Conversations ...

There is a rather interesting post by Nick Milton about the value of dialogue in KM. Nick makes a very important point about the non-clarity of the knowledge available with "suppliers", and the knowledge required by "customers". This is so because, by definition, we cannot articulate everything. And this makes conversations very important. And with conversations, i am not just talking about people talking face-to-face, but conversation as a generic presence within organizations.

Another aspect which i wanted to bring out here is that the value of conversations also comes from the fact that conversations bring out a shared context which is important for knowledge-sharing to happen. While i believe that with knowledge-sharing within the organizational context, the organization plays an important role in creating a shared context, within this larger picture, between the supplier and customer, there must be a shared understanding of what is being shared. This becomes even more important the more diverse the supplier and customer in terms of their background, whether geographic, work area, experience, etc., because the more diverse they are, the more important conversation becomes a way to bridge this contextual gap.

Lets take another step further. If we look at the KM scenario today, we find that content management is something which is already a given. Its not as though organizations are starting to implement content management. Rather, the concept of content management is already matured, with organizations already having a good understanding of what it is about, and what it entails, and the benefits they could expect from it. On the other hand, collaboration, rather, conversation, is something which is emerging as a concept in organizations. Which means that CKO's probably need to look more closely at this aspect of KM. Maybe we need, in addition to CKO, someone as CCO ... Chief Conversation Officer?

Wikis ...

One of the blogs i follow is Grow Your Wiki, by Stewart Mader. Stewart has some wonderful ideas about wikis, the role they play in organizations, and the way they could deliver value in organizations. In his latest post, Stewart talks about specific problems which can be solved with wikis. Here, he refers to the post by Andrew McAfee where he discusses Enterprise 2.0, looking at specific scenarios where social computing tools can be used to meet specific business requirements.

One of the things Andrew talks about is:

Problem: How can we bring new hires up to speed as quickly as possible so that they become effective employees and stop bugging people with all their questions?

Use a wiki. Office supply company VistaPrint initiated a wiki in an attempt to capture what a new engineering hire needed to know. Because this knowledge base changed so quickly, the company felt that any peper-based solution would quickly become obsolete. Within 18 months the wiki grew to contain over 11,000 pages placed into 600 categories, all of them generated by employees themselves rather than a professional knowledge management staff. It became a dynamic and up-to-date repository of the company's engineering knowledge.

A question which comes up from here, though, is whether the company is letting all employees write on the wiki. Or whether only people with a specific level of experience, and coming from a specific technical background are allowed to write on this wiki. One would probably think latter. Few of the organizations i interact with have a scenario where wikis are written by a set of people, for use by all. From this, one can see that the benefit of a wiki is that it is dynamic, that unlike a document, it doesnt become obsolete (thats assuming participation levels are appropriate).

What this means is that maybe a true wiki is not the appropriate solution, for a large number of scenarios. Something i have blogged about before. The idea is that authorship for these wikis may not necessarily be with all. A specific set of people write, and anyone can read. This seems to be the model which finds more acceptance within the organization. Somewhat like the knol. So where does the participation come from? Usually, team wikis could have everyone from the team participating, but not so corporate wikis. Collaboration, here, could follow the path of the discussion forum, which is why, i guess, some software providers give functionality for discussion forums attached to wiki pages.

This brings to the question of which are finding greater acceptance ... corporate wikis, or team wikis? Could you please participate on the poll you see?

Education For The Times ...

There is no way anyone could say that the new paradigm of social computing has not changed the way education can be delivered. New ways of reaching out to students have been opened, and this is not just for universities, but also for studetns, a new, different way of doing things.

If OCW was a step into things which werent explored, then this initiative ... Academic Earth ... seems to be the next step. There are two aspects of this that need to be looked at. One is that this is bringing the finest minds from some of the best universities together, and creating a repository of knowledge which can be shared easily with anyone anywhere who can connect to the internet. This was something we couldnt even have dreamt of when we were stusying at school, or college. OK, so that goes to show i am over the hill, but even so ... this is quite an amazing concept. What is also interesting is how students could actually leverage the power of the community ... so, for example, a student taking the course on Newtonian Mechanics by Prof. Shankar knows that this course has been rated A+ by 46 others. Which gives quite a nice indication of how the students perceive the course. This used to happen when we were in college, too. I remember, for example, when we joined college, everyone (from our branch) knew that the exam on Turbo-Machines in the VIIth semester had been the downfall of many a students (so much so that Prof. Roy was one of the dreaded ones), but that used to happen with a particular radius. The community, for this example, was the college students, while for Academic Earth, the community is anyone who wants to, or has studied, a particular course.

