The East have a major advantage with Knowledge Management

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Young

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

Knowledge Management moves from the Corporate World to Development Organizations!

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

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

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

Ron Young

More at www.knowledge-management-online.com

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

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

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

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

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

The Asian Century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think about these EU report extracts?

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


Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Future Centres and knowledge hubs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Young

more at www.knowledge-management-online.com

Key Knowledge Spaces in 3D - a new work paradigm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Young
www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge sharing in 3D virtual meeting rooms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Young

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Capturing and sharing the best new Knowledge Management learnings

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

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

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

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

All feedback and further contributions will be most welcomed.

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

Subscribe here

Ron Young

Knowledge Management for SME's - free ebook

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

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


ABOUT THE BOOK

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

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

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

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

The free ebook may be downloaded here

Ron Young

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

Disaster Risk Management and effective Knowledge Management

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

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

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

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

I look forward to hearing from you.

Ron Young

More at www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Transfer through a free Global Videoconference on the internet

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

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

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

We talk naturally most of the time.

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Young

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

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Global videoconferencing using ooVoo

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

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

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

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

Ron Young

More information at

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Assessing and Developing the Global Knowledge Economy

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

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

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

Thanks

Ron Young

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

Knowledge Management for SME's in Jakarta - some learnings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why not join us?

Ron Young

more at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Google Knol has an automatic audio facility !

I normally check my Google Knol articles once a month.

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

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

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

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Boiling frogs, or is the world restructuring around Knowledge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

Ron Young

More at www.knowledge-management-online.com

KM in Defence and KM in Government

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

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

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

Ron Young

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

Facebook Youtube & Myspace

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

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

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

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

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

- Eyeballs, then cash.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

What Would Google Do? Global Knowledge!

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Young

For more information:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Not just knowledge management, but really achieving corporate objectives

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

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

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

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

There is quite a difference in focus and implementation.

Ron Young

More information at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com

Knowledge Management and the power of a simple search

Sometimes, I amaze myself with simple things!

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would call it simply marvellous.

Ron Young

More at:

www.knowledge-management-online.com