Knowledge Management and Collaboration, Michael Loria
Contemplating the impact of email today is not unlike trying to envision a world without telephones. Everybody has at least one, uses it often and considers it a primary means by which to connect and communicate. What we have all come to embrace is that email provides a ubiquitous means for individuals to communicate directly with one or more people.
Email, however, does not eliminate some of the same cultural and communication problems that exist with telephone communication. Email generally requires that the parties know each other and that they directly initiate conversations. The knowledge of who to include in emails requires that those involved have some external knowledge of the relationships and skills of the parties.
Collaborative computing takes us a quantum step forward, by not only threading discussions, providing some persistence and context, but by allowing these discussions to take place in a more “public” forum. These discussions allow others, not initially included in the “distribution list,” to join discussions where they feel they can contribute to the conversation. This is the first step in the corporate utilization of “organizational knowledge”. An organization can now provide a platform for collaboration through messaging.
Volunteers vs. ExpertsSo now organizations can utilize their networks to share information, and employees can join discussions to share their experience and knowledge. So are we done? As with most technology advances, another vision is soon created that provides even more promise—but sends us back to the drawing board.
Discussion groups and mail create an opportunity for employees in an organization to “volunteer” their information. Several challenges still persist:
- How are we sure that a person’s “volunteered” information is the best knowledge in the organization?;
- Who is the best person we should proactively seek out on this topic?;
- If this document is the best coverage of this topic should we involve its author?;
- Indeed, how do I know this is our most useful document on this topic?;
- What relevant information exists beyond our organization on this topic?;
Fundamental questions persist with respect to having the confidence that the best information and the best people are involved in discussions and decision making. Of course when these questions are made in the context of business operations, the significance is very apparent:
- We have just received a claim against our patents in Germany. Who is our best authority on German patent law?u We need to respond to this RFP by the end of the week. Who should we put on this team to ensure that we take our best shot?;
- We must have encountered this problem before! Do we have anyone who has any experience with this problem in the field?;
During the course of a given day many such questions go unanswered. These gaps in knowledge end up in many cases as gaps in performance, missed deadlines, inferior answers, rework, and reinvention.
Research we have done at Lotus bears this out. Knowledge Management users identified the following reasons for their strategic investment in Knowledge Management.
The Technology Piece-partsA number of technologies have emerged to focus on providing solutions to many of the problems encountered by organizations. These technologies provide the foundation for collaborative knowledge management. At a broad level they are:
These technologies have gone mainstream to the extent that organizations generally understand the value proposition of each of them, can identify and describe problems they solve, and the products meet the promise they articulate. Taken individually each of these technologies provides value to organizations. However, taken together, organizations can truly begin to discover the knowledge within their organizations.
The Quest for Knowledge Discovery ? Context is KeyCollaborative Knowledge Management takes this foundation of messaging collaboration and document sharing and creates a platform for the discovery of knowledge—the identification of the experience, experts, learnings, and “prior art” of the organization.
The common theme is the integration of the people, the activities, and the documents—to provide not only the content but the context in which they were created and shared. It is this focus on context that is fundamental to knowledge discovery.
To establish context, knowledge discovery must address:
Taxonomy creation allows an organization to essentially inventory “what they know.” By being able to “spider” existing knowledge bases (Web sites, document repositories, email attachments, etc.) organizations create a framework for knowledge sharing. The inventory and relationship of documents and other unstructured data are essential to establishing comprehensive content and context.
Search enables people to query both within the organization and beyond. Additionally, search is not just the simple matching of indexed items that meet a given search criteria but the retrieval, ranking and evaluation of the relationship of the content and context in which those documents were created and used.
Additionally search is not limited to documents but to the “experts” that created and used them. Being able to tie the activities of individuals to searchable topics is the foundation for the organization to truly find their experts.Lastly, adaptability is key. With virtually every interaction within an organization, every retrieval of a document, every discussion thread, the knowledge map of the organization changes. Therefore the relevancy and utility of documents and people are re-ranked to reflect these interactions and key to identifying the context in which the information is created and used.
Collaborative Knowledge ManagementThe promise of collaborative knowledge management is one of confidence. Confidence that decisions are being made by the most experienced people in the organization, that prior activities and projects are available as a resource and point of reference, and that the documents being shared do indeed represent those of the highest utility. By implementing a collaborative knowledge management system, organizations do gain the maximum leverage of their “experts.” First by identifying those individuals with relevant capabilities, skills and knowledge, and second by providing computing services for engagement and communication—both instantly and through community building.
As companies face the challenges of doing more with less, getting to market faster, driving customer satisfaction to higher levels—the attention turns to the assets that enable employees to do their jobs more efficiently. Collaborative Knowledge Management is designed specifically to meet these challenges.
Michael Loria oversees Lotus’ marketing strategy for Knowledge Management. This includes products such as the recently introduced Knowledge Discovery Syste