Question ... whats the next step? Co-creation of courses by community? One point there, though, is that the community couldnt get the expertise of the Professor to this co-creation exercise, which means that the role of the community primarily has to be to enrich the experience of all the people taking a course, either through direct, or through indirect interactions. Any thoughts what the next step could be? Please do leave your thoughts ...

The Wiki Conundrum

This is something which is debated in a lot of organizations, and this is something which wikipedia has also adopted ... some amount of editorial supervision, on articles about living people. This is something which comes back to a question which has been asked before, about how reliable a source like wikipedia is. Having written about this before, the question comes up again. And i am talking about this question from the organizational perspective. The question is, how reliable is information which is written on a wiki application which may be deployed within the organization.

For example, what if someone writes an incorrect solution to a problem on a wiki which is meant as a Knowledge Database, and using this solution leads to further problems? Or, if someone writes something irrelevant or incorrect on the HR policy page? One could say that within the organizational context, everything written can be identified by author, but even so, this means that incorrect information could make its way to what is considered a reliable source of information. This could be more important if this source of information is required for some critical applications.

Does this mean one needs to ask what applications a wiki is ideal for, within the organization? If that is the question which one asks, the answer is maybe ... or then, maybe not. The answer would depend on who is answering the question, actually. But, some people believe it isnt. There are certain applications for which a wiki is ideal, and some for which it isnt. Or, a solution, which is a hybrid. Hybrid would be a solution which is a wiki, but not open to authorship by all. For example, a software company, maintaining a bug-fix database using a wiki may want to have only specific teams writing to this wiki. Something like a knol? As i have written before, this seems to be a solution which could be useful in the organizational context.

Does this mean that a team wiki finds more utility than a corporate wiki? Please do post your comments.

Social Media Study Findings ...

Bill Ives has blogged about the findings Prescient Digital Media study about social computing ... There are some findings of the study which one could look at ...

One, there is the finding about the reason that organizations are looking at social computing for ... as Bill says:

Employee Collaboration - 77%
Knowledge Management - 71%
Employee Engagement - 53%
Executive Communications - 35%

What we need to look at here is that a large number of organizations are looking at social computing for employee collaboration and knowledge management. What this means is that to a large number of organizations, KM is separate from the idea of facilitating employee collaboration. This means that a large number of organizations see KM as essentially document repositories, and not as a means for sharing knowledge, no matter the means for sharing knowledge.

Another aspect, as Bill puts it, is:

Despite the common wisdom that executive involvement greatly aids adoption, the study found relatively little executive involvement as 57% of executives have never contributed content or have done so infrequently (less than once per month) and only 11% of organizations have executives that contribute content on a daily basis.

This seems to be expected because more and more, it is people at junior or middle management levels who seem to be taking to social computing more than senior managers, which leads to the idea that social computing is not a fad, but would probably be around for some time to come, though the shape of social computing may change over a period of time. David Gurteen has put up a poll about this, where again, a large number of people who have responded seem to think that social computing is not a fad.

Social Computing ... Concern?

A lot has been written about how social computing, and some of the web 2.0 tools have changed the entire paradigm of content creation, and how today, anyone, in any part of the organization can create content, and discuss things with anyone else, and contribute ideas, and so on. One of the applications of this is what is termed as crowdsourcing.

There is a question which comes, though. And this is probably something which is not too well discussed. The scenario i am talking about is within the organization, and it is in this context that this scenario comes up ... the thing is that today, organizations are using social computing tools for getting people to connect with each, and in the process, the organization can listen in, and identify topics, thoughts, ideas, which could create value for the organization. However, and this is what we probably are not discussing ... when people are writing their thoughts (lets say a blog), they have a specific set of things which are their priority, which probably align with their performance appraisal criteria. What does this mean? This means that if you are trying to crowdsource ideas, for example, the ideas, or thoughts that you would come up with would be closely aligned to the interests of the people participating in this sourcing activity. To this extent, this implies that, at the end of this kind of process, some form of evaluation, whether by a set of people or by a community, is something which may be quite important before these can be taken forward. This is not just the idea of getting approval for specific ideas, for example, but rather, of sieving the ideas that do come up in this activity, and identifying the interests which those ideas serve, if at all, and then, build on those ideas keeping this in mind.

Is this something which you think should be discussed on a broader level?

