Talking about Enterprise 2.0 and knowledge management
Posted: - Modified: | enterprise2.0, talk, web2.0UPDATE: Fixed Wikipatterns URL
UPDATE:
I’m giving a lecture on Enterprise 2.0 and knowledge management at the Schulich School of Business (York University). There’s so much to talk about, but I’d like students to walk away with:
- an understanding of how this is personally relevant to them, and
- an understanding of the cultural and technological changes,
- some resources they can check out for their paper,
- concrete next actions they can take to learn more and make the most of the opportunities.
What I’ll discuss
Enterprise 2.0 encompasses many things. For this talk, I’ll focus on how emerging tools help us organize and share ideas, information, and experiences. I won’t dwell on emerging tools for communication, collaboration, or other aspects of Enterprise 2.0, although as you’ll see in a bit, those capabilities are difficult to separate from knowledge-work. I’m looking forward to finding out what tools class members are familiar with, and which they participate in: blogs, wikis, social networks, asset repositories, and things like that.
Relevance
Let’s start with why it matters. Why should these MBA students care about Enterprise 2.0 and what I have to say about it, and why do I care that they care?
The first and most immediate reason is that their professor has assigned them (or will be assigning them) a paper on knowledge management and Enterprise 2.0, and my lecture can help them find out about resources and understand some of the key concepts.
The second and much more valuable reason is that if they start applying these concepts now, they can deepen their knowledge, broaden their network, and strengthen their reputation – helping them differentiate themselves from other applicants when they look for a job, or helping them differentiate themselves from other companies when they start their own. These ideas can also help them share even if they’re not experts, make a difference even as newcomers, and create value on a scale that was difficult to do before.
The third and most far-reaching reason is that if these MBA students graduate and go into companies with a deeper understanding of what Enterprise 2.0 is like, then eventually, these seeds can grow into the bottom-up and top-down support that can really change the way we work. In Enterprise 2.0, many companies look to new recruits and fresh graduates for a deeper, almost instinctive understanding of new tools and concepts. If these students understand the ideas and tools behind Enterprise 2.0, then they can help their companies move forward.
That’s why I care, and I hope to help them learn more about why they should care too.
Cultural and technological changes
On the surface, it’s easy to talk about tools. E-mail, blogs, wikis, asset repositories, shared drives, group websites… All those tools have different capabilities, and each has advantages and disadvantages. If you search the Net, it’s easy to find examples of companies using any of these tools for knowledge management.
What I’m really interested in, however, is culture. Mindset. Attitude. And I’m interested in that at the individual, team, community, network, organization, and ecosystem level.
So I came up with a list of interesting contrasts. The core idea is still the same (“Knowledge is power”), but there are all sorts of aspects around it.
| Document, person, or interaction? | What is “managed” under knowledge management? What does knowledge management really mean? Is knowledge all about documents that need to be organized, categorized, and stored? Does it live it people’s heads, so the “killer app” is an expertise locator? Does it come out in the interactions between people and other people, resources, and situations? | I want to call their attention to different ways of thinking about knowledge, so that they can be aware of their perspective and they can recognize the perspectives taken by the different papers and resources they’ll come across. |
| Hoard or share? | Is knowledge something to be hoarded and kept secret so that you can gain power by controlling access, or is it something that you share widely so that you can gain power that way? | The difference between these two mindsets is one of the key challenges of adoption. |
| Formal/structured or informal/unstructured? (or the spectrum) | Is your end-goal a neat repository of cleaned-up documents, or a platform for ongoing work? | In the past, most knowledge management initiatives focused on formalized assets. With Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, we’re finding that making it easy to share ongoing work can create a lot of value and get better participation. That brings in its own challenges, too, like finding things. Taxonomies vs folksonomies also come into play. |
| Experts or novices? | Do you want contributions only from experts, or can you get value from the work of novices and amateurs? | This has implications for learning and search. |
| One place or many? | Are you looking for just one tool for storing, organizing, and searching all the knowledge, or are you looking at ways to integrate many tools with each other? | It’s a mess either way. The mix of mindsets adds conflict and tension to adoption, so watch out for that. |
| Knowledge management or knowledge creation? | Do you see KM as the end-point of a process, or as something done throughout a process? | This affects adoption, culture, and lots of other things. |
| Inside or outside? | Is the knowledge and experience you’re looking for entirely within your organizational unit, or can you find a way of engaging and learning from people outside? |
Hmm, I think Wikipedia would be a good example to use, because they’re probably familiar with it, and I can also talk about corporate use. I’d like to talk about blogs as well, because that’s something they can take away.
Resources
- Check out del.icio.us bookmarks: enterprise2.0 + km
- Search for Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0, knowledge management (anything recent probably talks about Web 2.0 as well), or specific technologies such as blogs and wikis
- Read analysts such as Forrester and Gartner
- Find research papers
- Read books like Influencer and Generation Blend
- Check out Bill Ives’ blog (link is to KM posts) and other blogs about knowledge management
- Find case studies on Cases2.
- Look for Enterprise 2.0 and KM-related conferences, and look for related speakers and bloggers.
- Check out Wiki Patterns for adoption tips and ideas about the challenges people face when introducing KM tools into real-world groups. (UPDATE: Fixed URL, thanks!)
Next actions
If people want to try these ideas out, they don’t have to wait until they graduate and join a company with Enterprise 2.0 tools.
Here’s how to get started:
- Set up a blog. Share your experiences and your lessons learned. Share what you’re learning. Share what you’re good at, and share what you want to get better at. Teach people along the way. This will help you learn even more and connect with more people. It’ll help you when you’re looking for a job, too – it’s a public portfolio of how you communicate and how you think. If you’re intimidated by the idea of writing in public, give yourself permission to figure things out, and just get started.
- Organize and share what you know. You’ll probably come across lots of resources while reading. Bookmark them and share them with others. You’ll all benefit in the process.
- Read a lot. Look for blogs related to your passions and career interests, and add those blogs to your feed reader. Find other resources related to your interests, too. You’ll learn a lot, you’ll pick up the vocabulary and jargon of an area, and you’ll get a better sense of what’s going on.
- Experiment. Try things out. Curious about wikis? Find out how other people use wikis, then make one. Bonus points if you explore group knowledge management tools with other people, because then you’ll also learn along the way about the challenges of adoption and how to deal with them.
I don’t feel anywhere near ready, but I do feel as if I have something to share, so that’s good. =)