This post is the result of a collaborative conversation. Jon Husband and I were catching up on Skype discussing where KM / HR /  enterprise learning / web2.o themes are going. I captured some of our thoughts in rough notes and  then tried to grow them. I passed back my draft to Jon who edited and added some clarity. Today blogging this my first question is too soft. It is not just looking for new conversations, what I care about is whether or not you will embrace change and have a real conversation around it. That’s something we are both effective at helping people with.

The New Conversation – Exponential Flows

Are you looking for the new conversation? The conversation you are supposed to be having or perhaps aiming to turn into gold?

How we enter into conversations is fundamentally changing. So is our role in holding them and using them. You sort of know it and yet you want the proof points too, because as often as not the “conversations” you and others may be having on the Web (the Web2.0 conversation) are too ad-hoc.

We might say it’s broken. It’s too focused on collaboration as the new work while organizations are just bogged down in meetings. Is your organization truly agile? Flexible? Connected? How are you addressing the change in processes required to succeed?

Consider these general trends:

• more information is available “in the flow”
• it can be easily searched and retention may not be the key
• change when networked effectively is not linear rather exponential
• we talk about “learning faster”, and “failing faster” in order to learn better and more quickly
• developer communities are much more agile than the enterprises they support
• we live in the flow in an activity stream and control or have access to more data personally

Enterprise conversations are at an inflection point – or closing in on one. Whereas previously “info was power” increasingly the outsourcing, the API’s, “standards” mean reduced leverage from internal information silos. Competitive advantage now comes from harnessing the value of community info. IE how connected is the organization. More importantly … how connected is each employee both internally and externally.

Each day we own … and are associated with … more of the information around us. As our lives become more digital that “search” about us (Example Specify) demonstrates the augmented power of the individual to be both part of and apart from a conversation. Today it is harder and harder to push things at me; I pull all the good stuff and some of the best stuff I may share or pass on. And while those “things” may seem without context the emerging people aggregators can make sense out of it.

Many employees are sharing stuff outside of the workplace all the time. For the most part the organization has no way to judge if this learning is relevant or even how it can use it. Why ? Because our lives are not really part of the organizations and we separate our behavior for our jobs. Do you have a life that is outside your job? In a more transparent work world we must increasingly be prepared to connect our personal world and our work world. I think we’ll benefit and so will the communities in which we work.

This boundary and managing the “what we do”  is the key reason the enterprise is stuck in thinking about information assets, and silos rather than how does the organization learn and help people prosper. For example, people such as those in developer communities are adapting more rapidly to change and are more agile in their actions. We can only expect this trend to accelerate. Another example is the way traffic monitoring systems are changing, or being changed. Today we have proof that a few mobile phones can actually process the location of traffic jams more accurately than the traditional helicopter in the sky, or more recently the webcam on the pole. Yet few organizations go would let go to this extent.

The answer is to let go and embrace the employees, and the community and encourage them to bring more in.

There’s plenty of good example of organizations that really get the purpose of the “suggestions” box. Yet if the box has a definition around it… eg boxed then how many suggestions are being missed. That’s the downside of restricting the flow of information into the organization. That’s the downside for not turning the organization outwards. Organizations are so focused on “push” that they fail to work the “pull” effectively.

Concurrently organizations must think less about “flow” and more about “acceleration”. Being in the flow isn’t enough. An organization’s effectiveness and ability to survive will be embedded in exponential escalation and network effects.  Knowledge has always flowed between individuals and within groups. However, for the most part individuals have no interest in hoarding that information. Neither do small businesses. They were never able to spend the money or capture the information to leverage “information and data” to make money. However, they built relationships better than their large compatriots. They thought about the conversations they had, and they listened. That’s something that most major enterprises don’t know how to do.

The Microsoft Kin debacle is a great example of how not to listen. If you ask me the research must have sucked, the business model re pricing didn’t hold up etc. The biggest failure was not listening, and a culture that seemingly was incapable of asking sensible questions. Microsoft had ever chance in the world not to miss this opportunity and blew it. Microsoft is also structured around old principles.