Formal And Informal ...

My friend, Subash Thyagarajan recently shared an interesting diagram over at the K-Community site. I am posting this here, thanks to him ...

This picture gives quite an interesting representation of the various initiatives which together make up for KM. I agree that i dont quite understand some of the terms he has mentioned here, but even so ... This shows that knowledge sharing has to be a convergence of informal and formal means. For over a decade, we have been looking at the right part of the picture, which is about the sharing of content in terms of documents, or means of learning like formal training. The left part, on the other hand, refers to the informal means of learning which are emerging as the next set of tools available to the organization for knowledge sharing.

The important point, though, is that these are to converge into a single set of tools, driving the entire idea of knowledge sharing. Which means that conversations, for example, which, within the organizational context, revolve around topics, could bring into their fold documents, learning content, and other formal means of learning, and documents could be managed in a way that lends them to be leveraged more easily to conversations. This is something we are seeing. So today, there could be tag-clouds for documents, just as they are for blogs, and people could reference documents they have written, or read on their profiles.

This is a picture which i have in mind when it comes to social networking, within the organizational context. That all people in the organization have their own profile, and they should be able to connect with others based on topics, as well as based on documents, and formal means. So, for example, if you are interested in a particular topic, you might like to see who are the people who have attended the training on that topic which happened some time ago. Or, who are people who are writing documents, or reading documents on that topic from the corporate content repository.

While these are just examples (and i would look forward to more such examples from you to add to this picture), these do make a point, that the KM strategy of the organization must be inclusive to these varied forms of knowledge-sharing.

Social Computing In Engineering

There is an interesting post by Leslie Gordon about social computing in engineering ... for one, you dont read too much about the web 2.0 phenomenon in the engineering or industrial sectors, and for another, the discussion here is quite interesting.

One thing that folks working in the information technology space can read and feel a little better about is that just like int he technology sector, in the engineering sector, too, social computing is seen as a waste of time. In other words, anyone who is blogging, or networking with others is not working. Now now ... where have we heard that before? Having said that, this is probably expected, given that technology professionals are supposed to be on top of information technology (which includes web 2.0 tools), engineering professionals are not supposed to be. Which would make this kind of reluctance expected in the engineering space, but not really in the technology space. Having said that, this is more about the value perceived from social computing rather than aout attitudes, though attitudes towards technology also play a role here.

What is also interesting is how CAD software providers are integrating with social computing platforms. The example here is of SharePoint, and how CAD software can be integrated with SharePoint. This is interesting ... given that SharePoint could serve as the repository of documents generated using the CAD software, and at the same time, blend social computing functionality into CAD tools themselves.

Another aspect which might be worth looking at, is the possibilities of virtual worlds when it comes to engineering. There can be plenty of work where virtual worlds could contribute to the development of engineering and design platforms in a way such that visualization, re-visualization, and the entire process of developing prototypes can be simplified and made much more intuitive and fun. Did i hear anyone mention flight simulators?

About Wikis ...

If you are looking at wikis as a tool for collaboration within an organization, there are a number of factors you need to consider which are quite distinct from the implementation of wikis in the public space. One of the major aspects that i consider is the context in which wikis can play a major role. A rather interesting post by Matthew Clarke about the question of control vis a vis community in the context of wikis can be found here.

While Matthew talks about three kinds of wikis, namely Public, Team, and Enterprise, i think that within the organization, public wikis probably dont mean too much. This is not to say that organizations cant have public wikis, just that i would think these would be few and far between. Which means that you are responsible for whatever you are writing over at the wiki.

Coming now to the team and enterprise wikis, i feel that the team wiki is a concept which could have the maximum impact within the organization. One reason for this could be that the way organizations work, they are organized into teams for achieving a particular objective. And a number of people, part of the same team, can relate to each other, and to the shared context of the team much more than in a non-team, or, if i may say, enterprise context. This is not to say, though, that the enterprise context is something which doesnt show value. Where there are topics which run across the organization, and these topics can draw people from a number of different parts of the organization, the contribution of enterprise wikis towards knowledge-sharing is, i think, quite large. In fact, an enterprise wiki could be used to build up a repository of knowledge originating from diverse parts of the organization, and utilized too, in a diverse way.

There are two aspects of wiki usage, which i would like to point out here, which i feel could be the appropriate way of introducing wikis to the organization.

