Listening ...

As i wrote earlier, i am these days reading Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker. Again, as i was reading yesterday, something from the book just came out, something i had to blog about. The point i am writing about is listening.

One of the sources of innovation, he says, is the unexpected. The unexpected failure (thats obvious), the unexpected success (here is a possibility that some of the assumptions that the organization had about the environment are not valid), or the unexpected external event (something external to the organization, or to its sphere, which could represent an opportunity for the organization). OK, i am not an expert at innovation (or anything else, for that matter, but lets just pretend you didnt hear that), so i am not going to dwell on this, except to start this conversation.

In the business ecosystem in which an organization operates, there are a number of unexpected things which happen from time to time. Have interacted with organizations, which have been able to create a new line of business from some experiments (usually done by a small group of folks as something they enjoy doing) which suddenly brought up something which had immense potential for the organization. The story about how Penicillin's medicinal properties were discovered are legendary. For those of us who havent read this, here it is. The idea is that there are a number of things happening in the organization, which, more often than not, the organization doesnt know about. And, since managers dont know about them, they dont know about the potential of some of these ideas to the organization. And this is where the idea of listening comes in.

This brings up the question of how. And this is where the tools of web 2.0 can play a role. By giving the control over creation of content and publishing it, web 2.0 tools can bring about a scenario where anyone anywhere in the organization can publish the things they are doing, what they are working on, and anybody anywhere else in the organization can pick up this idea, refine it, collaborate to take this idea further, and the organization has the tools available to be able to listen to all of this conversation. Doesnt matter if its about listening to employees, suppliers, customers, or any stakeholders. Point is, listening the way web 2.0 tools can enable it can enable the organization to build upon ideas which could germinate anywhere, within or outside the organization. There is one thing, though, which needs to be emphasized. And this is that the organization also has a role to play. People dont necessarily speak when they have an idea. The managers need to create a scenario where people are encouraged to speak, which is more like a scenario where the organization is seen as a facilitator for the ideas which people come up with, being receptive to them, and being open to the possibility of taking them further.

Innovation ... Asia Or America ...

Interesting article over at McKinsey ... about whether Asis, or America will lead innovation in the 21st century. There has been a lot written about the 21st century being the Asian century, and so on ... but, taking this debate in perspective, there are some interesting ideas that come out of it.

To begin with, innovation has always happened, even when management thinkers werent looking for it. I feel the way Asia and America look at innovation is quite different. And, there are a number of reasons for this.

The most important aspect of innovation in Asia, however, is that the contours of Asia, in terms of society, economics, politics and trade, are very different from that of America. While much has been written about the market mechanisms of America, at the micro level, Asia has thriving markets. Its just that the idea of the market is quite different in Asia and in America. This is something i have blogged about before ... and this idea makes a bit of a difference. First of all, things in Asia are not as organized, or as large-scale as in America. Neither are markets, nor is entrepreneurship. Rather, Asia has found these things largely at the micro level.

Another aspect we need to understand, which, as Iqbal points out is that in Asia, resources are scarce. Actually, not really scarce, but given the population, they seem to be scarce. And, scarce resources lead to a scenario where innovation can be the means for survival, not necessarily improvement. Let us look at some examples ...

The first example that comes to mind ... Grameen Bank ... an innovation that by itself has redefined banking for a large number of people. Microfinance as a concept has taken root in Asia ... India, too, is doing remarkably in this respect. Other examples come to mind, too ... the Simputer, for example.

As you can see, none of these are the big-ticket innovations. Rather, these are smaller in nature, but have immense impact. The important thing to udnerstand is, that in Asia, the potential for a small, simple innovation to touch lives is massive, given that it is so much easier for simple innovations to reach out to people, and to reach out to a large number of people, which makes the reach, and the impact these innovations can have huge.

So, what am i trying to say? Simple ... That the way innovation is seen in Asia (or, at least in India), is very different from the way it is seen in America, and the impact of these two perspectives on innovation, and the innovation process is large, which means that the path to innovation for these two different parts of the world could be different from each other.

Knowledge And Being Liberal ...

I have written before about how you never know what idea you may get from where. And this is something i have written about before. Though, i am not referencing a link here, because i cant find it. Which is one of the reasons i have been writing about the necessity for someone to come up with search for opinions, rather than just keywords (or maybe just aggregators which are rather more beneficial than the current ones) ... this would really help make much more sense out of the blogosphere. One of the reasons being that the way the blogosphere is today, and the way i see it going, is made up of a number of voices, which rather makes the signal-to-noise ratio rather low, the way things stand. I know, there have been a number of pieces written about this, but i just wanted to add this.