Conversation brings questions. Plenty of organizations know how to talk or is that strut their mumbo jumbo. They have PR and marketing experts now falling over themselves to provide that “social” connection and leverage. If it happens at a personal level it may work.

The crux is the information is increasingly moving to being outside the organization. Many organizations are going to be hollowed out by this effect. Just think about an organization that has no information assets, but still makes or provides something. What does it need? It certainly needs suppliers. It needs a way to estimate demand or make to order. It also needs to pay the employees. Does it need a huge marketing department in a world which can aggregate profile and demand with a simple / complex search? What will sales look like? Will it be a developer community? Or is that a user community?

In a restaurant where people go to dine (for example) the Chef has recipes. Most recipes, and how to execute them, are contained in their head. Yet perhaps tomorrow the menu should be based on who’s coming to dinner. So if you are a restaurant competing for business perhaps Yelp is going to help you with your menu?

So if you are the “new” organization looking to start a “new” conversation that will take you forward – where to start?

Don’t start with systems, and processes. Reject the idea that you are going to roll in new collaborative software. Start instead with a message. Start by listening… listening harder. In fact, that may be the first social step to getting beyond the structural impediments that lie in your way. When you listen really hard you open yourself up to new conversations. Those tend to be the ones that create real value. They are also the equivalent to learning on the job, and increasingly learning in real-time becomes the core of the work.

Think exponential. We tend to think straight line. In fact the accounting and budget departments don’t like the hockey stick estimates. Marketers always want to go viral too. That’s the same sort of exponential thinking. Yet that’s what we need. Good ideas, like a great story, are infectious, shareable, and seeded with a passion.

Empower people. Think about values and principles. It’s better to run on those than to run an organization on rules. Strengthen core values and look to build the conversation around them. Build conversations that revolve around flow, acceleration, agility, and change.

Only then will you be on the way to a new conversation. For Enterprise2.0 is stuck today in “social business”, web2.0, and resorting to outside suppliers and vendors with solutions for yesterdays problem.

When work moves beyond the boundary it becomes more social. When the organizational values are more broadly adopted by a community then engaging becomes more compelling. We’ve seen this in traditional brands and no matter how hard they try we will never see it effectively done by companies that are protected by regulation (example AT&T, Verizon, Comcast).

Companies like FedEx and UPS have harnessed information that helps delivery and tracking. They facilitate relationships between buyers and sellers. I’d suggest that more companies should think like that.


What’s with this collective blogging thing that now starts before conferences? I’m being rhetorical. Conferences that survive today become living events. They also have the opportunity to provide many more options for attendees to connect and explore before, during and after the conference.

I’m writing for the Supernova2008 ConferenceHub. I’ve been an attendee in the past and I’ve enjoyed blogging it. So I’ve made a commitment to join the group blogging about it and around it. Fact is many of them I know already. Still I’m hoping it will provide some new avenues for both inquiry, introduction and stretching me to think differently. I also just simply want the learning.

Last year I attended a few conferences but one in particular (KM World 2007) got me thinking about how we share and what the future of conferences should be like. Kevin Werbach‘s been encouraging experimentation in this area for awhile. Open to lively realtime IRC channels, and more last year they started the ConversationHub. Still if I reflect on the power that can exist around a major conference to influence a community then it is easy to point to TED (never been ), Reboot, Pop!tech and recently eComm. Poptech does a fantastic job re live shows with their Pop!Casts. eComm emerged out of an O’Reilly conference that was canned. The community wanted one on emerging telephony.

So like writing in the ConversationHub I believe there are probably many more ways to bring value to a conference. Live bloggers (think Ethan Zuckerman) and I’ve done some myself is one example. Still I will suggest just three here.

1) Open it Wide. Broadcast in real-time over the Net. Closing it doesn’t extend to the broader community who couldn’t get there this year.
2) Set aside time for larger open space style sessions, and sessions that are impromptu. Give the audience the opportunity to really contribute and get to know each other.
3) Think about the presenters and those coming. Look up their blogs, (do they have blogs?) If they don’t… how do we know we will get something new? Is there a social media quotient? I’ve proposed before that metrics on conferences are possible. Now I’m going to run some.

