On the ties that don’t bind

This article from the Australian Financial Review(subscription required) discusses a recent book by human resource management academic, Lynda Gratton, on the power of weak ties in the network. Having read Gratton’s Living strategy, I was intrigued to learn more about the new book, Hot spots, albeit written for a more mass market audience.
Weak ties are people who [...]

On participation

I was listening to the radio this week when I heard an interview with a film producer on triple j. Of special note was the comment by the female dj that perhaps casting for movies should be done the same way as decisions are made in those reality tv shows. Just sms your vote! The film producer was [...]

On SXSW 2008

I am really disappointed that I wasn’t able to get to Austin, Texas, this year to attend SXSW Interactive. I will get there one day (I hope) but in the meantime we are fortunate that the organisers provide podcasts of the presentations and discussions.
Check out this interview with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame - some [...]

On showing some interest in KM

The Reserve Bank of Australia announced an increase in interest rates this afternoon. Interest rates will rise by another .25% and the expectation is that another increase is likely in the near term.
Since interest rates are supposed to reflect the cost of capital, it is not surprising that high interest rates impact on the bottom [...]

On real work

A couple of weeks ago Euan Semple wrote a blog comment about real work. I made a hastily scribbled note to come back to the sentiment at a later date.
The prompt for me was the notion held by some people that social computing activities (blogs, wikis, virtual communities, social networks) are not of value for real work. And this negative [...]

On narrative, sensemaking, and volunteering

I did promise on Saturday that my next blog post would be on narrative, sensemaking, and the volunteering project. However, Doris Lessing did come between posts with an earlier blog post this afternoon.
Looking at my notes from the debrief from the volunteering project on Friday, I took this point from Dave Snowden’s introductory remarks on complexity and sensemaking, and [...]

On the wisdom of crowds and volunteering

My latest Knowledge@Wharton newsletter has this article about a new book called: We Are Smarter Than Me: How the Wisdom of Crowds Can Help Businesses Succeed by Barry Libert and Jon Spector. It’s a timely reminder that networked knowledge has a significant place in the competitive world of business. I recommend the article and the book to [...]

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 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 digital identity (2)

Matt Moore has a couple of recent blog posts on digital identity that pose some interesting thoughts.
The first, the technology of the secret, discusses secrets and what they represent, especially in terms of knowledge sharing and trust. Matt rightly says that we need to ”manage our identities in ever more complex ways. And they make our secrets [...]

On sins and other things

It’s been quite a week since I lasted posted. I have been confronted with some technical issues regarding web access and have been limited in the online time available to me. A wireless 3G account might have to be arranged…
Anyway, I can give some follow-up to a couple of activities from last week. Firstly, Patrick Lambe [...]

On KM Australia 2007 (final)

I had intended to give a brief synopsis and some comments on the remaining presentations that I heard at the KM Australia 2007 conference but I have decided to concentrate on the final presentation by Etienne Wenger.
Wenger is best known for his work on communities of practice (CoP). I have read some of his published [...]

On KM Australia 2007 (Part 3)

The highlight of the KM Australia 2007 conference was the presentation on the afternoon of Day 1 by Michel Bauwens on “Peer to peer: the new paradigm for social innovation”.
Michel believes that free agents are becoming the dominant form of economic activity in the post-dot com world. As a result, people and their networks are [...]

On KM Australia 2007 (Part 2)

Dave Snowden was the opening morning keynote speaker at KM Australia 2007 and presented on narrative and sensemaking. He emphasised that one of the problems with management and business strategy was the reliance on past performance and hindsight to predict the future. Hindsight cannot predict the future - the context is different and hindsight selects the [...]