But i am digressing from what i wanted to tell. As i said, you never know what thought could come from where. These days, i am reading a rather interesting book (well, you may find it interesting, or not, depending on your personal beliefs ... point is, i find it interesting ... you may not ... if you dont, or if you do, please do tell me about it) titled The Templar Revelation. Of course, i am not writing this to write my opinion about the book. Allow me to keep this to myself, at least for the moment ... let me think if i want to write about this or not, at a later time.

What i am writing about, though, is a sentence in the book, which got me thinking ... no, this sentence has nothing to do with the subject which it triggered my thoughts towards. At one point, the authors say ...

A culture that encourages the pursuit of knowledge tends to tolerate radical new thought.

Now, i am not looking at the context in which this sentence is written ... its not relevant, and thats one of the points i am trying to make ... something from a particular context could actually get you thinking about something which may not be related at all. And what this got me thinking about is whether a culture of knowledge is tolerant, or whether tolerance leads to a culture of knowledge-acquisition? And i am not able to come up with an answer (simply because one moment i think that pursuit of knowledge leads to tolerance, and the next moment, on second thoughts, i feel like changing my opinion ... so, maybe, sometime soon, i will post a poll on this ... please do let everyone know your opinions then ... which will be soon, as soon as i think i can get a clear picture from the current poll, that is).

Now, even though i am not able to come up with an answer, the fact is, there is a relationship between the two. Now, if we look at this relationship in the context of organizations, and try to examine this relationship, we find, at least from the interactions i have with a number of organizations, that this relationship does hold good. What this means is that in an organizational context, culture or atmosphere which encourages the pursuit of knowledge is more tolerant of ideas which are more radical (or, shall we say, ideas which represent departures from the established norms), or vice-versa. And this, to my mind, is a critical ingredient to innovation ... i dont claim to understand the process of innovation too closely, but i do understand that innovation is about the creation of new thoughts, and the pursuit of these thoughts and ideas to their logical conclusion, whether that leads to the introduction of a new product, or entry to a new market, or to nothing at all. This, of course, has to be tempered by considearions of ROI, but that is expected, isnt it? Senior managers of any organization are not runnina laboratory, after all.

The point i am trying to make, however, is that one way or the other, there is a relationship between knowledge and innovation ... question is, what is this link? Simple ... if we look at it carefully, all innovation is directly or indirectly knowledge-driven ... whether it be knowledge about customers, or markets, or products, engineering, or business processes ... and in turn of possibilities of creating greater value to customers by changing some of these.

Cause And Effect ...

I have long believed, and continue to believe (unless someone can convince me otherwise) that innovation is best when it is broad-based. No, i am not saying this with the benefit of hindsight, but rather, from the many Rum and Water consumed with colleagues (primarily Old Monk, but then, i am no connoiseur ... did i get the spellings right there?), cribbing about the so many stupid things which the senior managers keep doing from time to time. No, i am not taking names ... i am still good friends with most of them, so dont even bother to ask, my dears! Fact of the matter is, if you ask the many people working on the field about the things which the organization is doing wrong, you will be sure to get answers ... plenty of them! Of course, you got to be careful how you ask, though. Ask it too stiff-collared, and you might not get any answers whatsoever.

So, whats the point, i hear you asking. Stifling a yawn, maybe? Well well ... the point is simply this ... that when it comes to innovation, the ideas are out there. Legend tells of legendary innovations the creation of which is the stuff of legends (my take on Kung Fu Panda, which, by the way, if you still havent seen, you probably must ...), so let me not interfere with the legend. But the point is, so many of the innovations we see around us, have come from, at times, stupid ideas. Which is something i believe in strongly. That at the "bottom of the pyramid" is where the brilliant ideas exist. For another similar idea, read my previous post. And i believe, that social computing is a fabulous tool to tap into this vast treasure of ideas which is readily available, only needing the possibility of a treasure hunter coming and discovering the treasure, and generating value from it. In other words, the one most important aspect is that people have the ideas, and these ideas are based on knowledge. Most of these ideas come from very intimate understanding of work, organization, market, customers ... only thing, the organization must be willing to invest the energy required to listen.

And probably the most fabulous tool till now to enable organizations to listen ... whether to customers, or partners, or employees, is social computing. True, you have had discussion forums and similar technologies around for some time now, but then, i dont think they have been maningfully deployed. This is not to say that social computing tools by themselves are a magic pill, which implies that they too have to be meaningfully deployed. In addition, they are, at best, the ears ... the organization also needs to be build up the entire apparatus, from the external auditory meatus, to the tympanic membrane, the cochlea, the cochlear nerve ... all the way to the brain (click here for the diagram). Without this, all the organization has is the proverbial "deaf ear".