I’m fairly sure Kevin has all these covered to some degree for Supernova. Then outside a more geeky techie conference you are unlikely to see these things happening. The attendees aren’t prepared, the organizers don’t see it as a priority or money-maker.

In a time where the “unconference” is promoted more and more (and bastardized for marketing reasons at some events) there’s a role for intermingling all of these things. Guides are important to conferences. They lay out some of what they see, and select. Increasingly they are bringing in the Audience in design, and in real-time. We just need to remember, not everyone has the same agenda at a conference. Some want to learn, others do business or sell. I’m firmly in the camp of going to conferences where you can learn and not just hear a pitch. I’ve always said.. if I went to a conference and came home with one marketable solution, a new idea or perspective that I could carry out it was usually more than worth going.

For many of us… that’s why we go back. The second reason is the relationships that grow out of these events. The third is often the guide (think Kevin Werbach, Jeff Pulver etc.)

I’m hoping I’m going to see some of you at Supernova2008.

One of the sessions I got the most out of at the Foresight Unconference over the weekend was Eugene Kim‘s; topic “future of collaboration”. I took away some learnings for Twitter.

It began easily enough with a question. “What’s your favorite collaboration tool?” The answers ranged from telephone, to wikipedia, IM, humility, open space, internet, Eugene’s napkin, and twitter. You can almost guess who decided to throw Twitter up there.

Eugene provided a definition “Collaboration is two or more people sharing knowledge for a specific bounded goal”. He also asked us one of those trick questions; Is Collaboration about people or tools?

This led to a discussion where I brought back a Twitter example. Collaboration that is happening in an informal almost unstructured environment. This is a classic case for bottom up complex behavior to evolve. And it is. The example that emerged was:

Twitter Watercooler (naming the pattern what do we see?)

Twitter is becoming our online watercooler. Once your twitter follow X people strategy reaches a critical mass you can almost always drop in and find a topic to post or people to say hi or send a comment to.

It goes further. Start tracking certain topics, eg “social media”, political candidates, “open social” “jowyang”, etc. These were all suggestions I got within a few minutes of posting a question. What do you “track” on Twitter? So the answer is people, topics, events. etc. I really appreciated the “jowyang” answer. for it shows another side of Twitter. Others might say who’s stalking who!

If you aren’t following very many people… another thing to follow is the feedback people are giving to the stars. If Jeremiah has almost 1500 people following him then the right question by him could easily return a high number of quick answers. If you like one of those answers you can contact them direct, or send an open Twitter etc. If you aren’t tracking your name yet you should be. Then you will get all @yourname even if you aren’t following them.

In each case… what you see in twitter or on your twitter client can enable you to respond back to whoever just tweeted. Whether it is another question or an answer or pointer. This is opportunistic collaboration.

What I’m observing is people are looking for coders, developers, all sorts of help and jobs out there. There’s a marketplace around the Twitter water cooler emerging.

Twitter is the new IRC channel. It’s more personal, and it brings in a broader cross section when you add tracking into your peripheral vision.

I’m at KMWorld 2007 tomorrow. I’ve set up a twitter account for the event.

Robin Good is fired up after a visit to the US on next generation collaboration software. It’s a real contrast with how I feel about subjecting myself to Web-crossing which despite upgrades hasn’t changed much in years. It’s this quote from Robin that got me going today.

Allow me to extend my desktop to yours. My voice to your ear. My word document to your skilled editing hand. Extend what I already have, know and like. The name of the game is “hide” yourself. Be inobtrusive. Easy. Do not intrude. Be quite, gentle, on the side. Let me call you and fire up the colaboration facilities I need without needing to dress up for a ceremony when only neighbours are coming (meaning, stay-away from elaborate setups that offer you everything and more, like classical conferencing tools do trying to make available every and each possible function desired).

