The Future of Knowledge Management
In 1999 I published an article entitled 'Future of Knowledge Management' in the European American Business Journal. Today, 9 years later in August 2008, I decided to rewrite this article.
Where is Knowledge Management (KM) going in the next ten years? What did I get right in 1999? What did I get wrong and what have I learned from this? What are the challenges for knowledge driven organizations if they are to thrive in the global knowledge economy in the next 10 years?
As always, I would highly value your comments, feedback and any reviews, so that I may continually improve this Knol.
I find it exciting to write about the future of knowledge management in 2008 on a Knol, as I fully embrace the Knol as a great addition to the knowledge management toolkit.
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This article describes the case for the future of what I term 'extraordinary knowledge management', by first describing what we sometimes refer to as 'ordinary knowledge management' and then introducing the radical and fundamentally new knowledge management capabilities that I believe successful knowledge driven organizations need to understand, absorb and implement. Throughout, I will also comment on how I see the future of knowledge management over the next ten years, as well as the critical issues, challenges and opportunities facing us.
Where is Knowledge Management Now?
I stated in 1999 that knowledge management was at its most critical phase for further acceptance and development. Generally, the major shift in thinking that was essential to truly understanding the fundamentally new knowledge management capabilities, together with the understanding and implementation of radically and fundamentally new knowledge-based business processes, tools and technologies, had only taken place for a relative minority of people and organizations in the world. What we saw, instead, was an increasing number of organizations embarking on what I would refer to as 'ordinary knowledge management initiatives' that were doomed to failure, at worst, or mediocre improved organizational performance and improvement at best.
Those initiatives were fueled by consultants and technologists who had not even made the shift in thinking themselves, so they did not even see the more extraordinary new possibilities either. Neverthelesss, many of them were sincere and quite well intentioned and simply saw an opportunity to find a new explanation, or a new spin, for selling their solutions and services.
What about now?
Well, in August 2008, I maintain that the major shift in thinking still has not happened as much as I would have hoped. Of course, there are an increasing number of organizations around the world who have developed and implemented very successful initiatives, but successful KM is nowhere near mainstream yet. KM practitioners regularly state that as many as 75% of KM initiatives have produced mediocre results or failed. That really is bad news, but I tend to agree with this today.
The critical question I put in 1999 was: 'Will the good and extraordinary work that was going on in knowledge management around the world, show results quickly enough to make the compelling case and convince the critical mass of organizations that they really should urgently pursue KM, or would the massive and mediocre bandwagon ultimately convince organizations that knowledge management was nothing too special, and relegate it to 'yet another initiative?'.
I also asked the question, at the time, 'Are we likely to throw the baby out with the bath water?
In 2008, I think that many have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. But I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised. After all, history shows that we are continually throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some tremendous work was done in the 1980's with time management and productivity improvement. Despite some sound and timeless principles, the general view is that its past its sell by date. The argument is that we have moved on.
Well we may have moved on, but at our cost. The same can be said for a multitude of good initiatives. Such good work has been done in innovative process improvement, but BPR may have helped to kill that. Quality is an evergreen. But many managers feel that we need the next thing beyond Quality. Now we talk about beyond Knowledge Management. The bathwater certainly needs to be thrown away, but please let's try to retain and absorb the tremendous and revolutionary good work that has been done.
I started Knowledge Associates International Ltd with the firm conviction, in the early 1990's that information, process, learning and knowledge, creativity and innovation, quality, relations, productivity etc are management evergreens and should always be on the top agendas of organizations to increase sales and/or growth, reduce costs, make more profits and/or create higher value, through improved organizational performance.
I still maintain today, at least, that organizational performance can be so greatly improved through the implementation of new innovative processes that enable faster and higher quality new knowledge creation, retention, transfer, distribution and application. Throughout the entire history of business, knowledge has always been a fundamental success factor for all organizations.
Today, in a rapidly emerging global knowledge economy, knowledge has become 'the critical success factor', the most primary and fundamental asset to be managed.
Although we use the label knowledge management, and that is understandable, I am personally much happier with the term and the work done in 'knowledge asset management'. I have co-authored the book 'Knowledge Asset Management' in 2003 and I feel that this aspect of KM is about to gain much greater prominence, especially in the measuring, reporting and auditing of knowledge assets. But that's another Knol to follow shortly.
It is still the case today that 'knowledge core competencies' - how to create, manage, develop and apply knowledge - are critical to every knowledge intensive organization and to every knowledge professional.
I stated in 1999 that new emerging communications and collaboration technologies, at the time, undreamed of, will continue to radically disrupt and change our perspectives and our ways of working for the better, both as tools in themselves, and as enabling technologies for new methods, practices and processes.
Well, I think I got that prediction right. I certainly could not have envisaged the astounding success of the blog and blogsphere, the wiki and successful global developments like Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia of Life. I could not have forseen more Web 2.0 services, applications and technologies like myspace, youtube, facebook, etc etc. The most extraordinary thing of all is that all these tools are free on the Web today.
If you properly combine the evolving Web with mobile and wireless technologies like Apple iPhone, you have exciting and completely new ways of working. I said in 1999, "In a book that I co-authored in 1995, called Upside Down Management, I felt compelled to write at that time that, in the evolutionary perspective, "the learning organization was simply a warm up act for the main act - knowledge management".
So what is Ordinary Knowledge Management?
Even in 2008, we still keep hearing many management consultants, practitioners and presenters at conferences remark that "There is nothing new about knowledge management."
They are quite right. But they are also quite wrong!
In the mainstream mindset they are correct. We have been developing knowledge since the dawn of humankind. Our universities may be called the 'knowledge factories'.
But in the new knowledge paradigm, however, they are quite wrong. They have not themselves understood what this new phenomena, which I have referred to earlier as extraordinary knowledge management, is really about yet.
So I would first define ordinary knowledge management, in this context, as something that has always been possible. Nothing radically or fundamentally new. At an organizational level it could even be described as the sum of individual knowledge, together with some traditional methods to bring about better team collaboration.
However, before I go on to define extraordinary knowledge management, I have to remind us that today there are still only a few organizations that can boast that they are practicing good ordinary knowledge management!
One example of this is good story telling. With the greatest respect to my fellow KM practitioners, I am still hearing in 2008, at conferences, about the importance of story telling for effective knowledge transfer. That is absolutely and completely right. But this has always been the case! The few people and organizations that have known this have practiced this for many years with great benefit. Prophets have known this. Sages have known this. Effective educators and teachers have known this. Much is known about the art and techniques of effective communications through effective storytelling. It has been said, over the years, that 'people are naturally wired for pictures and stories'. Effective storytelling dramatically improves knowledge transfer - but it is hardly a new concept!
Let's take another example or good ordinary knowledge management. If we consider the principles and techniques of strategy , goal management, time, task, information, people, resource management and so on. Collectively they address the what, why, who, where, when and how of a given situation.
I remember explaining this to a colleague, many years ago, and he immediately reminded me of the wisdom of Rudyard Kipling, from his poem 'The Elephant's Child:
"I have six honest serving men
They taught me all I knew
Their names were what and where and when
And why and how and who"
Although I may well be greatly oversimplifying this to make a point, I would say that
• time management focuses primarily on the 'when'
• task management focuses primarily on the 'what'
• information management on at least the 'how' and 'where'
• people management on the 'who'
• goal management on the 'why'
You could say that you have complete knowledge when you know the what, where, when, why, how and who.
Again, this is very important and extremely good ordinary knowledge management, but it is not, in any way, new.
However, I repeat again that very few organizations today can boast that they are practicing good ordinary knowledge management. On the contrary, in the workshops that I conduct all around the world, people and organizations, as a whole, tell me that they are suffering from very chronic information overload, very high stress, and a lack of ability to filter the relevant from the irrelevant, the important from the unimportant. Why is this? It is due to the lack of a clear strategic direction, purpose, a shared vision and goals, and ineffective time, task, information and knowledge management, at a personal and team level.
