Following on from the post of 7 Mar; first the disaster scenarios - the immediate
impact on existing institutions:
As shown by the financial crisis, world economies are on a knife edge - a rapidly thinning edge from what Paul Gilding is saying. Economic collapse is inevitable as basic resources run out and growth, the underlying assumption in many economic theories, is no longer possible. Something drastic needs to be done. And that something is already being done - as covered in Diamandis' talk. There are new disruptive technologies that completely change the game. The troubles is that changing the game at this stage and so quickly will invalidate the business model of a number of multi-trillion dollar industries. In this context - what does "too big to fail" mean? What happens to people employed by industries who's whole basis for existence have been removed? Hence economic collapse again.
Damned if we do and damned if we don't.
As an example of the impact of transformative technologies, it is only necessary to look to the internet itself. In less than two decades it has already has a disastrous effect on a number of long established commercial operations. The recording industry has been the most notable one - particularly due to the narrowness of their viewpoint and the collateral damage they are willing to inflict. But game changing impacts on journalism, education and retail are also in the offing, at various stages of development.
Consider then what will happen when other new disruptive technologies are added to the mix. Cheap energy and 3D printing spread the revolution to manufacturing most utility services. From there we can predict flow-on impact to mining and construction (through new materials) and transport (both people and goods). Further development of ubiquitous communication through mobile devices will allow abstract human interaction activities, such as finance, being brought back into the control of the individual.
The reaction from the internet impacted industry groups can be considered to be indicative of the sort of fight-back that may be expected from other corporate bodies once their justification for existence is called into question. The recording industry is relatively minor and ineffectual in this context (and their response has been ironically un-imaginative). What happens when the much larger Oil industry starts to find itself becoming obsolete?
[Sidebar: This has already started and has been going since the 1970's when the question of oil dependency was first raised. The continuing importance of oil to our culture and lifestyle shows how effective the response has been to date. However, it cannot continue indefinitely as supplies get lower. On the other hand, oil is valuable for much more than just fuel and the industry is unlikely to ever die entirely - as long as they don't kill themselves (exhaust reserves) in trying to remain on the centre stage]
New industries will come into existence and forward looking corporate entities will transform themselves to suit the new environment. Some, like Apple, may even manage to transform the environment as well (they still changed themselves but in doing so they defined a new market position to colonise). The question is whether these new entities will be able to grow into place fast enough to cover the removal of the existing ones - and also fast enough to protect themselves from the flailing death throes of their predecessors. The struggle for survival in the face of changing conditions will still be there.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Knowledge Management
This is a post I put up on our internal company blog. I have copied it here (somewhat redacted) mostly because it seemed an appropriate place to put it:
This follows on from my previous post on KM [on the internal blog] with some further thoughts especially with respect to the comments made by others. Forgive me if this starts a little abstract; I'm an architect and that's how I think about problems. It may also be a somewhat long and meandering - be warned.
First question when dealing with Knowledge Management is:- What are we talking about when we say Knowledge? [The second question is "why bother to manage it?" but I think that has been covered outside this channel and I don't intend to address it here].
As I see it there are two forms of knowledge that we are concerned about within our company (or any corporate environment). I will call these 'formal' and 'informal' for convenience; although the terms are not wholly correct.
Formal knowledge is anything which has been documented in some defined form. A file, be it DOCX, PDF or MP3. In other words a static artefact. These may change (sometimes at lot) but changes can be tracked and versioned if necessary.
This is the sort of knowledge that we are already managing with Sharepoint and it forms the basis of a true knowledge base. These are the known unknowns and we just need to work on the structure and process or management. Taxonomies of documents, storage locations, classifications etc all come into this and represent known problems in search of solutions.
For instance, I think that the IDT categorisation needs to be done as metadata tags. Mostly this is because almost any document will have an 'I' a 'D' and a 'T' value and may have (many) more than one. Any other mechanism is going to way too complex to be useful.
One other thing to highlight is that the prime capability that any useful knowledge base MUST have is searchability. Information will not be used if it can't be found and we don't need a write-only repository.
This sort of knowledge is literally the intelligence of the business and represents a sort of corporate memory.
Informal knowledge is the stuff that each of us knows which is not written down anywhere. At the extreme this includes stuff that we don't know that we know (an unknown known!) which is usually referred to by the overarching term 'experience'.
I won't be covering this - mostly because I can only see only practical way of formally managing it and that is already covered under the term 'mentoring'.
Informal knowledge is the diffuse information in our heads that no-one ever bothers to write down. It includes directly relevant information such as the history of a project, including the reasons behind minor decisions, past discussions and their outcomes - what has been tried and failed in the past, what has not been tried and why. Often this is critical in understanding the current position within a client, or ourselves and we rely on staff continuity to preserve the back-story.
Informal knowledge may also include 'irrelevant' details which may seem unimportant but, in reality, are a critical part of how we do business. For instance the politics within a client and the personal preferences of key stakeholders can make or break a bid, or even impact the perceived success of a deployment, but is considered too sensitive to communicate. Information about a small issue in application maintenance may turn out to be the source of a major pain point for a client but is considered too trivial to mention to the design team.
In short the informal knowledge consists of small pieces or snippets of information, inferences and deductions, hints and allegations; transferred through gossip and chatter.
Following the above analogy, this is the instinct of the business and, like any instinct, although it may or may not always be correct, it forms the very real basis for any decision.
To revert back to the original question - how is this sort of knowledge to be managed?
I don't think there is any easy answer, but the business need to be aware that the question exists - even if it cannot be fully addressed.