Carry over from real life what works so well for us, and make it secure, reliable, robust…and fun.
Robin Good

I like the personal nature of his words and emphasis on letting me share. I too don’t want programs that are invasive rather they must be natural. Be an extension, let us easily dock, and live a set of events together. Don’t force me to turn off the music, rather share that connection as well. Let them know my phone is ringing via our always on connection, help me pace that collaboration like the open space in an office. Encourage my use of dual monitors so we can share while we work visible and invisible at the same time. Enable brains to work together, don’t allow lapses or formalise the structure so formality dumbs down sponteneity. Make it more than one to one.

So back to my current participation in an online Muckabout. I like what is happening there. The early signs are encouraging. I just think today that “forums” like this should be obsolete. Many never adopted them, and only a few have thrived in them. I’ve simply never grown to love them. I’ve had some good experiences in them, and also learned some lessons. I presume that Forums and Online Communities sort of go together at least the practice thereof. I’m not certain that will be true in five years time.

Today my forum format gripes are a little different. I’m much more blog – wiki centric than I was a year ago. I need new information in my aggregator. I expect better profiles etc. I’m used to back-channel chat and even having “working-on” Skype conversations. So signing up for a conference with an online forum feels a little backward for gathering introductions and getting topics going.

I know I shouldn’t expect blog centric enthusiam, or IM adoption. A part of my gripe traces to remembering the new url (and having to sign in each time) using web-crossing again, and dealing with forums that are nowhere near as easy as a newsreader to read. Forget about the fun new introductions that could be made. There are no guest books, no Ryze like pages to quickly make aquaintances. No social network that says who already knows who etc. I may be able to sort the posts by author however that function isn’t traceable to the list of members. It doesn’t dock with linked in or any other program I’ve made an investment in. So, for the most part why invest time in building a profile there? I predict most won’t. They reside elsewhere and it will be over in a matter of weeks. Yes there are a few phone numbers now listed but who wants to be called? I thought about adding Skype and other IM connections yet I know there will be resistance. There is no way currently for this new “conference” circle of connections to gain special access to me for a few weeks without effort despite the fact that is part of what I signed up for. (Others may not want that of course!)

Robin’s quote doubled my frustration as I’ve been editing scenario documents and it is easy to get problems with version control. We are not using Groove, while Wiki’s and blogs are foreign. We aren’t connected by IM (for the most part this team doesn’t use it) and so I’m using the phone and can’t even point to parts of the document I’m suggesting needs changes. I could use Glance maybe next time. This group is important to me and yet pushing forward in one area may require lagging in others. I’m already pushing the boundaries so I am just understanding their work practices and product first. Then the opportunity for a broader conversation may arise.

I should really draw a conclusion. Another day for I think the Muck may just begin to address the future of collaboration technologies.

I’m participating in the current Muckabout. It’s going to be a wonderful face to face meeting in early February. Right now the online ramp-up has begun and registration captured wonderful people and kicked off a set great questions there.

This is a question that just grabbed me tonight.

“is there a disruptive innovation in “collaborative work/learning/action” in process yet or are we still warming up?”

Just made me want to ask. Are “online communities” a relevant distinction in the world going forward?

Online (to me) now means that it is separate from my buddy list, apart from my social networking services, unlikely to connect in real-time and / or involve a voice conversation and for the most part we can forget the flip charts. It often means large lists of brilliant contributions to run though and contributions made in the environment are semi-lost to my personal search engine when my memory fails. It’s also a separate destination I must go to.

By contrast my “always on” buddy lists with their “presence” connect in much more interesting ways. My blog and trackbacks potentially link to others and my newsreader can aggregate all this stuff!

Is it the tools, is it the time, or is it just me? One thing is certain my online community participation has gone down since I began blogging.

The above is pretty much as I posted it in the Muckabout forum. I’m adding this little postscript here as it tells an additional story.

I shared my post with an online buddy, there was no-chat active in the forum. Just wanted to test my thought and check clarity. In a live facilitated session it would be the equivalent of a mini-paired discussion before sharing to the group. In closed online conferences where you don’t know everyone you learn caution. I’m intrigued by the fact that as I write this and post — the more “open” blog world lets me post with less reservation. That’s probably because they are in the context of all my posts, rather than an initial or early post on a forum. Here I actually know some of my readers.