In normal circumstances, in the 20th century, I would have been stating that before organizations go any further, they need to transform information overload into effective information management. Fortunately, in the 21st century, the new strategies, processes, tools and technologies for 'extraordinary knowledge management' have embraced this, so it is now possible to 'leap frog' conventional ways of the past.
But who will leapfrog the fastest in the next ten years? Asia, USA, Europe? That's another Knol soon.
But now let me try to define what I mean by extraordinary knowledge management.
What is Extraordinary Knowledge Management?
When I am asked this question at conferences and workshops, I start by defining extraordinary KM as radical and fundamentally new ways to create, retain, transfer, apply and leverage knowledge. Quite often, these new ways prove to be highly disruptive, and highly threatening, to the mainstream.They have never been possible before and, therefore, enable us to design innovative new work practices and processes.
One recent example, this past few years, has been the impact of the read/write web 2.0, highly participatory web services, self publishing through blogs, video's like youtube, massive global collaboration through wiki's, more meaningful content through semantics and, what is being called the Semantic Web 3.0, and the list is never ending. The web, and such new working capabilities, are turning many businesses upside down, and many are being destroyed. Yet, alongside this, many new jobs and businesses are being created through this. Even in my family, everybody earns their living today, and are developing their professional careers on and through the web.
But lets look a little closer at extraordinary knowledge management. Through the new fusion of people, process, content, technology, at every level in the organization, it enables fundamentally new virtual collaborative processes, as a start. These vcp's, as I shall call them, produce far more leverage of existing knowledge, and far more creation of new knowledge and innovation than ever before! This is now possible at the personal, team, organizational and inter-organizational levels.
Extraordinary knowledge management connects people to people in totally new ways, people to information in totally new ways, and information to people in totally new ways, across the teams, across the organization and, indeed, across the globe.
But, however much I try to describe the new working possibilities, many people still find it difficult to make the shift in thinking. What have I learned from this?
Well, of course, I need to become an even more effective communicator. That's a given and I am trying hard to improve all the time. But, also, I think that simply intellectualizing new thoughts and concepts is not very effective either. In my experience, I now believe that by far the best way to understand the new possibilities, and make the leap in thinking, even to the point of changing the paradigm, is to 'personally experience the new processes and tools available for the effective knowledge worker'. I stress the word 'personally'. We need to become extraordinary personal knowledge managers for ourselves!
If you have flown in an aircraft, or spaceship even, try getting that experience across to somebody who has never been near an aircraft or spaceship by explaining it. It will never happen.
In my case, I have spent several years, from 1996 to 2003, chairing and presenting at major KM conferences around the world. It was a great intellectual exercise, but, for the reasons given earlier, I am not convinced that it was that effective. Maybe it was, and I am being unfair, but it doesn't feel like it today.
So what do I now do?
Today, I find it far more effective to simply show people who are interested, how I work and the benefits I get from working this way. I show 'a day in the life of a typical knowledge professional' who works in a knowledge intensive industry, using personal, team, organization and community methods and tools.
I then wait for the reaction from the audience.
Normally, people do not care what I call it. It may be knowledge management or knowledge networking or knowledge sharing or accelerated learning or whatever they choose. If they find that what I am showing is of interest to them, to help them with their knowledge working, I will gladly point them to the right sources. And the good news is that most of these methods and tools are free on the web.
However, underneath the simple tools and methods is a set of timeless principles, and a solid new set of strategies, processes, methods and technologies that take the knowledge worker through several virtual collaborative processes (vcp's) that are common to most organizations, for example:
• VC client/customer knowledge
• VC market intelligence
• VC project and process team working
• VC learning and competence development
• VC creativity and innovation
Quite simply, the emerging innovative knowledge processes and tools are as new and as different as the invention of writing and the printed word was for information and knowledge transfer for the individual!
Extraordinary knowledge management is also concerned with putting the power and timeless principles of storytelling, for example, into new virtual collaborative processes. This then combines the richness of figurative language with multimedia to create even better corporate newsrooms, corporate tv channels, web centric publishing and so on.
I firmly believe that the business community will gradually embrace and implement the new extraordinary knowledge management methods, tools and techniques over the next ten years. Where I have been wrong is in thinking it would have happened faster. Clearly, the early adopters will gain a significant advantage - that is, until the extraordinary become the ordinary.
Where is Knowledge Management Going?
I stated in 1999 that, "in the short term, knowledge management methods, processes, tools and techniques will become better and more automated. The knowledge manager will still need to facilitate the processes, especially the vcp's, but less so, and the focus will shift even more towards coaching and developing the knowledge team. Laborious and costly manual knowledge categorization and indexing will be replaced by intelligent agentware, neural networking and personal knowledge profiling technologies that will summarize and deliver concepts of relevance and, also, relevant 'knowers' to the knowledge seeker."
I think I may have got that partially right and wrong.
Without doubt, Web 2.0 connects people and information in totally new ways, and we are all more used to categorizing our blogs and creating 'folksonomies' etc. But the automation has not happened as fast as I thought it would.
For the future, I would suggest that the rapidly emerging 'Semantic Web 3.0' will contribute enormously to automated and more meaningful web content management. Today, in August 2008, I am in an invite-beta to Twine
and I am testing the effect of semantic technology for my personal, team and organizational knowledge management. But that's even another Knol soon.
I also predicted in 1999 that there will be several fragmented schools of knowledge management, each with their own approach, philosophy, methods and tools. The human focused schools are still, today, fighting it out for supremacy over the process and technology focused schools. The traditional philosophers and academics are still debating knowledge.
I stated at the time "Egoless reason suggests that they should all fuse and integrate their different and equally important perspectives into one mutually agreed, inclusive and holistic framework. Ego suggests that different schools will wish to become dominant". Today I think we are just starting to see the deterioration of the dominant schools and the wise integration of the best. I hope I am right. In any event, the Web 2.0, blogs, wikis and Knols, at least, are to me the tools that are 'smashing down the Berlin Wall of Knowledge Management'. It can only be a matter of time.
A Cosmic Moment
I certainly do resonate very strongly with the shared vision of one more meaningful world with much better ways of working, and working together as one entity.
So, if I may go off into space for just a moment, I would like to suggest that we may ultimately realize that we are, indeed, one global entity. The technology to support global communications, collaboration, learning and sharing, is well in place and improving by the day.
In 1998 I attended a presentation in Singapore where Bill Gates presented his ideas on the rapidly emerging web-based lifestyle. He predicted that within 20 years (2018), the personal computer, as we know it, would be a million times more powerful. I will leave it for you to decide where we are in this exponential growth ten years on from his prediction.
Perhaps the billions of eyes and ears and brains around the world will, ultimately, be connected to work together in one extraordinary global network, and maybe we will then realize a totally new perspective about ourselves and others? Quantum Theory, Neuroscience, Nanotechnology and Molecular Computing, at least, are certainly showing us extraordinary new perspectives and possibilities.
Maybe we have now evolved even further from:
• our first emotional animal brain designed to 'fight or flight' to
• our second intellectual neo-cortex to think, develop knowledge, choose and decide, to
• the discovery of our third brain as one global entity of which we are all a part
Perhaps the new global synapses and connections are now being crudely prototyped on todays global Web?
In my opinion, one more thing is certain for the future. We do know that when you change beliefs dramatically, you can immediately change the performance dramatically, and create some extraordinary results. When people became more knowledgeable about Planet Earth - that it was not the centre of the universe - we changed our perspectives, culture, behaviour, and performance immediately. We realized that the Earth was not flat but round.
Likewise, when organizations become 'more knowledgeable about knowledge' we will immediately change our organizational perspective, culture, behaviour and performance.
