On vendor presentations

It has been a feature of some of the knowledge management conferences and seminars that I have attended over the years to include speaking slots for vendors. The vendor usually uses the speaking opportunity as a spruiking platform. I am not interested in conference presentations being product advertisements.
So it was refreshing to hear this morning that a vendor-run seminar proved to be less [...]

On five common mistakes in innovation

I want to share five common mistakes in innovation that were recently presented in an article in BusinessWeek. It seems to me that they are just as applicable in the context of developing initiatives for knowledge management inside the firm, and knowledge diffusion between organisations.
1) An over-reliance on pilot initiatives - pilots tend to focus [...]

On the fear factory

I intended to write some pithy comments about communication strategy in Australia’s federal election (voting is tomorrow) and how the spin from the current government has focused on fear, fear, and more fear. Fear the opposition Labor Party, fear the future economic tsunami, fear the immigrants, and fear the internet. Perhaps fear losing the election [...]

On new staff, new knowledge

One of the most under-rated resources in any business is the knowledge new staff bring to their new organisation. I am not just talking about the set of skills and capabilities that a new employee brings into an organisation, but the knowledge they bring with them from working at their previous employment.
One of my knowledge [...]

Blog inside the enterprise

I have come across reluctance by senior management in the past to consider blogs as a suitable communication medium for engaging readers and encouraging dialogue. I have also heard that “it’s all too hard”.
Check out Naomi Wolf’s Amazon.com blog. This is as simple as it gets and all focused around a single theme. And that theme [...]

On ODL

I was at a party last Saturday evening when I struck up a conversation with a chap who worked for a pharmaceutical company in organizational development and learning (ODL).
As he talked about his job, I was struck by the similarities to the work undertaken in the knowledge management arena. We discussed the importance of intellectual capital and innovation. We [...]

On Jeremiah’s weekly digest on social networking

Today I want to highlight Jeremiah’s weekly digest on social networking. I find it a valuable and quick read about the social networking space. Jeremiah Owyang is on my blog roll but his weekly digest is too good to hide behind that!

On personas

Mark Hurst has been keeping my mind busy with his regular newsletters from Good Experience. I really enjoy Mark’s passion for wanting to maximise the customer experience, something we should all adhere to in our communication and KM practices.
However, I wonder what Patrick Lambe and Arthur Shelley would make of this post on personas: Although referring [...]

On what’s all this fuss about?

Some friends of mine have been encouraging me to open up a Facebook account. I understand the mechanics of Facebook, especially it’s college mentality origins. Intellectually I can see why Facebook has become popular, but personally I am not so enamoured. But then again, I don’t watch much televison (especially useful at this time in [...]

On knowledge management - a work in progress (or journey without end)

Yesterday I wrote my blog post about the difficulty of defining knowledge management and how it’s lack of clarity and authority meant that KM was undergoing a crisis of confidence.
Having thought about it today, read some comments, and chatted with a couple of friends, perhaps the reason we cannot simply define knowledge management is because knowledge [...]

On knowledge management’s crisis of confidence

I read a lot of blogs on knowledge management. I also read articles and I try to read books (although I am doing so at a much slower rate these days). I attend knowledge management conferences and discuss issues with attendees. I talk knowledge management at forums and with friends and colleagues.
What I find is that [...]

On word farms

I was alerted to this article from The Guardian (thanks, Gerry) on word farms - “The growing number of websites that mix and match low-quality articles produced by amateurs in order to generate traffic”.
The article raises a good question: how important is content or marketing in driving revenues on the web? Any thoughts, please make a comment.

On the future of software

Today in my e-mail I received my Knowledge at Wharton with this particular article that discusses Software’s future: melding the web and the desktop.
Here’s a snippet: “the big question isn’t whether this desktop/webtop hybrid is the future. That … is a “virtual certainty.” The question is which company — Microsoft, Adobe or Google — will provide the [...]