Having said that, a question which i am asked quite a few times is whats the cause, and what effect. Can the success of social computing lead to greater participation, or could greater participation lead to the success of social computing. It is obvious that the latter it is, but what is not so obvious is that the former is equally valid. In fact, if we look at it as a circular phenomenon, we would be able to understand that social computing cannot succeed without enhanced participation, and enhanced participation wont come about till social computing is seen as a success (why would someone waste their time contributing to a platform which is not too widely accepted?). The answer is give is simple ... Value. Value creation, and the perception of this, is the way to break this circle. There are a number of organizations which have done it, and a lot of organizations which have struggled. But the fact is, the possibilities are enormous.

New Cisco ...

Happy New Year ... Here i am back to blogging. And i thought it might be cool to blog about an artile which is quite interesting ... about how John Chambers is turning Cisco socialist ... no, dont get too carried away by the topic. What comes as socialism seems to be more of democratization. In a nutshell, what we are talking about is the way John Chambers is getting Cisco into a struture where ideas, and delivery on these ideas happens at various levels and geographies in the organization. What seems like the logical next step from web 2.0 technologies, the form of enterprise 2.0 seems to be taking shape at Cisco, is what one would gather from this article.

There are a few thoughts that come out ...

distributed idea engine where leadership emerges organically, unfettered by a central command

The logical next step from the initial idea of e 2.0 ... though the point to see here is that the way, and the level to which this can be distributed depends on the level to which the central command is ready to relinquish authority. And this is the question which is either being asked, or will be asked in most organizations as web 2.0 proceeds.

"We want a culture where it is unacceptable not to share what you know," he says. So he promotes all kinds of social networking at Cisco: You can write a blog, upload a video, and tag your myriad strengths in the Facebook-style internal directory.

This is the important part ... the atmosphere where people believe that its desirable to actually share what you know. Without this, any kind of organization structure, or any kinds of web 2.0 tools would fall flat, not delivering on their possibilities. And this can actually be facilitated quite simply ... by turning people into contributors. By keeping in mind that everybody at every level of the organization has some form of expertise and knowledge which can be leveraged by the organization.

Chambers is convinced that the role of the CEO has to morph. He recalls a lesson he learned working for An Wang of Wang Laboratories, whom he has often called one of the smartest people he's ever known: "One person cannot anticipate a market transition.

And this is the key. Assumption has been in most organizations that there are a set of people who have the know-how which can be leveraged to drive innovation, and to take advantage of opportunities that evolving markets present. This is the assumption which is being questioned more and more by organizations, and this is the kind of thought process which would bring up ideas ... maybe not all ideas radical, but definitely, can bring up ideas which are in synch with the market, as well as bring up ideas which can drive the new ideas to delivery. What John Chambers also comes up with is interesting ... that the key is that the CEO, and the leadership of the organization has to morph. Most management consultants would tell us that managers should be coaches, but this is easier said than done, and misses the point that the leadership has to simply provide direction, and develop an atmosphere where people can actively contribute to the development of the company, if for no other reason, then simply because this development signals their development as individuals as well as employees in the organization.

KM India ... Day 2

Day 2 at KM India brought some rather interesting discussions ... it began with Debra Amidon making a presentation about Knowledge Innovation Zones, and the implications for India. This made a very eloquent point about the way the knowledge economy is evolving, and the role specific knowledge zones can play in this. This almost flies in the face of current wisdom that geography is irrelevant. But then, one thinks ... is it? If it is, how would one explain that Bangalore happens to be the hub of technology development in India. Or, Silicon Valley, for that matter ... Not that i unerstand too much about this, focused as i am on how KM works within the organizational sphere, but nevertheless ...

This was followed by a panel discussion about the Role of Technology in KM. The keynote address by Mr. A. Srinivasan from TCS, was a very interesting one ... it began with Dr. Kavi Mahesh raising the point about it being fashionable to downplay technology, and focus on the people aspect of KM. While i do agree with his point, i think its more about re-emphasizing the importance of people in the entire KM scheme of things, given that KM practitioners have spent quite some time focusing on the technology aspects alone, with not much emphasis on the people aspects. But, he does have a point ... and, this point was very well illustrated by Mr. Srinivasan, when he said that KM has been around for long ... technology has changed the scope of the activities which can be done to facilitate KM on a much larger scale.