One final prediction and one final piece of advice.
We know that the knowledge driven organization, to succeed in the global knowledge economy, will be based on principles of high trust, open two-way communications, rapid and continual learning, natural knowledge sharing and effective knowledge application. This brings the next stage of our organizational evolution and development into the spotlight. I predict that 'Business Ethics' will be the greater focus of a new wave of conferences, seminars and workshops that explore the fusion of high ethics and high technology.
And the final piece of advice?
I say the same today as I said in the article in 1999, with the same degree of conviction. If you are considering improving the knowledge management in your organization, whatever stage you are at, and if you wish to use consultants to advise and assist you, I strongly recommend that you ask them to demonstrate how they are, themselves, personally practicing knowledge management on a daily basis. Is it ordinary knowledge management? Is it extraordinary knowledge management? If it is neither, then run away as fast as you can!
The future of knowledge management. over the next few years, may be shaped accordingly.
Ron Young
Blog: http://km-consulting.blogspot.com
Web: www.knowledge-management-online.com
Book: Knowledge Asset Management, Springer 2003
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iMedPub
Board of Trustees for The Collaborative Book project
Dear Dr Prof. Adel El Zaïm,
I´d like to invite you to know about The Collaborative Books project.
http://knol.google.com/k/internet-medical-publishing/collaborative-books/1bbsle13m97c0/83#
This project counts with the support of Google and Knol developers.
We are creating a board of trustees for this project. Board members will judge and advise on the knols published and their advise will be a guarantee to continue a policy of unconditional open access and scientific quality for the books being offered. We think you would be an ideal member; therefore we´d like to invite you to join the board of trustees.
With best wishes,
Dr. Manuel Menendez
iMedPub
imedpub@gmail.com
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Tony Jameson-Allen
Basic IT/Web skills
Thought provoking article Ron, which got me reflecting on personal thoughts and experiences of why it is still such a battle to embed KM in some organisations. There seems to be a tendency in my own small experiences, for KM to be viewed as very much focussed towards IT provision and IT capability.
So whilst the development of the web is a huge opportunity, it could also be construed to be a hinderance to being able to influence organisations where investment in basic IT skills training for staff may have been lacking. VCP's have the potential to service so many aspects of KM requirements, yet It will be a great challenge to get sign up for the use of VCPs if organisations do not ensure basic web skills are part of mandatory training, starting at the very top of an organisation
Should we go down the route of trying to influence leaders to acknowledge the need for basic web training, this may further embed the belief amongst them that KM is definitely something for the 'IT folk' and further cool their thoughts on the use of VCP's etc?
How do we get that balance right?
Last edited Sep 23, 2008 10:35 AM
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Knowledge and wisdom are my passion and work
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Throughout my life, I have always been extremely passionate about knowledge and wisdom
At one end of the spectrum, I am extremely passionate about knowledge management for individuals, teams, organizations and global communities and networks. It became my profession, as a knowledge management consultant, since 1995.
At the other extreme, I am passionate about what you might call 'higher knowledge', philosophy, especially moral and spiritual philosophy and/or ethics. I am passionate about both the ancient wisdom, especially eastern philosophy, and modern scientific knowledge, whether it be about quantum theory, neuroscience, nanotechnology or even molecular biology and molecular computing.
I am interested in all the major world religions and their universal teachings of Love, Compassion and Wisdom. I have a special interest in the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism and the Hindu Vedas and Upanishads (Books of Knowledge).I am interested in the study of consciousness, and practice yoga and meditation.
I am also a Director of Intellectual Property for a Film, TV and Video Production Company and I am passionate about great storytelling, using the best entertainment and information technologies.
My work with knowledge management, my study of the ancient knowledge and wisdom, and my contemplation and meditation over the past 25 years, has led me to believe that, at a deeper level, we are all interconnected as one. My work on the world wide web involves daily communication, collaboration, learning and knowledge sharing. It is very easy for me to perceive the web as a prototype for the development and understanding of the notion of a collective human brain, or one thinking global mind .
More intensively, my work has led me to believe that all human beings are capable of achieving a higher state of knowledge and knowing. Some call this special insights. Some call this the 'sixth sense' beyond seeing, hearing, feeling, touching and tasting. Some prefer to call this intuition. I believe that this higher knowledge is also accessible through meditative states of mind. I believe that an enlightened state of mind is achievable by all.
But my greatest belief, and my greatest concern today, is that many people around the world, if not most, do not believe that we are all connected as one, at all, but, based on our five senses alone, the belief is that we are completely separate individuals. And this is the primary cause for all the problems and suffering that we have in the world today. It's just like flat world / round world thinking.
People would immediately act completely differently to one another if they felt a sense of interconnection, a sense of oneness. Quantum theory is based on notions like quantum entanglement, superposition, and phenomenon like wave function collapse, which postulate a highly interconnected world, and the world wide web can enable us to connect all our thoughts across the planet in radically and fundamentally new ways. I am convinced that it is only a matter of time before science and/or technology will be able to help us prove oneness in an ocean of mind..
The wisdom of the ages teach us to 'treat others as you would like to be treated yourself' . This is absolutely right, ethically and physically, and especially in one highly interconnected world.
If you are interested in my thoughts and my work with knowledge and wisdom, whether it is about practical daily issues and challenges of knowledge management, or whether it is about my perspective and experiences about the meaning and purpose of life, or both, you can find my work as listed below.
Knowledge Management books and articles
• Knowledge Asset Management
• The Future of Knowledge Management
• Knowledge Management - Back to Basic Principles
• Planetary Knowledge - effective knowledge working in a global knowledge economy
Knowledge Management websites and blogs
• km-consulting blog
• www.knowledge-management-online.com
• www.knowledgeassociatesinternational.com
Film, TV and Video Production
• www.britflickproductions.com
Spiritual Philosophy books
• Christopher and the Knowledger
• Enlightenment is.....
Spiritual Philosophy websites and blogs
• Sharing my insights blog
Ron Young
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Anonymous
very good info
very good info
You did very well for us
www.egyptdoor.com
Last edited May 23, 2009 12:07 PM
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ShwetA !
Hi Mr Young
I liked your write up and thurst for wisdom and knowledge verymuch.
Being an Indian I have cultured a deep pasion for all these.I want to have a consultancy of my own.But I do not have any idea what to do in order to achieve.Kindly guide me.
Last edited Aug 3, 2009 6:24 AM
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Please let us know if there is :
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Saturday, April 25, 2009
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
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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 Defence25 - 27 May KM in Government
For further details of these and other events go to the K2B website.
Ron Young
Saturday, April 11, 2009
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
Saturday, February 28, 2009
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
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Not just knowledge management, but really achieving corporate objectives
Several months ago, I had a meeting with an organizationwho wanted to review their knowledge management progressover the past 12 months.
They recalled that a first principle of good knowledge managementis to develop a strategic plan which links knowledge managementactivities to the corporate objectives. Although theyhad done this in the development of the km strategy, theyhad 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 withthe notion, and within the boundaries, of the practice of knowledgemanagement.
The key question to ask ourselves is 'Are we in the business of helpingthe organization better achieve, or even exceed, its corporateobjectives, through implementing effective knowledge management,or are we in the business of effective knowledge management?
There is quite a difference in focus and implementation.
Go to daily blog 'KM Consulting'
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Knowledge Management and the power of a simple searchSometimes, 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 wellas all the unstructured, or less structured blog content frommy KM consulting blog this past three years, and it containsDirectory details and comments from KM practitioners aroundthe world, I was simply amazed at the results I received fromseveral interesting internal searches of the website.
The searches gave me far far more information than I will everremember 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 getto the stage of offering us all simple searches on the World WideWeb using a laptop computer, or even now, a simple searchusing my iPhone!
I would call it simply marvellous.
