doing KM through implementing these social tools, especially wiki’s and blogs. There is some truth here, and they are making a great contribution to better knowledge management, of course, but when I consider the complete processes that practitioners and consultants have developed over the years, for creating, transferring and applying knowledge effectively, these Organisations still have a long way to go.
Even worse, I see even less knowledge driven organisations feeling the need for a knowledge strategy. But this has always been a worry of mine. A concern that senior managers do not seem to see the need of a wise investment in some strategic thinking that can make a big difference, and even radically transform the organisation for the better. There is still a sad lack of strategic thinking at all levels, whether it be for the strategic use of time, information, relationships or knowledge, to name a few.
People like novelty. People like new and refreshing perspectives. People like to be associated with exciting new developments. Otherwise, people get bored. That’s why we have ‘fashion’ and that also explains, to a degree, why we have fads. But the problem with this is that we tend to rush into the next search for the quick win, the silver bullet, or even the next holy grail, and repeatedly ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. Such good work has been done in helping us all to better manage our time and our lives, our work, our relationships, more innovative processes, our information and, of course, our knowledge. But I hear too many people saying that these fads are over. They say that time management was a fad of the 1980’s, process reengineering and CRM were fads of the 1990’s that didn’t work, and now knowledge management is a fad.
I would like to make an appeal to conference organisers. I would like us to be better reminded, through conference, of the underlying and even timeless and unchanging principles of our subject, and the need to combine BOTH the timeless principles AND the ever changing, naturally emerging knowledge, methods, tools and techniques. Just focusing on the new emerging and rapidly changing tools, or indeed, just the principles, is not enough. Put them together in new combinations and the extraordinary emerges naturally!
As far as KM Asia is concerned, I heard criticisms from several delegates about the model that favours financial sponsorships of different levels of vendor speaking and of chairing the conference. The Chairperson for the conference was Gary Szukalski, Vice President, Field Marketing, Autonomy Inc and I thought he was an excellent Chairperson in the way he conducted and facilitated the conference and the way he distilled key points. But even Gary said on the platform on day two, in the afternoon, that ‘the good news is that there are no more vendor presentations and we know you want more objective presentations from organisations and practitioners’. I was told, at dinner later in the evening, that in Australia people now increasingly walk out of vendor presentations in conferences as a principle.
Let’s not forget the hard facts of commercial business life and if it were not for organisations like Ark Group, who take all the risks and who need to be funded adequately, we would not be able to enjoy events like KM Asia. But the challenge I put to commercial conference organisers is to continually examine better alternative ways to fund models that will bring about more objectivity.
David Gurteen brings enormous enthusiasm and objectivity to any conference, but I arrived in Singapore too late to attend his Knowledge Café. I would have liked to do that.
But all the keynotes were from organisations and practitioners and were very objective. And there was some good new learning, insights and new knowledge for me here.
Unfortunately for me, I could not get to day 1 keynotes but I studied the presentation slides from both Verna Allee, Verna Allee Associates, on ‘Knowledge, networks and value creation’ and Jeff Kelly, Director of Knowledge Strategy, Hinchcliff & Co on ‘Enterprise 2.0 and knowledge management. I also talked to delegates about the day 1 keynotes. We all concluded that they were very informing indeed and we thought they added very great value to the conference.
From Verna, in particular, I liked the way she describes ‘Three Meta Capabilities’ – Business Innovation, Social Innovation and Technology Innovation and also her thoughts on ‘Dialogue vs Critical Thinking’ and the art of dialogue. I rather liked
‘An Emerging Value Model’ that describes broadly accepted categories of Intangible Assets. This led her to a Value Conversion Strategy Model and a Value Network Strategy Model that make very good sense to me. One of her concluding slides entitled ‘Increasing Prosperity’ has an excellent quote from Alan Briskin ‘The capacity to honour the collective consciousness and to act on behalf of the whole is truly the work of the next 100 years’. That’s cool.
From Jeff Kelly, I learned the working definition for Web 2.0, from their Web 2 University perspective to be:
“Web 2.0 is networked products that explicitly leverage network effects.”