1. Policies. A few organizations use wikis as a place where the policies of the organization are written down, and are periodically updated by people who are responsible for maintaining these policies. This, of course, assumes that not everyone is able to write to these wikis, but is a nice way of getting people from diverse backgrounds together, to create content which can be useful for a particular audience. For example, if you have a Sales wiki, this could be used to write the sales policies, which could originate from the sales team, from the manufacturing, design, and customer service teams. Here, the utility is the ease of use, and the collaborative capability (across teams) which wikis can provide.

2. Transactions. Wikis can be also used as a tool which brings transactional information from a number of sources to a single place, for use by different teams in the organization (notice board, maybe?) in a way that this information is easily available (doesnt have to be circulated), and up-to-date (containing links to the latest reports). This, probably, gains even more improtance within the team, because this is a simple way of getting information across to entire teams, from a single source.

As such, these are aspects of the wiki which also need to be considered, in addition to the "wisdom of the crowd" concept which wikis can be based on.

Poll ...

Been a few days ... i ran a poll on the blog here. The idea behind the poll was simple. What do we think is the way forward for KM. Why ask this question? Simple ... the way the realm of business is moving today, it seems that this question is a natural corollary. But, that wasnt really the reason for the question. The question came up from the more basic concern. More and more, KM practitioners are coming round to the idea that KM is not just about documents. There are a few organizations which i have interacted with, which seem to disagree, but these are not large in numbers. This implies that the idea of KM is surely moving away from content to collaboration. Or, the way i like to put it ... from codification of knowledge, to a scenario where KM is the facilitator for the flow of knowledge. This seems to make sense, because knowledge is primarily created by its flow. There was a poster i had seen ... It went ... If i have one idea, and you have one idea, and if we share those ideas, together, we now have four ideas. Makes sense ... at least in the context of shared knowledge. We agree that knowledge grows exponentially when it is shared. So, this is not a question anymore. Or, so i think.

The question then comes up is, what next. And this is where i could come up with three scenarios ...

1. The next big thing in KM could be the drive of KM towards Web 2.0, more participative, more interactive tools. I am not trying to be restrictive here, and used the term Web 2.0 to avoid death-by-jargon. You could include here virtual worlds, semantic web, or anything similar that you like. The idea is that the nature of tools going forward is participative.

2. Or, the next big thing in KM could be the dovetailing of KM as a function, or a discipline with other disciplines in the organization, so the two can function together to deliver greater value to the organization. One example that came to mind was that of innovation. What some organizations refer to as Non-Linear growth. Agreed, plenty has been written and discussed about the idea of innovation. But, the idea here is not to do that in the first place. Rather, the question is, would KM dovetail to a function like Innovation, or Ideation, to become part of the new-idea/innovation value chain? After all, innovation is knowledge-driven at its basic level.

3. Or, the next big thing in KM could be KM becoming an operational excellence tool, one of the tools available to oeprational managers to drive excellence in sales and delivery processes.

The results were quite expected. Web 2.0 got 45% of the votes, while Innovation got 36% of the votes, and Operational Excellence got 18% of the votes. What this means is that KM is far from being a hygiene factor, and we are yet to see the evolution of KM into something different. That going forward, KM would tend to drive the idea of conversations in the organizations to the next level, and at the same time, could move towards being a tool which can be leveraged for driving the next level of change for organizations. Actually, this reminds me of a post by Luis Suarez (cant seem to locate it!) where he mentioned the idea of a CKO being re-christened the Chief Conversation Officer. this also brings home the point that there is expectation that the contribution of KM as a driver of next-generation change is high, and that KM can be expected to play a meaningful role here.

This, actually, stands to reason. With the tools of social computing being more and more felt within organizations, there are changes (howsoever slight) in the way organizations are accepting the fact that knowledge, and expertise, are in fact disaggregated in nature, and that to deliver value, organizations need to not just recognize this, but also tap into this, by tapping into the distributed knowledge base, and also the networks that naturally develop withn an organization around this distributed knowledge base. True, this change is far slower than what a lot of us expect, but that is not surprising either, given the shift in dynamics that this seems to signify. Having said that, however, this is something which seems to have begun. And this, probably, is the large part of the change which organizations are looking at.

Learning And Knowledge ...

I came across a blog post by Luis about how the fields of Learning and Knowledge are essentially partners in the learning process. This is something i have been thinking about, and writing, for some time. Luis points out that with the emergence of social software, the two functions can walk hand in hand in the corporate environment.