Ron Young
Thursday, January 29, 2009
New free KM ebook from Asia
I was very pleased to hear from my good friend and work colleague, Dr. Serafin D. Talisayon, this morning.
He announced that The Asian Productivity Organization today released a new free KM e-book entitled “From Productivity to Innovation: Proceedings from the Second International Conference on Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management.” The conference was held in New Delhi, India last 12–14 February 2008. Dr. Serafin D. Talisayon of the Philippines served as the conference rapporteur and volume editor.
I started session 1 'Setting the Tone' with my paper 'Back to Basics: Strategies for Identifying, Creating, Storing, Sharing and Using Knowledge.
You can download the e-book for free by going to the section KM Blogs, ebooks and Knols
The book has 20 chapters, plus Q&A and technical sessions:
1: Back to Basics: Strategies for Identifying, Creating, Storing, Sharing and Using Knowledge (Ron Young)
2: Technology and Innovation for Knowledge Management (G. S. Krishnan, Arundhati Chattopadhyay and Avadh Yadav)
3: A Strategy for Library Networking in the Knowledge Economy (Dr. Prema Rajagopalan, Prof. M. S. Mathews and M. Kavitha)
4: Global Knowledge Management Trends (Dr. Rory Chase)
5: HAWK-i: Holistic Analysis for Working Knowledge and Implementation (Anne Chappuis, Luc de Golbéry, Paramita Sen, Nirbhay Sen and Sanjay Gupta)
6: Case Study: Knowledge Management in Wipro (Ved Prakash)
7: The Knowledge Economy Project: The Experience of IIT Roorkee (Prof. Harsha Sinvhal and Prof. Vinay K. Nangia)
8: Knowledge Management Framework: An APO Perspective (Praba Nair)
9: The Status of Knowledge Management in Asia: Results of an APO Survey of Nine Member Countries (Dr. Serafin D. Talisayon)
10: Critical Factors Constraining the Growth and Development of the Indian Economy: A Sectoral Study (Dr. Prema Rajagopalan, Prof. M. S. Mathews and M. Kavitha)
11: Knowledge Management in the Food and Nutrition Community in India: The UN’s New KM Initiative (Gopi N. Ghosh)
12: Participation of the International Management Institute in the Knowledge Economy Project (Prof. Ashoka Chandra and Prof. M. K. Khanijo)
13: Innovation and Knowledge Management: An Indic Play Ethic and a Global HR Model (Dr. Prem Saran)
14: Dimensions of Knowledge Management Projects and Leveraging Technology in Higher Educational Institutions (Dr. M. S. Rawat)
15: Service Quality in the Supply Chain: A Knowledge Gap Perspective (Gyan Prakash and Kripa Shanker)
16: The Intellectual Property System (N. N. Prasad)
17: Knowledge Management Systems in an Engineering Consultancy Organization (Sanjeev Kumar)
18: The Transformation of Innovation into Technology, Economy and Society (K. Kalaiselvan)
19: A New Infrastructure for Managing Knowledge in High-Value Outsourcing (Avinash Rao)
20: Knowledge Management for Competitive Advantage in the Steel Industry (Y. Bhaskara Rao and J. V. S. Sarma)
Ron Young
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Intersection of Ethics and Knowledge Management
I am so pleased to see that the Southern California KnowledgeManagement Forum have set a very powerful theme for this year'sconference.To my mind,'Ethics and Knowledge Management' are thekey issues before us, whether it's developing a KM strategy forHuman Rights, Extreme Poverty, or simply increasing the level oftrust within the organization.
Third Annual Meeting, August 5 - 6, 2009
Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA
Conference Theme
The theme of this year's conference is "The Intersection of Ethics and Knowledge Management." The global business and economic landscape has seen many recent changes and firms are being faced with new challenges each day. But can all of the efforts to manage the knowledge of the firm be considered ethical and socially responsible? The conference seeks to explore the development and application of corporate knowledge practices and issues emerging in the knowledge economy from a social/ethical perspective. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Social, cultural and ethical impact of Web 2.0
Advancing privacy, security and trust in a knowledge-driven economy
Advancing globally responsible practices through knowledge management
Ownership, collaboration and digital rights management
Individual rights vs. Collective rights
Legal (and illegal) implications
Stewardship, mentoring and succession management
Multi-generational learning and knowledge-sharing
Return on investment and corporate social responsibility (CSR)
Establishing values-centered employees
For more information about the conference go to:
http://bschool.pepperdine.edu/newsevents/kmforum/
Ron Young
Monday, January 26, 2009
New Global Knowledge Order - New Rules?
This morning our UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, talked fromDowning Street about the global financial crisis and suggesteda new global order with some new rules.
Although he was talking about the global financial economy,in the main,I could not help but relate it to the global knowledge economy.His words would not be amiss in a discussion aboutglobal knowledge management.
He said we need a new way of thinking and governing.
He talked about the high interdependence and connectivity ofthe world, and global flows.
He stated that we cannot bring about better global security control with only national regulation. We need an open global economy and we need a global coordinated response.
He proposed a new global order, with some new rules.
He proposed an 'early warning' system, or an early alerting system to prevent systemic imbalances.
In discussing a global regulatory system, he talked of theimportance of establishing a common set of principles, bestpractices and common standards across nations.
He stated the need for 'agreed transparency'.
I am not saying that I agree or disagree with his talkand proposals, at this stage, but I did think to myself,as he was speaking:
'I have seen and heard these same words, so many times,in many KM blogs, KM articles and KM books, including my own.But I do not like the thought of ,say, a new global knowledgeorder,with its emerging new rules, working with global regulation?
I thought also, what risks do we take with sub-prime knowledge?'.
But, is there anything here, between money flows andknowledge flows, that we can learn and use?
Ron Young
Friday, January 09, 2009
Book - Knowledge Management for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises
I am working with a global km practitioner team to develop a bookon KM for small and medium sizes enterprises, to be completed byApril 2009.
In part of the book, we are researching and writing KM for smecase studies, probably 8 - 10 good cases across industry sectorsand geography.
Please let me know if you are interested in our developing acase study for your organization, or if you know of a good smeimplementation to nominate.
We would probably define an sme as an organization with lessthan 200 employees and / or sales turnover of less thanUS$ 10 million pa.
We intend to finalise the list of case study companies by theend of January 2009.
Please, also, let me know if you are interested in receivingdetails of the book/ebook when published.
You can contact me directly at: ronyoung@young-int.com
Ron Young
Friday, January 02, 2009
Book - Personal knowledge management in a global knowledge economy
I have set my New Year goal to finish my latest book which has the working title "Personal knowledge management in a global knowledge economy". It should be ready as an ebook within the first quarter of 2009.
Naturally, I would be so grateful for any interest shown or feedback given, so I enclose a description of the book, as at today, as a soft pre-release.
I do hope to get your feedback and interest, or email me directly ronyoung@young-int.com.
Happy New Year
Ron Young
Planetary knowledge with personal knowledge management.
This book is written to change lives and organizations around the world. It provides substantial opportunity in a rapidly emerging global knowledge economy, despite global recession in traditional economies. We are at the dawn of a revolutionary era where the means of production is not with the capitalists who own the land, buildings, plant and machinery etc, but with the individual, wherever he or she may live. We are entering the era of the individual knowledge capitalist, who owns the means to knowledge production! This book describes in simple steps the means to effective knowledge working.
It is a book that contains one of the most critical and essential life skills for the 21st Century – how to become an effective knowledge worker - in a rapidly growing global knowledge economy. It is for those who wish to become Web citizens.
The book is inspired by the Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, who said
“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That is our commitment“
This book shows you how to much better develop your ability to create, capture, store, share, apply and sell your knowledge by applying the best personal knowledge management disciplines, process, methods and tools. It provides you with a very fast, convenient solution, immediately downloadable, and it has been written by one of the thought leaders in global knowledge management today.
