Adventures in Knowledge

Social computing upends past knowledge management archetypes

I recently was forwarded a trend paper produced by Forrester Research titled: "Social Computing Upends Past Knowledge Management Archetypes". I cannot link or reproduce the entire paper due to copyright, but thought I would provide the Exec Summary which by itself is quite interesting.

"When knowledge management (KM) practices, tools, and architectures burst onto the scene in the mid-1990's, the looked a lot like the old economy business that built them, hierarchical and work flow driven. Now, Social Computing tools are flattening those architectures and extending the reach of KM well beyond the walls of the conventional enterprise to touch customers and business partners. Information and KM professionals are becoming knowledge facilitators, and they must get smart fast to capitalise on this trend. Although disruptive, Social Computing will transform KM, shifting the emphasis from repositories, which are hard to build and maintain, to more intuitive, tacit knowledge sharing. Social computing is becoming the new KM, moving it from an often too academic exercise into the real world of people sharing knowledge and expertise with each other naturally, without even thinking about it."

This paper certainly provided me with much enthusiasm to see what I have been talking about becoming more mainstream. It also left me with a feeling of frustration that a lot of big organisations still are not even in this space, let alone seeing the urgent need to develop social network strategies for corporate knowledge. I continually see a focus on the technology - a "new toy" to play with, yet little thought being placed in the development of a road map for the organisation - what will the impact / value add be of embracing a social network approach to the business - is the culture of the organisation ready to support such a move - how will we educate our people to the benefits of being more networked - does management understand and support this change in the business - just to name a few big questions!

Anyway - ultimately it will be those organisations that embrace this challenge today that will have competitive advantage and an enhanced value proposition tomorrow....

Wikipedia and Jimmy Wales

Yesterday I attended a seminar with the keynote address by Jimmy Wales of Wikimedia fame. It is interesting to note what preconceptions we have, I was expecting some glitz and ra ra about wikipedia and the success he is having. Yet the whole event was quite understated and Jimmy appeared to be a genuine down to earth guy with noble sentiments to help all of us through free access to encyclopedic resources. He has stated that his goal "is to give a free encyclopedia to every single person on this planet." I was impressed that he did not know the answer to everything and freely acknowledged that the volunteer team responsible for wikipedia can be quite chaotic at times, but still manages to get lots achieved. He also freely admitted that there had been lots of challenges and unwanted media attention - or media attention on the wrong things!

My conclusions from listening to the keynote address are that Wikipedia is not going away, has set a benchmark in new ways to collaborate and has provided the much needed impetus for organisations to consider how wikis might work with their people.

Serious business - Web 2.0 goes corporate - EIU Report

The EIU have just released a really interesting report: Serious business - Web 2.0 goes corporate. Dare I say that perhaps we are reaching the tipping point! This paper is a great paper to take to management to open their eyes to the need to consider Web 2.0.

Some of the major takeouts from the paper are:

• 31% of companies think that using the web as a platform for sharing and collaboration will affect all parts of their business
• Almost four fifths of executives surveyed see the sharing and collaboration aspects of Web 2.0 as an opportunity to increase their companies revenue and/or margins
• Nearly 60% of big companies surveyed say they are for example inviting customers to contribute content that explains, supports, promotes or enhances their products, or that they plan to do so within the coming two years
• 47% of companies are, or are planning to, treat customers as co-developers of products that they constantly improve in a continual "beta" testing phase
• Big business expects the repercussions of these new tools and methods to be far reaching: 58% say that their use of the web to partner with customers will impact on some or all parts of their business
• So far, early adopter companies have focused their Web 2.0 efforts on the creation of online communities that can help with product marketing or the development of new products. Right behind that, companies are setting up blogs or wikis to initiate conversations either inside or outside the company (49%)

What I found most encouraging is that these results are validating the need for Knowledge Management to change the focus away from content to connecting people as outlined in an earlier post Direction of KM

One quote from the report really stood out to me in the context of collaborating around knowledge:

"The value is not in the delivery of knowledge, but in the alchemy of knowledge, in the ability to connect thoughts that weren't previously connected"

A very thought provoking quote indeed!

Have you had a look at the Adventures in Knowledge Anecdotes wiki? Come on - everyone has experiences  - good and bad about sharing knowledge - we would like to hear about yours!

Wikis in the workplace

Here is another post - from the Wikinomics blog showing that Wikis are making inroads in the corporate world.  The explosive growth of Wikipedia has proven the usefulness of these collaborative tools and driven demand for their use inside corporations.

What is also interesting is to see what happens when the "lightbulb turns on". The excitment and rush of enthusiasm is amazing - the challenge is to harness this in a meaningful way. More damage can be done inside the organisation through people rushing off and setting up a plethora of blogs and wikis, without taking into account the people side - the need to manage the fear factor and associated cultural change required to ensure that benefit to the business is recognised and objections overcome.

Have you had a look at the Adventures in Knowledge Anecdotes wiki? Come on - everyone has experiences  - good and bad about sharing knowledge - we would like to hear about yours!

Commercial wikis

My apologies for not having posted yet this week. I have been rather busy undertaking a network analysis with an multinational in China and fighting the dreaded flu at the same time. But hopefully with the Easter break just around the corner I might get some breathing space....

On to today's post:

Bill Ives blog Portals and KM in a recent post Creating Successful Niche Content Spaces on the Web commented on a recent article from CNN  Why Commercial wikis don't work concluding:

"So foster very focused content creation and stay away from trying to do too broad and ill defined a topic like writing a group novel. Success can come on a focused site or on a site that promotes and support multiple niche content areas like the Wikipedia"

I would just like to add that when looking at the perspective of using wikis within the organisation, from my expererience they work best when there is a specific business need - getting teams to collaborate around a specific business issue or building community around a service offering is a great way to get individuals to start to experiement with how the wiki can be used. A lot of the time the experience is positive which leads to word getting out. I don't advocate a "big bang" approach as at the end of the day the wiki is an enabler - it is up to the practitioner to determine how it can add value and best be used in the context of their job.

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