I agree that the idea of the two functions is complementary to each other. And Luis has it spot on, because it is with the emergence of social software that the importance of networks (whether formal or informal) as a learning tool in the organization is becoming more apparent. However, the idea of the complementarity of the two functions is something which, to my mind, predates the idea of social software.

Lets look at it this way ... what is the goal of a Learning function. The idea is basically to get people to be more effective in doing their work, to enable them to be able to deliver work in more effective manner. Now, lets see what is the goal of Knowledge Management? Again, it is to enable people to be able to deliver their work in a more effective manner. Question ... how can this be achieved? By having a scenario where the people are able to learn from their work, learn from the work of others, and incorporate this learning into their work. Now, the question is, what is the difference between the two? While there are differences in the way the two functions approach this, the basic objective is the same. Hence, while the approaches may be different, the goals being the same, at a basic level, the two functions must complement each other.

Let me take an example ... and we will start this example from the Training aspect. Suppose someone comes out after attending a training. They have learnt some concepts (at least thats what Training managers are assuming). They are in a position to apply these concepts into their work. Which is nice. But, does learning stop the moment you come out of the classroom? Or, if you take e-learning, does learning stop the moment you complete the course? No it doesnt. And this is where KM must complement the Training aspect.

And this is where i agree with Luis that social software needs to play a role. In addition to the role of bringing out the value which can be delivered by networks, social software must be in a position to connect people with networks which can add value to the training they have attended, by enabling them to build upon the training. As such, this needs to be a process which must continue even after the training is over. Taking this one step further (or back, depending on where you are standing), social software is also emerging as a tool for training delivery itself. By enabling organizations to build communities of learners (and i am not just talking about people attending training, but in the larger sense of the term), social software can enlarge the scope of learning, as also deliver it in much more meaningful ways. As i had written in my earlier post, social software can be used to source content (this is not just about structured training material ... one learns a lot from blogs, too), as well as to connect people. One step further would be to use social software to identify the concepts or training that is required to solve a particular problem.

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.

Social Media

The human brain sometimes creates connections where none seem to exist. And maybe this ability of people to create connections between seemingly unrelated things which creates value. No, i am not saying i am doing that, but reading a rather thought-provoking post about Social media needing to grow up, actually got me thinking about some rather interesting thoughts which have been doing the rounds.

To begin with, this is an interesting post. I would think this is more to do with the shape of things going much into the future, but maybe this is a possibility. I have written a bit about this earlier. The basic concern i see is that there are plenty of interests in the current organizational structures, and web 2.0 technologies, in large part, seem to have the tendency of tugging at these, and it is this which could be the central point of resistance to evolution of organizations into the e 2.0 environment.

But thats moving away from the thought i was writing about. There is, these days, an advertisement running on tv, for !dea Cellular ... about the proposal to making shopping malls in the fields, and the possibility of having an opinion poll, reaching out to the people, to get their opinion on a particular proposal. What seemingly is only an advertisement, can become the vehicle for possible change ... change, which could possibly change the way a lot of things work. Click here and you could post your opinion, as well as see the ad ...

The point i am trying to make here is that one doesnt need a highly complex complex technology platform to move towards a more participative way of doing things ... whether it be in the political space, as the advertisement shows, or it be in the organizational environment. Relatively simple platforms can be used to reach out, and to develop participative value-creation in the organization, too. The iportant point is the recognition of the need to tap into the resources which are distributed, and not always recognizable. For, one doesnt know what ideas could emerge from where. As i have written before, this is something which Cisco seems to be doing.

Whither Knowledge Sharing?

There was a news article recently carried in most Indian newspapers ... front page news ... about possible industrial espionage. Nothing concrete, mind you, but there are ample apprehensions for this ... and this brings up a few questions. Actually, more than a few.

One of the stories can be read here ... Indian infotech sector is main focus of Chinese spying ... Interesting reading. What i am writing about here, though, is not the instance of possible spying, but rather the implications this kind of incident can have on the psyche of people and organizations, and the possible impact on activities like knowledge sharing. After all, its all about knowledge, isnt it?

Lets take this at two levels ... restricting access to specific content to specific people, and, more importantly, to the realm of social computing.

Lets take an example ... if there are employees in a firm who are spying on the content in the firm, and passing it on to competitors, then the question this brings up is, to what extent is the whole idea of knowledge sharing valid? Maybe i am being a bit too cynical here, but look at it from the perspective of the company whose computers have been hacked into, and who lost a large deal. If there were employees of theirs who were responsible for leaking information, then the question is, would they like to have content shared across the larger canvas of the organization, or would not the temptation to restrict content to a need-to-know basis? And if the organization moves to that kind of scenario, then the challenge this brings up is how this can be integrated with the larger knowledge-sharing, dont-reinvent-the-wheel philosophy?