This is something i quite agree with ... that Knowledge Management has been around ever since Knowledge has been around. Whether it was the passing down of traditions from generation to generation, or the writing down ot texts, both religious and secular, or whether you look at the idea of guilds, transforming into apprenticeships, into training, and KM as we know it today ... and this is where the point Mr. Srinivasan made come in ... that today, the way we can reach out to people, exchange thoughts and ideas, is very different, and much larger in terms of scale, and this is something which has been enabled by technology. Another aspect which came out quite well was the idea that KM technologies must integrate, over a period of time, with enterprise applications ... something on the lines of what i have written about, from the perspective of CRM apps. What the panel also quite agreed about was the two aspects of the technology framework for KM, which they pointed out to be serendipity, and presentation. This looks similar to the idea that David Tai raised on day 1 ... that people are interested in doing their work, and not necessarily KM. Taking this one step further, people's contribution to KM could be seen as a by-product of their work, rather than being in addition to it. For example, take facebook ... when you join a group, you dont go about telling your friends about it. They just get to see it without you having to do anything additional. Something on similar lines within the firewall ...

Another interesting point that came up was about the contribution distribution. There seems to be a general picture that contribution to KM platforms comes from a minority of people, with the rest of the people being consumers. So, there are a set of people who actively contribute (say, 10%), another set of people who comment on these, or provide feedback (say, 20%), and the majority who simply read (say 70%) ... of course, these figures are something i just made up.

Raj Datta came up with the idea that social networks, with their people to people interactions, could be used as a catalyst for generating contributions from larger proportion of people. This could be because this gives them a trusted channel for collaboration. To an extent i agree with this, but i think serendipity would also need to play an important role for this to happen.

There was an interesting question which was raised ... that most companies seem to be using similar strategies for KM. Does this represent a convergence to a possibly right way of doing things, or does this mean that we have run out of ideas? To my mind, its the latter ... the way i look at it, we have yet to come up with a best approach to much older questions (remember the core competence vis a vis diversification debate?), and hence, i wouldnt think we could have arrived to a best approach to such a new question. This also brings to mind the fact that most organizations are facing similar challenges in taking KM to the next level, but this is to be expected because the basic, underlying problem they are trying to solve remains the same, irrespective of organization.

On the topic of Innovation, Venky Rao, from Satyam, made an interesting observation ... this is something i have been thinking for quite some time now, and it was nice to get validation ... that real innovation happens where the rubber hits the road. That ideas are aplenty in organizations, only thing is, not many managers actually listen to those ideas. This could, in large part, be because most managers, with conventional experience are not comfortable with some of these ideas, because represent something which is different from conventional experience.

This, more or less, covers the two informative days at KM India ... Day 3 was the master-classes, though i would think of them more as break-out sessions. More about them soon ...

KM India ... Day 1

OK ... I am at Mumbai ... attending KM India 2008. So this is a little dated, considering that today was day 2 of the event ... but then, with the Cocktails and Dinner last night, you didnt think i would have been blogging, did you? I did think i would blog live from the venue, but then i realized i am yet to perfect the art of listening, understanding, and commenting about a topic, all at the same time. Hence the delay ...

 

Nevertheless, the opening day brought up some interesting topics. It opened with an address by K. V. Kamath. Needless to say, a large part of the address was about the current (ok, so most of us would like to use the word recent rather than current) financial crisis. This was followed by a talk by Suresh Prabhu ... and i must say that when K. V. Kamath said that he would go anywhere to hear Suresh Prabhu speak, he wasnt exaggerating. Prabhu made a strong pitch for integrating knowledge into the organizational structures. Of course, we know this is far easier said than done, but then, this did kick-off the proceedings in the appropriate way. Especially interesting point he made ...

 

A conformist attitude is a problem in any social setup, and can be handled if some level of deviation from the ideal is encouraged.

 

Of course, this makes sense. This was, in fact, brought forth quite strongly by S. K. Sharma from Airtel, who raised the point ... about the inherent tension between Knowledge Management, and Quality. This was in response to my question at the panel discussion with few of the MAKE award winners ... actually, i was trying to understand the difference between the communities they have been able to foster at Tata Steel (i still call it TISCO ... guess i am too old to call it anything else) and some similar initiatives which have been around for some time now ... especially Quality Circles. To cut a long story short, one way of addressing this tension could be to make the KM initiatives dovetail into the quality initiatives running in the organization. So, if you generate some great ideas, you work with the Quality team to bring them in as an integral part of the quality processes in the organization.