It is a book where you will learn how to:
* Create personal income and wealth in a rapidly growing knowledge economy
* How to develop a perfect business with no financial capital and turn your personal knowledge into digital income.
* How to avoid stress and ‘information overload’ and save time and effort, by organising and accessing your information and knowledge effectively in a personal goal and results focused way
* How to develop valuable sought after knowledge working skills and competencies
* How to save time and money by less ‘reinventing of the wheel’ and ‘repeating the same mistakes’
* How to use your brain more effectively to provide you with the events, circumstances and opportunities you need to succeed in a knowledge economy
* How to successfully participate in global knowledge community web services
* How to develop a knowledge based livelihood that significantly contributes to a more sustainable and ecologically friendly planet
For the past fifteen years, Ron Young has been giving presentations, running seminars, workshops and conferences all over the word in knowledge management. He was also inspired to write this book following his introductory quote from the late Professor Peter Drucker who said
“The greatest contribution that management has made in the 20th Century was to increase the productivity of manual working fifty fold. The greatest contribution that needs to be made in the 21st Century is to similarly increase the productivity of knowledge working fifty fold”.
This book aims to dramatically increase personal knowledge working skills, competencies, productivity and income.
Whether you are working in a large organization in a developed economy that could benefit from your increased knowledge working skills, or an individual in an under-developed nation that wishes to fully participate in a global knowledge economy, this book will most certainly change your life.
The book has been written as a result of Ron Young personally ‘practising what he preaches’.
1. A day in the life of a global knowledge worker2. Trust the system and start using the knowledge tools today3. The practical personal daily knowledge management process4. The principles of personal knowledge management5. The global knowledge community6. The global knowledge web services
Copyright Ronald Young 2009 - All Rights Reserved
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Capital, Knowledge and Transparency
This resonated with me:
McGraw-Hill aligns with three enduring global needs:
• the need for Capital
• the need for Knowledge
• the need for Transparency
These are the foundations necessary to foster economic growth and to allow individuals, markets and societies to reach their full potential.
Cool - Ron Young
Monday, December 22, 2008
Learning and Knowledge creation is Super
I am certainly glad to be back blogging my KM Consulting learnings and experiences after a few very hectic months of writing a series of KM articles, which you can read as Google Knols and, also, writing several KM reports and recommendations for clients with pretty tough year-end deadlines. But life is now back in balance for a while.
I hope to soon share some incredible new learnings and experiences that I have had, and some of which I believe will literally turn the KM world upside down, and, I am glad to say, for the better. Just as an interesting aside, I had a fun experience whilst travelling to a client last week.
Whilst travelling from New Delhi to Ghaziabad in a car, I noticed a large billboard on the main road. It was advertising a forthcoming spiritual event promoting the peak of well being, and there was a great quote I wanted to capture and share.
"It's not about becoming Super Human
Its about realizing that being Human is Super"
Sadhguru
Not only do I like this quote, but it inspired me to spontaneously think
"Its not about becoming a Super learning and knowledge creating organisation but its about realising that learning and knowledge creation is Super"
Enjoy
Ron Young
Monday, August 11, 2008
Knowledge and wisdom are my passion and my work
Today I have created my third Knol article on Google entitled ' Knowledge and wisdom are my passion and my work'.
Throughout my life, I have always been extremely passionate about knowledge and wisdom
At one end of the spectrum, I am extremely passionate about knowledge management for individuals, teams, organizations and global communities and networks. It became my profession, as a knowledge management consultant, since 1995.
At the other extreme, I am passionate about what you might call 'higher knowledge', philosophy, especially moral and spiritual philosophy and/or ethics. I am passionate about both the ancient wisdom, especially eastern philosophy and modern scientific knowledge, whether it be about quantum theory, neuroscience, nanotechnology or even molecular biology and molecular computing.
If you are interested in my thoughts and my work with knowledge and wisdom, whether it is about practical daily issues and challenges of knowledge management, or whether it is about my perspective and experiences about the meaning and purpose of life, or both, you can find my books, articles and blogs listed.
As always, I would highly value your comments, feedback and any reviews, so that I may continually improve this Knol.
Ron Young
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Updating the Future of Knowledge Management - a second Knol
Today I have created my second Knol article on Google entitled ' Updating The Future of Knowledge Management'.
In 1999 I published an article entitled 'Future of Knowledge Management' in the European American Business Journal. Today, 9 years later in August 2008, I decided to review and rewrite this article.
Where is Knowledge Management (KM) going in the next ten years? What did I get right in 1999? What did I get wrong and what have I learned from this? What are the challenges for knowledge driven organizations if they are to thrive in the global knowledge economy in the next 10 years?
I find it exciting to write about the future of knowledge management in 2008 on a Knol, as I fully embrace the Knol as a great addition to the knowledge management toolkit.
As always, I would highly value your comments, feedback and any reviews, so that I may continually improve this Knol.
Ron Young
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Knowledge Management in the 21st Century - a first Knol article
Well today I have created my first Knol article on Google entitled 'Knowledge Management in the 21st Century'. Its my current point of view on the state of KM, where it might be going, and some challenges over the next years. It's good to see other Knowledge Management Knols appearing already. Google define a Knol as a unit of knowledge.
My first article is far far from complete, but because it is a Knol, it can be rapidly developed, continually improved, and I can refine and develop it further over time and experience. What I urgently seek now is comments and even reviews. Any sort of feedback is very much welcomed.
So I see the blogsphere as a marvellous fragmented or loosely connected global space which is ideal for capturing and developing opinions, ideas, insights, learnings, comments etc chronlogically, and often spontaneously, and I see the knolsphere (if it can be called that for the moment)as a space to develop ideas, opinions, insights, learnings and comments into articles that can be peer reviewed and further developed.
If we wish to, we could then develop several Knols into book chapters, and/or website themes and so on. Of course, the Knol can accomodate collaborative authoring in public and private modes, so, together with blogs and, say, ebooks it could be used as part of a progressive authoring suite.
Coincidentally, or maybe not so, I first heard of the Knol through using my 'Google alerts', learned more about it through 'Google Groups' and 'Search', of course. I use Google reader to better aggregate and track what I am reading, and I am now sharing my thoughts on a Google blog.
I think I badly need a vacation!
Ron Young
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Understanding the dynamics of knowledge and know how it is crucial to employee engagement and performance management
Anjana Doshi (Anj) from the UK has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.
Anjana passionately believes that understanding the dynamics of knowledge and know how is crucial to employee engagement and performance management. She uses the value of diversity, inclusive working, and collaborative partnering to help ambitious management teams operate as high performance teams whilst executing robust, profitable and yet complex business transformations.
She states that "Sustainability of change and growth hinges on how people interact, behave and collaborate. Facilitating the best dynamics to ensure sustainability and engagement is a fascinating key dimension for me. Process and system changes are relatively easy in my assessment and get too much priority."
"I would very much like to share my thoughts with others who are practitioners like myself and those who may have experiences to share as executives and managers responsible for difficult transformations."
If you are interested, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with Anj directly.
Ron Young
Thursday, July 24, 2008
KNOL - a unit of knowledge from Google
Today, I claim that knowledge management has taken a great step forward towards a more inclusive discipline.
I was so pleasantly surprised to see the launch of KNOL by Google. For me, it marks a significant step towards more inclusive and more Open Source Global Knowledge Management. Whereas Wikipedia may be considered to be an incredibly powerful resource for the creation and dissemination of knowledge, there are some limitations, that I believe Google have addressed.
As a key principle of effective knowledge management, it is now possible to have more choice in the information and knowledge you are presented with. With KNOL, you can choose to have an 'author-centric' and a more 'fully inclusive' series of authoritative articles with the same name, for example 'knowledge management', if you wish, as opposed to having just one authoritative article that is managed with that name. There is great merit in both approaches and, if you so wish, you can now choose both.