At the other level, an organization which enables its employees to blog about the work they are doing, and their experiences, there is always a possibility of someone, somewhere inadvertantly writing something which is sensitive in nature, and could lead to some issues. Would the organization want to keep looking over its shoulder?

Question is, how can we address these concerns? One important thing here is that there must be a clear distinction between what can be shared on a public platform, and what cannot be. There must be very clear definitions of these, which must define very clearly what content must be made available on a need-to-know basis, and what can be readily shared. On the other hand, there must be clear guidelines about information (i am not talking experiences, lessons learnt, or knowledge in the larger sense of the term ...) which should be kept away from social computing platforms, and information which can be shared on these platforms. Agreed, most organizations have corporate blogging policies in place, for example, but more often than not these tend to be too vague, with not even any examples about what is acceptable, and what is not.

There could be those who argue against the adoption of social computing given these kinds of things can happen, but this would, i think, be too drastic a thought process, because this negates the benefits that an organization can find from deploying social computing platforms. But, the fact remains that a tool ... any tool ... is as good as the user who is using it.

Social Computing In Organizations ... Interesting Study

There is an interesting paper by HP's Social Computing Lab about ... Long Tail in Office Conversations. This paper actually validates a lot of the thoughts that have been emerging from a number of thinkers in the social computing space, but even so, i would think this is a must-read for anyone interested in the subject.

Having said this, let me first tell the route by which i reached this paper, and this will be an indicator of the role serendipity plays in knowledge discovery ... I have set a google alert for social computing. This gives me a daily mail about some of the things happening around social computing. Today, one of the entries in this alert was this blog by Puneet Gupta (which i had some difficulty understanding, and probably more so agreeing with) and here, Puneet has written about this paper.

Coming now to the paper itself ... there are a few points which stand out here. Though, what this research does also is to validate some of the thinking which quite a few of us have been writing about. Some of the things which i wanted to write about ...

While these tools significantly lower the barriers to producing content, employees may perceive there to be little incentive to invest their own time in providing this content for public consumption.

As i have written before, what people are looking for is value from their interactions. The question is, how this value is derived by participants in this space. One of the means, of course, is recognition. As a number of folks have written, recognition is the equity of those who are contributing their thoughts and expertise to a knowledge platform.

The “long tail” of expertise and interests in large, distributed organizations offers potential opportunities for broad and diversified access to knowledge.

This is an interesting point ... that, as organizations are trying to deliver more value to customers, they necessarily need to enter domains which are niches of sorts, and as such, organizations find that the requirement for knowledge on highly diverse topics grows as this happens. As i have written before, this is one of the challenges which faces KM. If the topic is a niche, where are the people who can contribute, and impart knowledge on these niches (and the ones who are there, are too overloaded with work, to really bother about doing this). This then means that the organization must invest to some extent to create knowledge, maybe even from external sources, in these niches.

Encouraging adoption of social media within organizations requires overcoming these two challenges: motivating people to contribute information, and helping people to locate relevant information.

This is the key ... adoption. Adoption, as i keep telling anyone i talk to, is the key to the success of any KM initiative. And the issue that the paper is talking about is simply a demand and supply issue. First, how do we get people in the knowledge marketplace to "supply" knowledge, and even if are able to do this, how do we convince people to come this marketplace to "consume" knowledge ... in other words ... generate "demand". Which is why, i like to look at the KM role as a sales role ... selling the idea of "selling" to people who have knowledge, and selling the idea of "buying" to people who need it. Although, more and more, i find, the issue is to get people to contribute, rather than to locate ... with search, and (as i have written before, and so has Nirmala) communities.

What i found particularly important about this paper is the way it summarizes the strategies people use when they are looking for knowledge:

• Novelty
• Popularity
• People
• Topic

This is sort of the thing i was debating with Nirmala and Anjali.

Though what i found most interesting in the paper was the observation that ...

commenting patterns tend more to intra-group discussion.