Finally, I’m not being more explicit about the Muckabout right now as “blogging” it has never been discussed and I sense it is “community” work product. Thus I share my little piece.

There is a little trepidation when a troupe starts exploring whether it can really collaborate and how it can make money. I was serious about both conversational blogging and jazz communities. I reread and reread new posts from overnight, spent time Skyping with Ton and Dina and then resorting to the phone with Ross Mayfield. In the meantime I’ve sent out yet more messages spoke to Gary this morning and it continues.

Ross Mayfield made the emerging Actionable Sense Troupe a very generous offer yesterday to aid in community building by offering a SocialText workspace get things started. Having read many thoughtful posts I’m going to start inviting those in that have said they want to participate later today. We will be starting with a blank sheet and that will presents some challenges. I think we all understand the difficulty and the desire not to waste effort. Time is money..

We need to articulate a process, but it has to be a process that scratches some itch sufficiently that someone will give us their itch to scratch, and thus I think we should begin our sweep-out radar project pitch by identifying who it is we need to ask who might have such an itch and back that offer with a budget and a deadline, Gary

My own thinking on this at the moment is that the money will come from the consulting work that is generated by the community, not from access to the community itself. John

The business model is the direct concern, and as Gary says needs to be underpinned by an identifiable need and itch to make it stick. Ton

Currently I think very much along the lines John, does where hiring one independent actually means hiring the community and thus money will flow from the individual consulting jobs to the community. In recent e-mail conversations with Lilia Efimova and Martin Roell I formulated it that it would be like having part-time colleagues, i.e. on certain topics with certain clients, the community gelling around specific themes and points in time. Ton

We all make decisions (often subconsciously) about what to blog and what not to blog. For many people (myself included) the most potent area of such decisions is around our relationship to our employer (or clients for the self-employed) Julian

Where to begin?
Let’s take this discussion into the SocialText workspace. Let’s build our thoughts together rather than independently. I jotted down the following based on the comments above. However, realize it is better all stared in the Workspace.

Taking it to the next level would move us beyond a best practices collaboratory to creating a networked brand. The brand would help us achieve a price premium for the collective capability and reduce risk for others engaging us on a large collective project. An example would be a more complex multi-client that is facilitated by a core group and had commitments from both industry leaders and topic experts. I can imagine a couple of examples in the blogging social software space that would combine research, best practices and planning for the “future”. We have to think through our target companies. We might be surprised by what we turn up when the proposition is ready to sell. This might also form a “collective intelligence” at your fingertips type capability. (And that was where my membership type model suggestion was coming from). Such a service might be a GLOBAL “tec chair” type approach which demonstrates a successful business model in this regard.

Actually to get anywhere we have to start with an exploratory form of one above making some specific commitments in terms of both time, expected rewards and what we are each prepared to commit to. We also need those quick ideas on “ITCH” and “TARGETS”. The key consumable is “time”. Forming, storming and norming still have to take place.

I’m taking Ross up on his suggestion and activating the “Actionable Sense” Network (working name for now). If you haven’t already and are interested e-mail me. It will prove to be a more effective environment for developing this thread further.

]]> http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/12/03/actionable-sense/feed/ 4 http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/12/01/km-in-pharma-rd-conference/ http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/12/01/km-in-pharma-rd-conference/#comments Mon, 01 Dec 2003 15:48:41 +0000 Stuart http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/12/01/km-in-pharma-rd-conference/

I’m participating in my first Metalayer online conference this week Dec 1-5. The platform shows lots of promise for this type of application. The topic is Knowledge Managment in Pharma R&D. I’ll be speaking on blogs and social networks. Barry Hardy has also launched his new blog “The Ferryman” concurrently with the launch. I hope his posts become a river!