As a result, Global Knowledge Management is about to move to the next incredibly exciting step, and KNOL is certainly a part of that.
I am now far more motivated, enthused and committed to continually extending and improving KNOL articles and contribute more, starting with some links to more inclusive approaches to knowledge management, new perspectives on knowledge asset management, the inevitable drive to more open source knowledge, and the impact of rapidly emerging knowledge tools to support new and disruptively innovative knowledge processes, that will take us all to the next level of knowledge management. The Semantic Web 3.0 is just one example of this.
Thanks to Google and KNOL, we can now all add our voices, articles and perspectives, and choose to be more inclusive, for the common good of effective global knowledge management.
Ron Young
Thursday, July 17, 2008
National Library for Health Knowledge Management Specialist Library
Caroline De Brun from the UK has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.
Caroline is responsible for finding content for the National Library for Health Knowledge Management Specialist Library .
The aim of this site is to provide National Health Service staff with the resources required to embed knowledge management into their daily practice, with a view to improving the patient experience.
If you are interested, you can read more in the Directory and communicate with Caroline directly.
Ron Young
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Hong Kong Knowledge Management Forum witnesses the changes
Waltraut Ritter has made and entry in the KM Global Directory for the Hong Kong Knowledge Management Forum (HKKMF)
Waltraut founded the HK Knowledge Management Forum in 1998, which is quite influential in growing the awareness for knowledge-based economy issues in Hong Kong and beyond.
The forum engages in advocacy of areas such as knowledge economy, intellectual capital, innovation, knowledge management across different sectors in the society. The forum is independent and receives no public/government funding. It operates thanks to volunteers, private donations and receives sponsorships and participation fees for public events and community-based activities.
This year will be the HKKMF 10th Anniversary!
If you would like to know more about the work of the Hong Kong Knowledge Management Forum, you may view more here.
Ron Young
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
'Mapping Social Connectivity and Artefact Relationships to Improve Knowledge Productivity'
Graham Durant-Law has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.
Based in Canberra, Australia, he is the principal and director in a boutique consulting company called Knowledge Matters, which specialises in business network analysis(BNA) and knowledge management solutions. He maintains a website and blog at http://www.durantlaw.info/ . This site has many papers and presentations, which are freely downloadable.
At the moment, he is a doctoral candidate at the University of Canberra where he is researching part-time the subject 'Mapping Social Connectivity and Artefact Relationships to Improve Knowledge Productivity'.
If you would like to know more about the work of Graham, you may view moreGraham directly.
Ron Young
Monday, July 14, 2008
KM for poverty eradication and knowledge-based development
Professor Serafin "Apin" Talisayon has made and entry in the KM Global Directory.
He advocates knowledge-based development and KM for poverty eradication, in addition to developing appropriate KM tools for clients in the international, public and private sectors.
"I believe that KM can help policy-makers and decision-makers better understand and manage organizations, networks and national economies amidst the changes in the global knowledge economy."
Current positions:> Director for R&D, CCLFI.Philippines, a non-profit NGO dedicated to personal and organizational learning and change, knowledge-based development, knowledge for poverty alleviation and knowledge management> Chair, Knowledge Management Association of the Philippines> Vice-Chair, Society of Knowledge Management Practitioners> Professor, Technology Management Center, University of the Philippines
He has written a book and edited three others in KM, and is a senior author of a book on knowledge for poverty alleviation. He was lead writer of a technical note on knowledge-based economies in Asia
If you would like to know more about the work of Professor Talisayon, you may contact Professor Talisayon directly.
Ron Young
Go to daily blog 'KM-Consulting'
Friday, June 06, 2008
Moving Kenya into the Knowledge Economy 2010
Dr Ann Hylton has entered a very interesting KM initiativein the Global KM Directory for Kenya, entitled 'Moving Kenyainto the Knowledge Economy 2010'.
She says, "For Africa's sake, and for KM growth in Africa, it is hoped that this 'Moving Kenya into the Knowledge Economy 2010' initiative will be a success and that Kenya by 2010 will really have given birth to, (started), a New Economic Life truly driven by its people's knowledge."
You may like to read about this important initiative and, if you can help,please contact Dr Hylton directly.
Ron Young
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Global KM Directory continues to develop...now 68 countries
As at the end of May 2008, we have 64 key countries in the KM Global Directory, and more will be added during June.
Some great KM practitioners and consultants have added their details during May, and much more is promised for June.Check it out, as it happens, by subscribing to the 'What's New' section.
So far, we have entries from the following countries:
USA, UK, India, Malaysia, Spain, Canada, France, Bulgaria, HongKong, Singapore, Norway.
We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, policy makers, students, organizations and other interested parties.
So please let us know your KM capabilities, needs and offerings.
If your country is not listed yet, and you wish to register now, please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.
We will announce new countries and entries through this blog.
We hope you will register in the KM Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities, needs and interests, comments and opinions, the more benefit to us all.
Ron Young
-----------------------------------------
KM Global Directory...capabilities, needs and challenges are coming in
Continuing the launch of a free service, a KM Global Directory of Practice on the website added ten more countries to the KM Global Directory yesterday.
So far, we have received details of KM capabilities, needs, challenges and issues from USA, UK, India, Malaysia, Spain, Canada, France, Bulgaria.
We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, policy makers, students, organizations and other interested parties.
So please let us know your KM capabilities, needs and offerings.
We expect to launch at least 5 new countries per day, and all the key countries should be completed by the end of May 2008.
If your country is not listed yet, and you wish to register now, please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.
We will announce new countries each day through this blog.
We hope you will register in the KM Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities, needs and interests, comments and opinions, the more benefit to us all.
Ron Young
Monday, May 26, 2008
KM Global Directory...25 more countries added last week
Continuing the launch of a free service, a KM Global Directory of Practice onthe website added twenty five more countries to the KM Global Directory last week.
People are now starting to add their own KM capabilities, needs, issues and challenges, around the world. You can check this out automatically, as it happens, by creating an RSS feed to the 'What's New' section, or checking it out when needed. The 'What's New' section will highlight new people and new countries added, as well as other important website changes.
The KM Global Directory will enable you to create your own web page, upload and edit picture and information about your KM capabilities, interests, wants and needs. Others will be able to submit comments, share knowledge, contacts, services, methods and tools and even make ratings of KM professionals, where appropriate.
We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, policy makers, students, organizations and other interested parties.
There will be a section for each country in the world, categorized according to the United Nations World Macro Regions.
1. Africa2. Asia3. Europe4. Latin America5. Northern America6. Oceania
We expect to launch at least 5 new countries per day, and all the key countries should be completed by the end of May 2008.
If your country is not listed yet, and you wish to register now, please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.
We will announce new countries each day through this blog.
We hope you will register in the KM Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities, needs and interests, comments and opinions, the more benefit to us all.
Ron Young
Monday, May 12, 2008
KM Global Directory of Practice..more countries launched
Continuing the launch of a free service, a KM Global Directory of Practice on the website adds eleven morecountries today.
It will enable you to create your own web page, upload and edit picture and information about your KM capabilities, interests, wants and needs. Others will be able to submit comments and even ratings, where appropriate.
We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, students, organizations and other interested parties.
There will be a section for each country in the world, according to the United Nations World Macro Regions.
The first seven countries were launched yesterday. Today we launch:
1. Germany2. Denmark3. Norway4. Finland5. Sweden
6. Canada
7. Hong Kong8. Singapore9. Thailand10.Philippines
11.New Zealand
Yesterday we launched:
1. United States of America2. United Kingdom3. Australia4. Japan5. Spain6. Malaysia7. India
We expect to launch at least 5 new countries per day, and should be completed by the end of May 2008.