What this implies is that more and more, people are using these platforms for more effective interactions within a particular group or team (not necessarily organizational, but could be based on any parameter, i guess ... maybe function, department, or even technology?). This also implies that more often than not, the usage of tools like blogs tend to revolve more and more around a community rather than a general read it all kind of scenario (one wouldnt expect it to be the latter, anyway, but this just validates that). The question this brings up ... what implications does this have for the organization? The way i see it, one important thing this brings up is that the key to generating adoption of these tools, and enhancing the level of collaboration groups or communities, which share a common parameter, either in terms of their objective, or interest. This could generate far more adoption than doing a be all things to all people approach. Any thoughts about this? All thoughts welcome ...

Wiki Meets Social Networking ...

An interesting page i came across ... MySpace - WikiPatterns ... looks like a social networking meets wiki kind of concept. Though, i am not yet clear how or why we should look at this kind of meeting place. Rather, i would look at it the other way round ... that the central point for any kind of platform need to be the people ... the wiki is incidental. Well, not exactly incidental, but then, not the central point either, which is what seems to come out of here, unless i am missing something.

Having said this, this seems to have value when looking at the entire idea of social computing within the organization. Here, the point of importance from the organizational KM initiative perspective would be the wiki, because this is what can bring together the thoughts of people from diverse perspectives. However, this doesnt take anything away from the power of the social network, and hence, the way to look at this might be to look at the person centric social networking as the centrepiece driving the other pieces of the social computing strategy. This is something a lot of organizations seem to have missed out on, as i just said. I dont know why this is, but this is something which we need to look into, because what is happening because of this, is that the social computing initiatives of organizations are largely missing the point.

Social Enterprise Software ...

Bill Ives has written a post which is a comment on a post about social enterprise software being an oxymoron. Quite interesting reading, both of them. Though, i dont much agree with the original oxymoron question.

To begin with, i am not quite sure which ones are the oxymoron ... social+enterprise, or enterprise+software, or social+software. The only thing that comes remotely close is social+enterprise. Which is where i quite agree with Fred Wilson ...

And most enterprises don't want their employees to be active members of a community that it can't control, monitor, and moderate. So the software that tends to be adopted by the enterprise is usually hobbled by the needs of the enterprise and cannot get that magical lift that an unbounded community provides.

No, i dont agree with that entirely, but to some extent. First of all, i agree that enterprises dont want their employees to be members of communities which they cant monitor or control. Having said this, if we are looking at the e 2.0 scenario, and looking at it only within the firewall, then i must say that all communities can be monitored and controlled by the organization ... whether that is a nice thing or not.

Coming to the second part of this, the software which gets adopted within organizations is hobbled by the needs of the enterprise ... but isnt this meant to be? Agreed, having an unbounded sense of community within the organization would be really nice ... but, having said that, i dont think there are many organizations that have been able to achieve that, with or without social software. So, this is probably not so much a function of the nature of social software, or the approach of organizations towards it, but rather, a function of the kins of problems that social software is trying to solve.

As Bill says ...

These tools are developed for businesses to solve business problems. Businesses are run and operated by people, for the most part for now, and these tools look at the social context of information.

The key point here being the social context of information. Or, put differently, the human aspect of information. And this is what social software can bring into the organization ... the human aspect of business, after having tried to totally remove this aspect in the form of human-independant business processes, and looking at an organization as a collection of business processes. This view of business has not helped ... no way to explain how the same business process, being run by two different people operates so different. The fact that business processes are, in the end, run by people, and these people need to connect with each other, in order to create more value through business processes is something which can be brought into the organization by social software.

KM ... Nothing New

A very encouraging post by Dave Snowden ... titled We just forgot it for a while ... encouraging because this affirms something i have been thinking about for some time now. I wrote about it, too ... and i quite agree with Mr. Srinivasan that KM, with the new aspects of technology, and the entire gamut of tools which are at our disposal, has changed the scope of knowledge interactions.

Something that i have been thinking about ... the basic nature of human interactions doesnt change. Sure, it changes in terms of its form, but not really in terms of substance. What really changes is the mechanics of these interactions, and this change is facilitated by the changes in technology which are coming in. And, to that extent, i agree with Dave, that social computing has simpy changed the scope for human interactions, by enabling people to interact with each other across barriers and boundaries. Before the advent of modern management as we know it today, there was conversation. And today, we are again emphasizing conversation as the mainstay of knowledge interactions. Somewhere in between, the focus shifted to documentation as a means of abstracting meaning from personal knowledge and making it more generically relevant.