Starting 1st December 2003
Knowledge Management (KM) in Pharma R&D is an international conference to be held on the Internet which brings together researchers to discuss the applications of Knowledge Management methods to Pharma R&D. The program covers:

* analysing investment issues in KM projects in the pharmaceutical industry, new ROI measures analysed including EVA,
* remote team management and co-ordination
* social sciences: how do you understand how people behave? How do you change or react most effectively to that behaviour?
* understanding management and how implementation of KM can practically enhance productivity
* community management and monitoring
* intelligent search agents and expertise location
* establishing and supporting networks of scientists
* enabling effective clinical feedback to early-stage R&D teams
* intellectual capital approaches and business agility
* use of electronic notebooks and management of R&D data
* enhancing communication via blogging and augmented social networks

In addition to talks from BMS, Pfizer, Aventis, UNIC, 3rd Millennium, Rescentris, CambridgeSoft, Partners HealthCare and Leif Edvinsson, we will be interactively exploring blogging and wikis with Stuart Henshall, conducting a workshop on investment analysis with Kevin Cookman and trying out new social software including metalayer’s collaboration tools.
[The Ferryman]

]]> http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/12/01/km-in-pharma-rd-conference/feed/ 0 http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/06/18/collaborative-spaces-transforming-innovation-capital/ http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/06/18/collaborative-spaces-transforming-innovation-capital/#comments Thu, 19 Jun 2003 03:48:10 +0000 Stuart http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/06/18/collaborative-spaces-transforming-innovation-capital/

How might the growing interest in linking digital identity, blogging wiki’s, RSS feeds etc evolve?  How might the emergent functionalities in these tools benefit our evolution and daily experiences. How will they combine and spiral to augment our collective intelligence? How will they reframe the KM knowledge innovation paradigm? For most companies it’s happening more rapidly than they think. 

There’s a saying “the future is here  – it is just unevenly distributed” (William Gibson). This couldn’t be more true when we start to apply it to emerging lightweight knowledge innovation tools and combine it with what we know about mobility, decentralization, hyperconnectivity, online identity etc. 

Yet using the metaphor “standing in the future” we almost inevitably find ourselves reframing the space we compete in today. 

I facilitated the chart below about three weeks ago before going somewhat silent (at least on my blog) when exploring early ideas for transforming a “systems integration business” into an innovation engine.  As the tools paradigm developed we kept spiraling back to the benefits. Each iteration breaking a new frontier, each new technology providing new functionality.   

It’s a WIP (work-in-progress) and making the point that all these technologies are already available they are not just effectively connected yet.  For the most part it will be bloggers reading this.  Some have the curiosity to ask:  Is corporate blogging just noise or part of a greater shift.  What about wiki’s and the broader aspects of augmented social networks? Etc. 

For my part I’ve seen no clear model of where corporate blogging is heading.  Yet I firmly believe that blogs are part of the emerging value creation spiral.  The recent wave on posting on wiki’s, forums, corporate blogs reaffirm this interest.  Similarly thoughts keep emerging about creativity and innovaton. The underlying thread is a move from systemic innovation to transformative innovation (about which I will define separately).

A few years ago Tom Stewart wrote “Intellectual Capital” and more recently followed it up with “The Wealth of Knowledge“.  I’d suggest if we really think about the chart above – IC /KC merely set us on a pathway.  The (not new) idea of “Collective Intelligence” is just now beginning to reframe how we think about capital and the types of organizations.  We now know that organizations will increasingly compete through their collaborative networks. While it’s not just asking better questions — it’s the capability to capture and harness the hidden ones.  More peer driven, more decentralized; almost certainly. 

It’s transforming innovation capital (lets not get hung up on definitions of Capital here) simply because what we are now after is hidden.  It is primarily social and these new tools are helping us to uncover the wealth that was always there, always undisclosed, tacit unless tapped, and too infrequently accessed.  Even a small start would include employee who’s thoughts or interests you never before knew, to teams doing collaborative manual building, and spontaneous connections enabled through who we know in trusted networks. 

This is nothing less than the beginning for framing tools and an evolutionary path to a  radical shift in the collective intelligence of teams, communities of practice and organizations.