If your country is not listed, and you wish to register now (first listed will appear at the top of each country page) please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.
We will announce new countries each day through this blog.
We hope you will register in the Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities and interests, comments and opinions, the more benefit to us all.
Ron Young
KM Global Directory of Practice launched
By popular request, we have just launched a free service, a KM Global Directory of Practice on the website.
It will enable you to create your own web page, upload and edit picture and information about your KM capabilities, interests, wants and needs. Others will be able to submit comments and even ratings, where appropriate.
We hope it will help you better connect with other KM practitioners, consultants, teachers, students, organizations and other interested parties.
There will be a section for each country in the world, according to the United Nations World Macro Regions.
The first countries launched today are
1. United States of America2. United Kingdom3. Australia4. Japan5. Spain6. Malaysia7. India
We expect to launch at least 5 new countries per day, and should be completed by the end of May 2008.
If your country is not listed, and you wish to register now (first listed will appear at the top of each country page) please let us know your country, by commenting on this blog post, or emailing ronyoung@knowledge-management-online.com and we will create your country page within 24 hours.
We will announce new countries each day through this blog.
We hope you will register in the Global Directory. The more who register and share KM capabilities and interests, the more benefit to us all.
Go to daily blog 'KM-Consulting'
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Better 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, one of my all time heroes, and Nova has a very enviable track record in founding and developing web companies to successful IPO's over the years.
Radar Networks have been in stealth mode for quite a while but in October 2007, they launched an invite-beta version of Twine at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco in October 2007.
From their press announcement:
"Radar Networks, a pioneer of Semantic Web technology, today announced the invite-beta of Twine, a new service that gives users a smarter way to share, organize, and find information with people they trust. Twine is one of the first mainstream applications of the Semantic Web, or what is sometimes referred to as Web 3.0"
I immediately put myself down for a beta version as they expand the final testing phase. I am hoping for an early beta version as I believe Twine could start to change paradigms, both as a teaching tool, and, most importantly, as an effective personal knowledge management tool. I hope that Twine will greatly accelerate my ability to teach, consult and help individuals, teams and organisations, and move more people into the more meaningful Web 3.0 world, to use the Web as a resource to achieve even greater results.
Nova Spivak believes that we can combine the best of the people focused social web 2.0 tools together with the semantic technologies that aim to make more sense of documents and the connections between people, and people and documents.
Watching a video from Web2.0 Summit, I respectfully chuckled at Nova's remark that he is combining the 'wisdom of crowds' with the 'wisdom of computers' and that Web 3.0 is Web 2.0 with a brain! Cool!
It's certainly worth following Twine. Check it out and please let me know what you think.
Ron Young
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Share, comment and rank your Knowledge Management (KM) Definitions with us all Over the next few weeks, we are rolling out a new collaborative website that will allow us all to publish, discuss, review, improve and rank knowledge management topics at www.knowledge-management-online.com.
Today, we launch the first collaborative feature, which is to invite you to share with us all, your definition(s), comments and ranking of knowledge management definitions.
'KM Definitions' is the most popular page on the website, and we are keen to help students, practitioners, consultants and organisations more easily understand, develop and further improve their own meaning and definition.
We will announce further features through this blog, as they become available, in the following days.
Ron Young
Go to daily blog 'KM-Consulting'
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Fuji Xerox - 'Creative Routine', Knowledge Management and Innovation 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Go to daily blog 'KM-Consulting'
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
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
Go to daily blog 'KM-Consulting'
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
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
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
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
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
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
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Knowledge Management – the known and the unknown
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, (Sunday 28th October) 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
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
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Knowledge and a commitment to Openness
I am very interested in the growing debate that is developing concerning Open Knowledge on the Web.
I was drawn by a colleague to read a very interesting article in The New York Times 'Libraries shun deals to place books on Web' of 22nd October 2007
In particular, I agree with the following quote, especially too, from a KM Consulting context,
“There are two opposed pathways being mapped out,” said Paul Duguid, an adjunct professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. “One is shaped by commercial concerns, the other by a commitment to openness, and which one will win is not clear.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/technology/22library.html?adxnnl=1&ref=us&adxnnlx=1193134240-lxWxzSxfiLYf9AY68XuG/A
To a degree, I understand the arguments that have been put to date, that information and knowledge developed from public funds should be available for the common good, and "some libraries and researchers worry that if any one company comes to dominate the digital conversion of these works, it could exploit that dominance for commercial gain.", and I understand the need for commercial concerns to make a profit to live and grow, but I think there are several other issues that are emerging on the Web that are just as challenging and fundamental.
I believe that the greatest challenge to a KM Consultant is to take his/her own medicine too and 'think differently about knowledge'.
I fully accept that "many in the academic and nonprofit world are intent on pursuing a vision of the Web as a global repository of knowledge that is free of business interests or restrictions." and I would suggest that this will extend further into the profit world than we, perhaps, realise.
As a KM Consultant, I have realised that I will never be able to develop and compete on knowledge, personally, compared to developing knowledge through open collaborative knowledge communities. It's insane to keep thinking in competitive ownership terms.
Where I believe I can excel as a 21st Century KM Consultant, is in my experience gained, and in my competencies developed, around applying the best available knowledge.
I think that increasingly, the Web will certainly be a growing global repository of knowledge for all, that is free to use for both business interests and non-business interests.
Maybe it will be the case that people will continue to 'compete' on ideas and innovation, and 'collaborate', for the common good of creativity and innovation on knowledge development?
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
KM Singapore and KM Asia 2007 I have been asked to give a keynote address at KM Singapore on 1st November and the title is 'How to develop KM Competencies'.This is very close to my heart, as I feel that the biggest difference to achieving excellence in KM is made through KM competency development of individuals, teams, organisations, knowledge networks and communities of practice.
www.kmsingapore.com
I shall attend KM Asia on 29th - 31st October, in Singapore also, catch up with old friends and listen to all the keynote speakers. I am particularly interested to see if any new challenging thinking, trends, strategies, methods and tools are developing within the conference context of 'enhancing knowledge culture and discovering new possibilities'. I am pretty sure Dave Snowden will deliver some constructive and challenging thoughts. He always does!
www.kmasia.com
My aim, for this trip, is to observe, learn, blog and share any new insights and ideas that I gain. If you have a special interest in these conferences and speakers and are not planning to attend, and if you have a special question or challenge, please let me know and I will do my best to help, if I can.
Ron Young
Go to daily blog 'KM-Consulting'
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Knowledge Management and 'The Search'
I am reading 'The Search' - How Google and its rivals rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture, by John Battelle.
For me, as a knowledge management consultant, putting the search developments and future intentions into a global knowledge management context is very exciting.
So far, this book is blowing me away!
I love the concepts, thoughts, insights and ideas like:
'search has become a universally understood method of navigating our information universe' or
'search defines our interactions with the Internet'
'massive click streams'
'we trust you to not do evil things with our information'
'the future of search will be more about understanding, rather than simply finding'
'what does the world want?'
and best of all, so far:
'harness and leverage the intelligence already extant on the Web - the millions and millions of daily transactions, utterances, behaviours, and links that form the Web's foundation - the Database of Intentions'
This really stretches my brain and aligns my mind to the evolution of planetary intelligence. Read John Battelle! Cool ...
Knowing what you know
So here I am again, back in S W France, reflecting on lessons learned and my trip to Asia and Scotland this past month.
Most times, I am asked to create new knowledge management presentations around new themes. For example: focusing on identifying and developing the core competencies of knowledge management consultants, as in Asia, or how to achieve much better knowledge retention, as in the case of the Oil and Gas sector in Scotland.
What always amazes me is that I never can know what I truly already know until I am given a task and context to think about. In other words, preparing presentations around themes are great knowledge creation and better knowledge organisation techniques.