Lets not get carried away, though. We need to understand that both documentation, as a form of content which can deliver generic content to an audience with widely varied contexts, as well as the conversation, which today accompanies this document, both make up an integral part of the "conversation" in the context of today's technology-enabled business scenario. While it can be argued that blogs and wikis, for example, also represent documents, i dont quite like to look at it this way. This is because these are tools, and tools, as such, re dependant on their usage by someone. So, its dependant on the user to decide whether to use these as tools for creating documents, or conversation. The difference being the reference to the context, with the conversation being highly context-rich.

Measurement And E2.0 ...

Back after a week ... and, Diwali! And here's wishing all of you Happy Diwali and a Prosperous New Year. The Mahurat trading session yesterday had most stocks going up on the BSE, so thats a nice start.

Andrew McAfee has a rather interesting conversationg going ... about a topic which tends to have about the most divergent views when it comes to social computing ... yes, you got it ... measurement. Andrew has written a rather interesting post about the whole idea of rating knowledge workers, encapsulating a large range of divergent views on the subject.

What i believe comes out of the entire discussion is that while the whole idea of putting a rating to someone's contribution to a social computing platform is quite against the entire idea of social computing, there has to be a way this can be addressed. After all, when we look at anything in the organizational perspective, there has to be a way of finding out whether we are on the right track, and whether there need to be changes to the way things are being done.

There could be two ways of looking at this ... one could be in terms of a performance appraisal type of rating on contributions and knowledge sharing efforts, and the other in terms of community feedback on these. While the first could end up stifling the entire effort (because this would look at it more quantitatively, rather than qualitatively ... how many blog posts could your boss go through to give you a rating ...), the second option is actually quite in line with the overall idea of social computing.

Lets take an example ... when someone from your network posts something on their profile, say, on facebook, you, and lots of others have the means to comment on this. These comments are essentially feedback, and could work as a form of ranking on this contribution. Take this one step further, into the organizational context ... if people had the possibility of giving you stars (ya, this is something i picked up from my son ... they get stars for doing well at school), they could show their appreciation of whatever you have contributed. The nice part is that there is no limit to the supply of these stars ... so, you dont necessarily rank someone to the exclusion of someone else, and considered over the larger audience, this could be a reasonable way for people to show their appreciation of your work, at the same time, work well in terms of recommending things to others.

In addition to this, different people look at the same contribution from different perspective. An expert looks at it trying to understand how well this could communicate a concept to a larger audience, a novice could look at it to learn something new, while someone who is simply trying to solve a problem would look at it from the perspective of relevance. Aggregating feedback from such diverse viewpoints would, i think, give an overall qualitative perspective.

In other words, if we take a scenario where feedback could be gathered by the larger community, this could be a reasonably nice way of understanding how the entire idea of social computing is working in the organization.

Leadership and Social Computing ...

A rather interesting post by Rachel Happe ... the distinction between wisdom of crowds and mob rule ... interesting reading ... more so because it brings in some form of sobering to the euphoria around social computing. Having said that, however, the key point i think Rachel brings out is the idea about leadership. And this is something which i have experienced in my interactions with different organizations.

Especially within the context of the organization leadership plays a critical role. As i have written before, the difference between succesful adoption pf and hence deriving benefits from social computing and Knowledge Management initiatives, and the other way round, comes, to a large extent from the leadership and the attitude of leadership towards these initiatives. Now, leadership is not the only parameter here, but it is definitely one of the most important parameters towards determining how an organization is going to take to the larger social computing picture.

If we have an organization where leaders look askance at blogs (there are quite a few organizations, where senior management, and i am equating them with leadership, look at blogging as a waste of time), then the probability of the organization adopting blogging on a large scale is quite low. Similarly, for communities ... One of the paradoxes about communities is that while they are supposed to be self-forming, and self-governing, they really cannot sustain without some amount of stimulus provided by the organization itself, and when i say organization here, i am really talking about leadership.

Which brings us to the question ... how to get the leadership to buy into these initiatives. Lot has been written about this, but more and more, the ROI concept comes in. Managers need to see what is the benefit the organization gets from investing time and effort into an initiative like adopting web 2.0 technologies, in order to justify the investment of resources into this, rather than into other initiatives which are competing for the same funding. Having said this, ROI is not a concept which lends itself easily to calculation when it comes to knowledge, for reasons which i have written about before. This is not to say that we can do without something which is as basic as this in the minds of the decision-makers. Now, i am not writing about a score-card here, but some measures for performance (which are usually already in place), and their relation with KM initiatives is something which needs to be developed. And this, to my mind, can be developed only within the context of a specific scenario, rather than being generalized.