There could be much more to this post.  A little encouragement and a few questions and I might just get back into writing again. 

A little over a week ago I had the pleasure of listening to Doug Engelbart at the Planetworks conference.  Doug’s summed up his life’s work for the conference: “As much as possible boost mankinds collective capability for coping with complex urgent problems.” 

As he developed his view of the world I realized there were similarities to the chart above  — originally tracing to conversations I’m in with George Por which started and were furthered in France a few weeks ago.  In Doug’s chart the frontier (cloud in mine) is constantly changing.  His concepts which I’m still discovering include… The “Hyperscope”, “NIC’s” – network improvement communities and “DKR’s - dynamic knowledge repositories.  They fit easily within the above. 

One word of caution.  This is a somewhat generic chart.  Organizations wanting to explore this space must develop their own pathways augmenting their current competences and enhancing the culture of their organization.  Then having the “foresight” to take this forward begins with a few small bets or prototypes and a few committed individuals.  The key to motivating individuals to participate is creating the clear need for change and building the excitement for what the future might bring. 

]]> http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/06/18/collaborative-spaces-transforming-innovation-capital/feed/ 6 http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/06/03/radical-innovation-cops/ http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/06/03/radical-innovation-cops/#comments Tue, 03 Jun 2003 23:36:58 +0000 Stuart http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/06/03/radical-innovation-cops/

Congratulations George on your paper “Radical Innovation with Communities of Practice” being circulated by the Knowledge Board. 

“It is that shift in the basis of value creation, what propelled communities of practice (CPs) in the limelight as collective players with largely untapped potential for radical innovation.”  

The topic had us chatting in France.  If you’ve not seen it download and join the conversation. 

]]> http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/06/03/radical-innovation-cops/feed/ 0 http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/09/trust-requires-transparency/ http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/09/trust-requires-transparency/#comments Sat, 10 May 2003 04:31:10 +0000 Stuart http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/09/trust-requires-transparency/

To find Jim McGees post on Trust Security and OD after writing on LinkedIn today seemed appropriate particularly as LinkedIn is a closed system. 

“Humans gain trust by interacting and “getting to know” people. Transparent technologies that make it easy to see what people and companies are up to (in a sense the opposite of firewalls) are what help me trust. I like Reagan’s saying: “trust, but verify”. It implies that trust requires means for openness, not firewalls and secretiveness.” SATN.org: David Reed,

Somehow I think bloggers are opening up perhaps just so we can get to know someone and make some new connections.  Having a degree of broken or incomplete connections is probably ok.  That’s exploratory.  We also desire collaboration, that’s in smaller groups. 

Jim uses a chart reproduced below created by Bob Keidel of whom I’m not familiar and writes:

Typically we tend to think only in terms of the tradeoff between control and autonomy. His, richer, model introduces a third point of cooperation and suggests that organization design problems can be treated as looking for a spot somewhere inside the triangle instead of somewhere along one of its edges. The trend has been northward towards more recognition of cooperation and, hopefully, away from stale debates about control or autonomy

I’d gone off triangles….. and would like to see the tittles changed to reflect the knowledge organization.  Replace Control, Cooperation and Autonomy with Leadership, Learning and Leverage and we may conclude that innovation and communities of practice go together.  They work when there’s the context and discipline to ask better questions.  Which for me is a balance and mixing it up between leadership and frontline understanding – leverage!

 

]]> http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/09/trust-requires-transparency/feed/ 2 http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/05/jazz-blogging/ http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/05/jazz-blogging/#comments Tue, 06 May 2003 04:32:21 +0000 Stuart http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/05/jazz-blogging/

Abe Burmeister recently comments:  “I think the key is to look at the blog *as a path towards a better designed conversation space*, not as the conversation space itself. I just don’t see conversation flourishing to its full potential in the highly owned and branded environment of the blog.”

To which I agree! He draws the metaphor of the blog as a home a home for thoughts, invites, the occasional dinner party etc. And yes for the replacement for the personal page. Well I’d sort of like to go out tonight!