His presentation confirmed many of the discussions I have been having recently about the disruptive effects and challenges that Web 2.0 poses for the established Enterprise and he has some good recommendations for an E2 strategy, not least ‘Start small and keep expectation low on a small budget’ You can see the work of Web 2.0 University at www.web20university.com
I did attend both keynotes on Day 2 from Bob Buckman and Dave Snowden.
Bob Buckman never fails to inspire me. I have heard him several times before and I had the fortune to have a few words with Bob in the VIP breakfast just before he kicked off Day 2.
It is not so much that I learn new things from Bob, although I have certainly learned from him from time to time, but, as I said earlier, he never fails to inspire me. And that is what Leadership is all about. I would certainly and completely trust Bob to ‘pack my parachute’.
How encouraging to hear a successful leader of people say ‘ I believe we should establish the cultural paradigm of creating unlimited opportunities for our associates to grow and to be the best that they can be’ and ‘We need to invest in knowledge systems like any other investment that will redefine an organization if we want improved collaboration and innovation’.
He reminded me, when discussing collaboration, networks and Metcalf’s Law that ‘the value of a network increases as the square of the number of users on the network that we are all building’. I realised again, that we are building a huge new neural network out there on the web with increasingly new and massive flows of thoughts, ideas, insights and valuable conversations.
I liked his powerful statements on collaboration, firstly to ‘reduce the number of transmissions of knowledge to one, to achieve the least distortion of knowledge’
And secondly, to ‘focus on changing the speed of response to any need toward instantaneity’.
But what I resonated with the most was Bob’s presentation of a ‘Community of One’.
Mentally, emotionally and spiritually, he has a powerful point here. I believe that he is also talking about the emergence of the global individual and not just the global organization.
Whereas Bob inspires me emotionally the most, Dave Snowden never fails to inspire me intellectually the most. He gets me to think, whether it’s through challenging my thoughts and beliefs, and certainly challenging the status quo, or whether it is through excellent new thinking.
I haven’t heard Dave for a while, so I was not sure in which direction he was moving.
He started by repeating his challenge that he said he first made in 2004/5 that ‘KM is at the end of its life cycle’. I have made my views on that too, earlier in this blog.
I certainly liked ‘Switch from fail safe design to safe fail experimentation’ and his comment that the IT profession is stuck in an old age. His messages on creating evolutionary environments and his criticisms of the SECI model and the data/information/knowledge spectrum are well known.
But the greatest new insight for me was the way he talked about “knowledge in the human brain as ‘fragmented’ and is reassembled in the context of need” I resonated with his explanation of fragmented patterns and especially “the way we know is not the same as the way we describe what we know”
It is quite a compelling argument to talk about fragmented narrative and not structured knowledge bases, although I see a need for BOTH/AND albeit much more fragmented and, as Dave calls it ‘messy knowledge’ rather than structured.
I think Dave is an ‘upside down thinker’ which I mean as a compliment, as he tends to favour opposites from standard perception, like ‘tolerated failure’ and one tolerated failure can be better than 20,000 successes.
Generally, I am quite familiar with his good work on Complexity and Narrative Development.
He advised:
Make it all available
Learn in the sandpits of Wiki
Consolidate blogs into Wiki’s
Allow freedom
Ban email attachments and
Hotlink into document repositories
For the first time, I heard Dave say that the new technologies of Social Computing are matching the theory of KM.
His best theory for me was simply ‘order – mess – order – mess’
His truism that ‘facebook creates an allergic reaction on Management’ made us all chuckle. I have just leaped into Facebook, thanks to David Gurteen's prompting, and together with my personal experience of blogging, wiki's, youtube etc I realise the fears and concerns that many, less enlightened, managers will have.
I remember giving an after dinner talk on KM in Hong Kong several years ago, focusing on the true power of knowledge sharing. Afterwards, the Chief Executive from a large mainland China business said to me 'I love KM, I want you to come to China and teach me everything you know about KM, but don't tell any of my employees!' I realised that either I had not communicated very well about knowledge sharing and/or he may have had a great hidden fear to lose control. I see lot's of this all around the world in many management teams today.
