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September 2nd, 2010 by Tracey Mustacchio
In challenging economic times, there is a natural tendency to retrench. Rather than investing in innovation, corporate decision-makers look for ways to cut costs and stretch resources. After all, if there isn’t a good likelihood that innovation will yield substantial new revenue in the near term, why invest in it?
I would like to suggest a few reasons why such investment is not only wise, but actually essential in our current business climate—especially when it comes to Information Optimization (IO).
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Tags: competitive advantages, increasing productivity, Information Optimization, innovation
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August 23rd, 2010 by Stacy Monarko
Perhaps, just perhaps, we’ve taken Buzz Lightyear’s “to infinity and beyond” a little too seriously with our data. At least according to the recently released 2010 Information Management Health Check Survey, “infinite retention results in infinite waste.” While there may be some truth in this, the digital hoarder in me yells surely not. Either way, it brings up several questions: What data should we keep? What’s the best window for data retention, 30 days or 300 days? Is there a right answer?
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Tags: contextual intelligence, data waste, retention, tacit knowledge
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August 16th, 2010 by Mark Myers
If you read the inside-the-Beltway publication Washington Technology you may have noticed that the August issue has an article on five “disruptive technologies”. Search, lumped together with the Semantic Web, is discussed as one of the five. No argument here on search being disruptive, even though it has been around quite awhile. And I wouldn’t argue about the importance that the Semantic Web will play in our future, or the decision to combine search and the Semantic Web in the same discussion.
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Tags: clustering, disruptive technologies, search, Semantic Web
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August 9th, 2010 by Stacy Monarko
Whoa, I can now add certified conference guru to my resume! The interesting thing is that at all these various industry events, one hot topic is always “fostering collaboration to document all the rich information that is often stored within the minds of employees, but not documented elsewhere.” That’s a mouthful, but not quite as big as the task it presents.
Nicole Haggerty, Associate Professor at the Ivey Business School defines tacit knowledge as “deeply embedded experimental knowledge within people’s heads that is difficult to express out loud.” Wikipedia goes on to say that “the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge which is only known by an individual and that is difficult to communicate to the rest of an organization.” Research shows that this same tacit knowledge accounts for 80% of an organizations knowledge. We need this knowledge—but it’s locked away in the heads of our employees. It would seem that we’re at an impasse.
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Tags: capture information, collaboration, employee expertise, employee knowledge, Information Optimization, knowledge sharing, tacit knowledge
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August 2nd, 2010 by Jerome Pesenti
Before one company acquires another company, it performs due diligence. It checks that acquisition target’s balance sheet. It evaluates the target’s physical assets. It reviews its executives and overall staffing. It solicits input from customers and market analysts about that company’s products and services—as well as those of its competitors.
But if we really consider knowledge an asset, why don’t we audit that as well?
Sure, we may assign some value to the knowledge possessed by a potential acquisition target in some general way. We may factor in the fact that they have expertise in some particular technologies or that they operate in some geographic market we want to penetrate.
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Tags: Due Diligence, Information Optimization, institutional knowledge, Knowledge Asset, Knowledge Audit
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July 26th, 2010 by Stacy Monarko
“When data pours in by the millisecond and the mountain of information builds continuously, professionals inevitably cut corners and go with their ‘gut’ when making decisions…” Many may argue strongly against this statement, assuring the board that this is not how they run a multimillion dollar corporation. However, there is so much truth to this statement. For years “gut”, or dare I say business sense, has spawned household brands and industry giants. How much more can we achieve if we had a gut check?
A recent study, “Intelligence, Intuition & Information,” explains that “the key is to build information systems around the ‘Hierarchy of Information Need (HIN)’.” I smiled for two reasons: First, I loved the analogy to Maslow and human need. As people, our need for information is almost an uncontrollable inferno. We’re constantly wanting more information and faster. I refuse to wait to return to my desk to research a question or to get the latest press or industry update. Everything is on our mobile devices — email, text, IM, FaceBook, Twitter and more. And there is no imminent end in sight for on demand information thirst.
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Tags: contextual intelligence, Hierarchy of Information Need, information connectivity, Information Optimization, Maslow
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July 7th, 2010 by Jerome Pesenti
Last week, Janet discussed some of the challenges of optimizing information flow and the need for expertise location. Today we look at how we can use content to pinpoint experts.
Sites like WebMD are certainly useful. But sometimes when we’re sick, we actually want to go to a doctor. We don’t just want some generalized medical information. We want someone who really knows medicine to give us his or her expert opinion about our particular case.
This same reasoning applies in business. No matter how well we try to capture institutional knowledge in our various document repositories, much of the most valuable information in our organizations remains locked inside the heads of subject-matter experts. So whether we’re looking for insight into a technology, a customer, a vertical market or a geographical territory, sometimes we need to talk to an expert. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: expert, expertise location, institutional knowledge, metadata, optimizing information
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July 1st, 2010 by Janet Ward
Larry Pruseck, Executive Director of the Institute for Knowledge Management, once said that the best knowledge management strategy is to “hire smart people and get them talking”. How do we make that happen in a corporation with a large and geographically diverse set of knowledge workers? The challenge of using traditional search engine technology to find and share expertise includes:
- People search or Who’s Who applications typically search and present data from a single content repository such as Seibel which usually has only structured information such as location, title, department, etc. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: expertise location, Institute for Knowledge Management, knowledge management, people search, unstructured data
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June 22nd, 2010 by Stacy Monarko
The energy and intensity behind World Cup Soccer 2010 is incredible! Even as an avid American football fan, I can get into the action. Of course I still can’t quite understand the excitement of a 1-1 draw, but I will leave that to some of my European colleagues to explain.
What confuses me the most, however, is the complexity of knowing who plays when and who will progress through the tournament. I was excited when a colleague emailed me a calendar explaining the upcoming schedules: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: contextual intelligence, Informa, information navigation, Velocity, World Cup
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