denotes premium content | Dec 5 2008 Inside Knowledge Magazine /Knowledge Management Magazine Archive
Volume 9 Issue 1
Editor's letter
Welcome to the July/August edition of Inside Knowledge. In this month’s cover story, Alan Mitchell charts the rise of personal knowledge management (KM). According to Mitchell, this new wave of KM refers to the set of tools, skills and services that help individuals improve the acquisition, generation, storage, distribution and use of the knowledge and information they need to make their lives as fulfilling as possible. In this brave new world, the advent of personal knowledge banks will enable individuals to build up their own personal databases – databases about their own lives and activities that remain under their own personal ownership and control, and which they manage in order to pursue their personal purposes more efficiently and effectively.
Continuing the theme of people-based KM, on page 12 Sandra Higgison talks to Andy Boyd from Shell about the scourge of document databases, rule breaking and the renaissance of the librarian.
In our regular KnowledgeWorks column, Jerry Ash turns his attention to the dangers of lost knowledge, which he believes is at the forefront of corporate consciousness, not only because of the legacy of the downsizing craze of the 1990s or the feast or famine nature of a volatile market, but because of inattentive management and increasingly agile and independent workers who no longer stake their careers on long-term relationships with a single company.
On page 32, our focus returns to Patti Anklam’s four-part masterclass, which covers the benefits, limitations and practical implementation of social-network analysis in an organisational context.
I hope you enjoy this month’s issue. As always, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact me at jschofield@ark-group.com.
Jason Schofield
Managing editor
Features
Masterclass: Social-network analysis Part III
I’m a firm believer in the adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” I’ve also learnt from experience that if you launch a survey without paying attention to the details, you risk having a low response rate, disgruntled staff and incomplete results.
Case study: Northrop Grumman
In KM circles, when stories are told about the era of business-process reengineering (BPR) in the 1990s, it is usually a sad tale of the effect of a short-sighted downsizing strategy that sent valuable knowledge out the door in the name of short-term cost reduction and a ‘leaner/meaner’ organisation.
Case study: Arup
Founded in 1946, Arup is a global firm providing engineering design, planning and project-management services in all areas of the built environment.
Cover story: The rise of personal KM
Seven years before Henry Ford introduced the Ford Model T – the world’s first mass-market car – his entire R&D facility was confined to a cramped 12-by-15-foot, third-floor office room in Detroit, grandly entitled the Experimental Room.
The knowledge: Andy Boyd
When Andy Boyd came across a group of university engineering students sharing lab results and discussing their outcomes via e-mail, little did he know that the concept would form the basis of his work for the next 20 years.
Regulars
KnowledgeWorks: Lost and found
It has been 33 years since the US landed its last astronaut on the moon. From 1969 to 1972, the US landed 12 astronauts on the lunar surface, but according to a recent report in the New York Times, most of the knowledge from the Apollo programme that sent men to the moon has been lost and the US probably couldn’t go back to the moon today even if it wanted to.
KM toolkit: Information workplaces
Today’s information workers are distracted, frustrated and distinctly less productive than they need to be, says Connie Moore, an analyst at IT market research company Forrester Research. The fault, she adds, is not their own, but lies squarely with a disjointed set of office productivity and collaboration tools.
Trend tracker: Blogs and wikis
If you think that your organisation does not use blogs or wikis, then you may need to think again. Just as instant messaging appeared informally a few years ago, blogs and wikis are appearing as skunkworks projects across a large number of organisations.
Knowledge advisory centre
In my opinion, the major challenge that managers face in organisations today is to really grasp the meaning of at least two areas that are at a natural tension with each other and balance these, simultaneously, from an ‘architectural’ point of view.
Thought leader
If you look at the new economical power triangle, with North America, Europe and Asia in each corner, some strategic intellectual capital and knowledge issues might arise.