 

With this, the session on KM Strategy and Assessment got underway ... and Prof. Jayanta Chatterjee from IIT-Kanpur (or, IITK, to the old hands ...) made a rather impressive presentation about the work they have done with creating a platform for knowledge-sharing in the agriculture value-chain, from the farmer to the trader. Its quite an impressive model, bringing together all the participants in the agriculture value-chain. What i found stood out in this discussion was the description of the "knowledge-grid". Here, to take an example, they would take a particular crop variety, e.g. Pulses on one axis, and different aspects of cultivating the crop, e.g. pesticides, harvesting, etc., on another axis, and clicking on the intersection one can reach the discussions around the intersection of the two. The question this brought to mind was how they managed to address the fuidity in topics, or whether they did even have such a fluidity. I think not, if they can capture the various aspects of cultivating the crop, then all information related to this can be classified into one aspect or the other. Some sort of taxonomy, but what is interesting is the way they have worked out the intersection of the two dimensions.

William Miller gave a very interesting talk about the whole idea of knowledge and innovation. He used the example, where he likened inhaling to learning, and exhaling to innovation, to make the point that knowledge creation must lead to innovation, and vice-versa. Quite convincing, especially the way i look at it ... that we create knowledge through everyday work that we do. And in this manner, this learning, or the process of creation of knowledge, must lead to new ideas, new ways of doing things ... whether we know it or not. He also tried to bring in the whole idea of best practices, as not necessarily the place where you need to stop ... rather, to use best practices as the benchmark in a way so that you can use them as a launchpad to create something better.

Dr. J. K. Suresh from Infosys reflected on the idea that knowledge is communal property, which means that it belongs not just to one individual, but rather, by its very nature of multiplying by sharing, to the community. However, when we are trying to measure knowledge, we are trying to ascribe it to particular individuals. This is a basic mis-match which needs to be addressed. This, i believe, must be something which must be looked at, when we are trying to understand the basic dynamics of knowledge creation in the organization. One possibility is to encourage the treatment of knowledge as belonging to the entire community, rather than to the individual. Of course, this is far easier said than done, and i agree that this is a rather vague way of looking at things, but this mis-match must be addressed.

Ed Cohen from Satyam made a rather interesting point ... that the essence of leadership is collaboration. Or, in other words, that the main role of leaders is to facilitate collaboration. This makes sense to an extent (no, i am not going into the other aspects of leadership ... i dont think i am best suited to write about them), since collaboration is about getting people to work with each other, together, towards a common goal, in a way where the whole is greater than the sum. It made sense when i was listening to him, but i guess somewhere i lost my threads on this line of thinking ... need to think more.

Debra Miller made a rather interesting comment ... about the need to empower people to contribute and share knowledge as themselves, as individuals, rather than as parts of a business process. This is pretty much similar to the philosophy of social networking ... the focus being on people, rather than on the content, and the role of people in generating knowledge, and sharing knowledge, being central, and being acknowledged as such.

David Tai from IBM made a very impressive presentation about the web 2.0 initiatives being run at IBM. I say impressive, because this presentation described very well the journey IBM has taken over the years from the ICM days of Lotus Notes databases, to the new w3, and KnowledgeView, and the further step towards social computing. An interesting point that David made is about the way he uses his social network within IBM, and outside to learn, because people in his network have already synthesized knowledge, and he gets to see the outcome of this synthesis, so he has a lot to learn from his network, rather than searching for things. This is something i have written about before. This brought up an interesting conversation i had with my friend Nirmala Palaniappan, though i still do believe that social networking is not going to do away with search, though it is going to impact search in some ways.

Raj Datta (looking quite different from the picture you see in the profile) from MindTree Consulting came up with a very interesting idea ... of breaking up knowledge-space into four quadrants:

• Q1: i know what i know
• Q2:  i dont know what i know
• Q3: i dont know what i know
• Q4: i dont know what i dont know

From here, he went on to raise the question that since the largest of the four is the "i dont know what i dont know" quadrant, and this is also the fastest growing of the four, why is it that most KM strategies focus on the "i know what i know" Q1? The interesting part here is that the Q4 "i dont know what i dont know" quadrant, while being the most difficult to discover, is the one with the most possibilities. Of course, this is easier said than done, but this does take us somewhat into the realm of innovation, but this is something that William Miller mentioned, too, describing knowledge and innovation as being two parts of a single whole.

As you can see, it was quite a packed day at KM India, and this was followed by Cocktails and Dinner, and though i couldnt commune with the Old Monk (please read the odes penned by a number of followers), with Mr. Walker for company, you wont be surprised at the delay in writing, would you?

Oh, and please do look to the right, to see the most interesting aspect of KM India ... and no marks for guessing why there's only half a plate of Cookies there!