But, getting back to Dave Snowden's keynote at KM Asia, although I have heard it from him before, it was still refreshingly provocative and entertaining for Dave to tell the audience, especially in Singapore, that ‘you know when you have reached the end of a cycle when Government adopt as Industrial Best Practices what traditional Industry has abandoned already’
Generally, in KM Asia 2007, I would have liked to have heard more discussion in the conference on Open Source Knowledge, Knowledge Commons and other emerging instruments, which are my special interest at the moment, and which I think will make a big impact and contribute to even more radical KM developments in the future.
Talking about Knowledge Commons, I could not get to KM World in San Jose, but Stuart Henshall has done a great job in blogging it and he refers to a talk by Richard McDermott – Tragedy of the Knowledge Commons – which didn’t do much for him. I hope to be able to talk about the developments and implications for Open Source Knowledge in KM conferences next year.
I feel that we need more than one Dave Snowden, we need a few actually, to keep challenging us on everything from BOTH underlying timeless principles, to knowledge policy, knowledge strategy, knowledge processes, new knowledge technologies AND naturally emerging properties, complexity, chaos and messy knowledge. We need some more new blood too. No disrespect to the oldies, and I am one of the senior members that’s been around for a long time, but we need some new stars to inspire us and move us forward with new thinking, alongside the established thinkers.
The big question. Will I go to KM Asia next year?
If I were living in Asia – most certainly
As I live in Europe - If I am working in Asia at the time – most certainly
As I live in Europe - If I am invited as a speaker, certainly.
If not invited, and it is at my cost from Europe just to attend the conference, maybe, unlikely, but totally depending on the speakers, the themes and topics.
Good luck Ark Group and congratulations on running successful conferences over many years.
Ron Young
For more information on Open Source KM go to:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
Monday, November 05, 2007
KM and the Wikinomics of Mass Collaboration
Later this week, I shall be blogging my review of KM Asia that I visited in Singapore last week.
But before that I simply had to share a fantastic book.
At the conference I met an old friend and colleague, David Gurteen of Gurteen Knowledge. He recommended I read 'WIKINOMICS - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything' by Don Tapscott (best selling author of The Digital Economy) and Anthony D Williams.
Sure enough, at Singapore airport, I bought the book.
I started to read it at 8am local time and I read the whole book, non-stop
on the flight in 10 hrs. It is a brilliant read, and if you haven't discovered it
already yourself, please get a copy.
I am particularly interested in Open Source Knowledge and Knowledge Commons, so the book was a great confirmation for me about these developments too.
I agree with Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum, it's "a deeply profound and hopeful book, Wikinomics provides compelling evidence that the emerging 'creative commons' can be a boon, not a threat to business"
Thanks David G
Ron Young
More information at: www.knowledge-management-online.com
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Knowledge Management – the known and the unknown
Sunday 28th October 2007
I seem to get many of my new learnings, new insights, and most ‘aha’s’ in airports and especially during flights. I guess this may be something to do with having time on my hands, for reading and contemplating, and also, maybe, it has something to do with breaking with routine and literally, and metaphorically, pointing in a new direction at a greater height (broader perspective).
Today I find myself in Toulouse Airport, South of France, awaiting the morning flight to London. From there I will be connecting to fly this evening to Singapore, to attend KM Asia and KM Singapore 2007.
It’s a sunny morning in Blagnac Airport, Toulouse, the home of Airbus Industries and the exciting new A380 aircraft (the largest airliner in the world).
This morning I reflected on the ‘known’ and the ‘unknown’.
It may be said that Knowledge Management provides more of a certainty of the ‘known’ by better sharing, to as many people as possible and appropriate, what is ‘known’.
It may also be said that an aspect of Wisdom may be the application of the best knowledge.
But also, I have learned about the creative mind and that, in detachment from the known, we can enjoy the ‘Wisdom of Uncertainty’.