I know that there is the well known maxim 'You teach to learn and you learn to teach'. But it is so true.
Sometimes I think that I should pay conference and workshop participants for giving me the opportunity to consolidate my learnings and experiences and learn more as I teach!
But then I would not be able to afford to travel and learn at such a fast rate anymore.
So please keep inviting me to speak around the world and I will do my utmost to provide high value by sharing my experiences, learnings and new insights...and , of course, continue to better know and share what I know!
Ron Young
Monday, September 10, 2007
KM Technologies are nothing and everything
Today, I find myself sitting in a Starbucks Coffee lounge at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, with a great mug of cappuccino coffee and a lovely sunrise.
It’s 10.30am and I am waiting for a 12noon flight with Malaysian Airlines direct to London Heathrow. A cool 12 hours of flight, with a specially requested Asian vegetarian meal, which I love, and with time to read and reflect on the weeks work with an international team of KM Consultants. No doubt I will also get time to take in some music and a movie.
As I look out onto the tarmac, I cannot help but be quite awe struck by the queue of Boeing 747 Jumbo jets that are lining up on the runways towards takeoff. Such technology has simply changed the world. I cannot help reflecting on the technologies around me that have radically transformed my life as a knowledge worker this past 20 years.
Incredible Jumbo jets with onboard personal entertainment and personal telephones, together with an extraordinary 21st Century airport with driverless trains, a wifi coffee lounge and, of course, my wireless enabled Sony Vaio personal computer that is connected to the web and the global blogsphere. Of course, my mobile phone enables me to receive emails, pictures and video’s and text my wife as often as I like, using Sony handwriting technology on my PDA, without having to worry about the cost.
I may even get feedback to this blog post from anywhere on the planet before my aircraft lands at LHR International later today!
How did I get invited to Kuala Lumpur from Europe to talk with KM Consultants about KM Consultancy Competencies in the first place?
Well I owe it entirely to new tools to support the knowledge worker. Blogging tools, a personal website building technology, a Google search from a consultant in KL and the World Wide Web. And all of this technology created the invitation to Kuala Lumpur ‘as a simple and natural by product of my knowledge work’.
You see I have always, as a teacher, writer and consultant, disciplined myself to write down what I have learned, and to capture new ideas, new insights and new inspirations. I was taught, as a young consultant many years ago, that the discipline, the process, the habit, call it what you will, of writing this down is of great benefit to me, personally, in organising and developing my knowledge.
What’s new?
Well I used to write this down on odd pieces of paper. Not that effective. Then I captured my learnings, ideas and insights into paper journals. A little better. Then I captured them on my PC in an MS Word document. Even better. Then into a personal PC Journal. Great.
Now it is captured in a blog. Simply fantastic! When I get feedback to my blog, my knowledge expands. Furthermore, at the end of each month I transfer my blogs to the www.knowledge-management-online.com website, and I then discipline myself to distill the learnings into website knowledge content improvements. And then I benefit from even more feedback from visitors to the website - to create even greater knowledge!
You might say I conduct a simple personal knowledge management process, but with the added great benefit of feedback from a growing global community of interested students and experienced practitioners and consultants.
So, although I still do the same knowledge work as I did 20 years ago, in capturing my learnings and ideas and experiences, as a discipline, the new supporting 21st Century Web 2.0 technologies of capturing and sharing have radically changed the quality and capacity of my knowledge work. There is no doubt that the Web has radically transformed the economics of knowledge, and will continue to do so as new tools and technologies appear. Would you go back to central community telephone booths only and throw away your mobile?
The technologies have massively transformed my reach, literally, and I have evolved from being an 'individual individual' to becoming a 'global individual'.
One Google search later, in Kuala Lumpur, while I was asleep in the south of France, searching for ‘knowledge management’, pulls up my website and blogs. A few emails and a couple of weeks later, and I book my flight – on the web of course!
Those KM Consultants that say KM is not about technology are so right and so wrong! They need to wake up and get a new life. They need to get really real!
Knowledge technologies are nothing and everything!
So, what about my learnings and insights after a week working with KM Consultancy Competencies and a great team of consultants from throughout Asia? Simply great!
But the learnings, insights and experiences that I have gathered and distilled this week (maintaining strict confidentiality of specific people and content, of course) will be the subject of my next blogs next week. The flight is closing now and I must switch off my laptop PC.
I certainly do not want to miss out on being able to move my body and my mind around the planet so fast. Such great technologies for the knowledge worker!!
Ron Young
Go to daily blog 'KM-Consulting'
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Sunday, July 15, 2007
Knowledge Management and Open Source Methods?
We are all very familiar with open source software, and there are several offerings available for KM, but I do not see much open source consulting methodology for KM available.
As the original idea for open source was conceived around 'open knowledge', for which we are starting to see significant developments, eg wikipedia, I was wondering if anybody knew of any open source methodologies for KM. At www.knowledge-management-online.com we are starting to do this and, naturally, we are interested in working together with other groups.
Ron Young
This km consulting blog has the following tags
knowledge management km consulting km collaboration km innovation communities social networking information management Web 2.0 Web 3.0 Semantic Web
Thursday, July 12, 2007
KM and the Geneva Declaration 6th July 2007
It was very interesting to read the links sent by Dr. Donat Agosti, Science Consultant Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History and Naturmuseum der Burgergemeinde Bern,concerning the signing of the 'Geneva Convention' on 6th July 2007. After reading, I could not help but put this into the context of the contribution that knowledge management could make to achieving the Geneva Convention goals.
Here are the links to the Global Compact declaration signed last week in Geneva. The GC is an initiative between the UN and the business world based on the hind sight, that it needs both for a better world.
http://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/summit2007/GENEVA_DECLARATION.pdf
http://www.unglobalcompact.org/NewsAndEvents/news_archives/2007_07_06c.html
"Some 4,000 organizations from 116 countries -- among them trade unions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and some 3,100 businesses -- have so far subscribed to the Global Compact, pledging to observe ten universal principles related to human rights, labour rights, the environment and the struggle against corruption.
The Geneva Declaration expresses the belief that “globalization, if rooted in universal principles, has the power to improve our world fundamentally -- delivering economic and social benefits to people, communities and markets everywhere”.
The key theme that I resonated with throughout reading the Declaration, Principles and Actions was 'global sustainability'.
Surely the global knowledge economy, the development of more knowledge driven organisations, and knowledge workers, will make a huge difference to reducing the use of valuable natural resources, on the one hand, and transforming our cultures to more open and trust based on the other.
Traditional Business economies tend to be based on competition for scarce valuable natural and tangible resources, driven by scarcity and knowledge power politics. Sustainability in this economy, based on a scarcity mentality, is almost impossible.
Knowledge economies are based on cooperation and collaboration with unlimited valuable intangible resources, driven by abundance and knowledge sharing power politics. Businesses in this economy, based on abundance, are naturally sustainable.
We are firmly in the era of 'global' individuals, teams, organisations and communities, and I believe that these new knowledge driven entities will substantially contribute to bringing about a more naturally knowledge sharing global society.
I think that effective knowledge management, at the personal, team, organization and inter-organizational levels will make a significant contribution to all of this.
Ron Young
Go to daily blog 'KM-Consulting'
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Yoga is a way of life, a conscious act, not a set or series of learning principles. The dexterity, grace, and poise you cultivate, as a matter of course, is the natural outcome of regular practice. You require no major effort. In fact trying hard will turn your practices into a humdrum, painful, even injurious routine and will eventually slow down your progress. Subsequently, and interestingly, the therapeutic effect of Yoga is the direct result of involving the mind totally in inspiring (breathing) the body to awaken. Yoga is probably the only form of physical activity that massages each and every one of the body’s glands and organs. This includes the prostate, a gland that seldom, if ever, gets externally stimulated in one’s whole life.
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