To my mind a good start is the Wiki approach. A loosely controlled structure where people are welcome to add, modify, correct or link small snippets of information would be a valuable starting point. The goal is to create a brain dump site to cross-link and consolidate the diffuse knowledge spread across the organisation with the expectation that it eventually resolves into something useful.
Obviously this process would require significant contribution from everyone and that itself is likely to be the biggest hurdle.
First question when dealing with Knowledge Management is:- What are we talking about when we say Knowledge? [The second question is "why bother to manage it?" but I think that has been covered outside this channel and I don't intend to address it here].
As I see it there are two forms of knowledge that we are concerned about within our company (or any corporate environment). I will call these 'formal' and 'informal' for convenience; although the terms are not wholly correct.
Formal knowledge is anything which has been documented in some defined form. A file, be it DOCX, PDF or MP3. In other words a static artefact. These may change (sometimes at lot) but changes can be tracked and versioned if necessary.
This is the sort of knowledge that we are already managing with Sharepoint and it forms the basis of a true knowledge base. These are the known unknowns and we just need to work on the structure and process or management. Taxonomies of documents, storage locations, classifications etc all come into this and represent known problems in search of solutions.
For instance, I think that the IDT categorisation needs to be done as metadata tags. Mostly this is because almost any document will have an 'I' a 'D' and a 'T' value and may have (many) more than one. Any other mechanism is going to way too complex to be useful.
One other thing to highlight is that the prime capability that any useful knowledge base MUST have is searchability. Information will not be used if it can't be found and we don't need a write-only repository.
This sort of knowledge is literally the intelligence of the business and represents a sort of corporate memory.
Informal knowledge is the stuff that each of us knows which is not written down anywhere. At the extreme this includes stuff that we don't know that we know (an unknown known!) which is usually referred to by the overarching term 'experience'.
I won't be covering this - mostly because I can only see only practical way of formally managing it and that is already covered under the term 'mentoring'.
Informal knowledge is the diffuse information in our heads that no-one ever bothers to write down. It includes directly relevant information such as the history of a project, including the reasons behind minor decisions, past discussions and their outcomes - what has been tried and failed in the past, what has not been tried and why. Often this is critical in understanding the current position within a client, or ourselves and we rely on staff continuity to preserve the back-story.
Informal knowledge may also include 'irrelevant' details which may seem unimportant but, in reality, are a critical part of how we do business. For instance the politics within a client and the personal preferences of key stakeholders can make or break a bid, or even impact the perceived success of a deployment, but is considered too sensitive to communicate. Information about a small issue in application maintenance may turn out to be the source of a major pain point for a client but is considered too trivial to mention to the design team.
In short the informal knowledge consists of small pieces or snippets of information, inferences and deductions, hints and allegations; transferred through gossip and chatter.
Following the above analogy, this is the instinct of the business and, like any instinct, although it may or may not always be correct, it forms the very real basis for any decision.
To revert back to the original question - how is this sort of knowledge to be managed?
I don't think there is any easy answer, but the business need to be aware that the question exists - even if it cannot be fully addressed.
To my mind a good start is the Wiki approach. A loosely controlled structure where people are welcome to add, modify, correct or link small snippets of information would be a valuable starting point. The goal is to create a brain dump site to cross-link and consolidate the diffuse knowledge spread across the organisation with the expectation that it eventually resolves into something useful.
Obviously this process would require significant contribution from everyone and that itself is likely to be the biggest hurdle.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
TED talks - intro to thoughts
I've just been watching some of the new Talks put up from the TED 2012 conference. The two contrasting talks but Paul Gilding and Peter Diamandis started the ideas flowing again and I feel the need to explore the implications.
Gilding covered the problem with finite resources in a world where economic theory encourages unlimited growth. Since the first is the immovable object, the second cannot be an irresistible force. The logical conclusion is that economic theory must fail and some sort of collapse is inevitable once this fact can no longer be ignored.
Diamandis talked about the promise of new technologies and things such as limitless cheap power, 3D printing and new active materials. These are game changing and subvert the concept of finite or un-reachable resources. Hence the immovable object can be moved and the theory may be irresistible.
My initial thought was that the introduction of new technologies could itself cause economic trouble. They will cause disruption to multiple trillion dollar industries and introduce global cultural change.
I added a comment to the discussion thread on TED:
Gilding covered the problem with finite resources in a world where economic theory encourages unlimited growth. Since the first is the immovable object, the second cannot be an irresistible force. The logical conclusion is that economic theory must fail and some sort of collapse is inevitable once this fact can no longer be ignored.
Diamandis talked about the promise of new technologies and things such as limitless cheap power, 3D printing and new active materials. These are game changing and subvert the concept of finite or un-reachable resources. Hence the immovable object can be moved and the theory may be irresistible.
My initial thought was that the introduction of new technologies could itself cause economic trouble. They will cause disruption to multiple trillion dollar industries and introduce global cultural change.
I added a comment to the discussion thread on TED:
I would think that the technology change in itself will create an economic crisis. The resource limitations are the driving force which require new solutions to be found. But even a relatively small change in technology can result in the complete upheaval of established industries.Further thinking keeps leading to other ramifications that I will need to work out in other posts.
Consider what is happening to the recording and publishing industries due to the paradigm shift created by the internet. Then think about the impact on power suppliers when everyone can get generate household power in their own backyards. What happens to the board of works when that power is used to extract water from the air.
The great abundance mentioned in Peter Diamandis' talk will completely destroy many major industries by making their core business obsolete - almost overnight too given current progress.
Even without the inevitable backlash from the entrenched powers, the economic impact on the developed countries would be disastrous. Places like Africa and parts of Asia may actually survive better because they are only a short way down the large scale centralised infrastructure path. Hence they should be able to leapfrog onto much more sustainable technology - if political considerations don't get in the way.
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