The big difference here is that we can become detached from time and place and the known past. Total attachment can be a major limitation to our creativity. Attachment has even been called a ‘prison of past conditioning’.
However, if we are willing to step into the ‘unknown’ it will take us into the field of all possibilities, known and unknown. Quantum Physics also talks about the field of infinite possibilities.
So we need to remember to both surrender ourselves to the creative mind, to the unknown, and also to attach ourselves to that which is known, as appropriate.
Therefore, to the degree that we can detach ourselves from the known, we can be more creative in our thoughts and actions in each new moment.
This may be a worthy ideal for an individual but I wonder, for knowledge driven organisations, to what degree knowledge leaders and managers are prepared to allow the wisdom of uncertainty whilst striving for measurable performance and certainty?
Ron Young
For more information go to:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
KM and links within links
I still find it simply amazing to be sitting in my home office
overlooking the golden and green autumn vineyards in SW France,
on the one hand, and replying to friends around the world who
have given such feedback to my thoughts and insights, as I try to
understand what is happening in the global knowledge space.
Blogging really is so powerful and I truly believe that we are still
only able to see the tip of the iceberg. I look forward to what is coming.
When I first started to blog, I really wanted and hoped for
lots of direct two way communication and feedback. I then quickly
learned the nature and motivations of different bloggers, and how we are all trying to deal with so much more information of interest, but no more time.
Probably even less time to absorb all that we wish we could.
So meaningful filtering of information is even more critical to
effective knowledge working.
But what caused me to write this post was the simple realisation
that there is something as important, even more important sometimes,
than feedback.
The links that I get from people who read my blog, but do not
directly feedback, tell me what information and what solutions
people are looking for. The links contain the search requests.
That is of course interesting. But when I examine and follow
their searches further, I discover so many other interesting
things that greatly add to my knowledge.
Most of them are so relevant to my interests in knowledge management.
This can be so revealing and sometimes, so inspiring.
So I do get valuable feedback from every single searcher and
reader of my blog too!
Of course, I love the feedback, as direct communication, and I
am finding, more and more, that people find my blog through
searching for information, not just from what I write, but
the searches are finding results to comments that others write.
So there is an increasingly complex set of links, and links
within links that are naturally emerging.
The web is naturally emerging as a complex global organism
of thoughts, insights and ideas.
Now it's back to a cup of coffee and a walk in the vineyards to
retain my sanity :-)
Ron Young
For more information on Open Source Knowledge go to:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
overlooking the golden and green autumn vineyards in SW France,
on the one hand, and replying to friends around the world who
have given such feedback to my thoughts and insights, as I try to
understand what is happening in the global knowledge space.
Blogging really is so powerful and I truly believe that we are still
only able to see the tip of the iceberg. I look forward to what is coming.
When I first started to blog, I really wanted and hoped for
lots of direct two way communication and feedback. I then quickly
learned the nature and motivations of different bloggers, and how we are all trying to deal with so much more information of interest, but no more time.
Probably even less time to absorb all that we wish we could.
So meaningful filtering of information is even more critical to
effective knowledge working.
But what caused me to write this post was the simple realisation
that there is something as important, even more important sometimes,
than feedback.
The links that I get from people who read my blog, but do not
directly feedback, tell me what information and what solutions
people are looking for. The links contain the search requests.
That is of course interesting. But when I examine and follow
their searches further, I discover so many other interesting
things that greatly add to my knowledge.
Most of them are so relevant to my interests in knowledge management.
This can be so revealing and sometimes, so inspiring.
So I do get valuable feedback from every single searcher and
reader of my blog too!
Of course, I love the feedback, as direct communication, and I
am finding, more and more, that people find my blog through
searching for information, not just from what I write, but
the searches are finding results to comments that others write.
So there is an increasingly complex set of links, and links
within links that are naturally emerging.
The web is naturally emerging as a complex global organism
of thoughts, insights and ideas.
Now it's back to a cup of coffee and a walk in the vineyards to
retain my sanity :-)
Ron Young
For more information on Open Source Knowledge go to:
www.knowledge-management-online.com
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