Ton Zijlstra writes on the Tipping Point. He also looking for a meme to seed. Let me suggest “Blog Coops” or “Blogops” or perhaps as you will see below “Jazz-Blogging” 

It also reminded me of a  Dave Winer post i saw today contrasting a Barlow point of view with “These are utilitarian things, they simply facilitate a higher level of communication.” Maybe but we have to be “collectively involved” and engaged for them to really matter. 

From my perspective most blogging today seems highly personal, the number of public community or cooperative blogs very limited. Of those personal blogs I see two kinds.  First the blog done for primarily for intellectual interest, and second the blog that is part of an economic engine. While I see examples where coding solutions and new memes spread rapidly what clients want when it comes to thought-leaders is a safe place to engage.  So blogs aren’t just thinking tools or communicating tools, they are also learning tools.  It just how we apply them and how we create access.  For them to really work some new business models must emerge around them. 

Earlier today I posted on Lifecast.  One of its secrets was the “club”, the limited role the safe environment.  So if we want a trusted blogging engine we should assemble a few pieces and test it.    

Here’s some quick notes of what I’d like to work towards trying out. 

• Personal blogs (perhaps a category eg Collective Intelligence).  Each contributor posts two or three times per week. 
  
• Fed to a private aggregated community blog I think the max number is about 15.  A subscription – invite only community of approximately 150. 
  
• Defined by some key themes.  This extended think tank harnesses the nature of the jazz club.  Clearly the group plays in real-time.
  
• Members can comment and become private blogger too if they desire although it won’t be necessary.  There’s also a message area and capability to share profiles round the group. 
  
• It has a profile component too. The social capital exchanged is probably as important as the intellectual stimulation and the technology participation. 
  
• Individual blogger still get the benefit of promoting their external self. Blogging externally they can enables new meme and connection to be fed into the blogop (for blog cooperative)

What are the benefits.  Safe access to thought leaders.  Top executives daily news feed, are part of conversation.  The conversation will connect and introduce them to others.  Their views and the views of others stays within the community.  We will meet as a community 3 or 4 times in the year.  There will be a core underlying research program. 

The tools are right there in front of us.  Who has examples of where it is being done already? Always On doesn’t cut it as an example. 

Why will they buy?  The same reason the brand manager wants a 24/7 focus group at their fingertip.  Here’s the chance to run some ideas, lines of inquiry, test uncertainties, in real-time…… beta testing.  Nothing like having 150 experts at your fingertips.  More importantly the trust and reciprocity that is established means everyone benefits.

Similarly, for key contributors — their efforts will be sponsored!

Summary: 

“Jazz-Blogging” as a possible meme for colective collaborative intelligent blogging.  What clients want when it comes to thought-leaders is a safe place to engage.  My individual blogs are not safe or maybe too public.  We need to create safe access environments. Probably as part of a collaborative blogging environment. Perhaps then it more like an extended dinner party in the Hamptons.

 

]]> http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/05/jazz-blogging/feed/ 4 http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/04/communities-and-discovery/ http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/04/communities-and-discovery/#comments Sun, 04 May 2003 20:00:50 +0000 Stuart http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/04/communities-and-discovery/

I’m wondering if Conversational Blogging will merge into a new thread around the impact of using emerging blogging tools, for accelerating innovation, and trust across communities.  Check out Collective Intelligence and Community Inelligence: 

George Por blogs on: Knowledge <- Intelligence <- Wisdom writing about complexity and urgency is clearly seeing the tools take a new direction and the shift in values summing it up by closing: “Exploring and embodying together these questions is the highest adventure I can think of for the rest of my life’s work.”

In a separate posting on a related blog, Erik identifies three ways in a recent posting Value-Creation by Communities of Practice to introduce diversity in innovation communities

• geographical diversity (e.g. The Asia Office with The European Office)
  
• social diversity (e.g. bringing sales people into a business development community)
  
• organizational diversity (e.g. bringng customers into the innovation community)

I think there is another that represents little danger for the organization with enormous upside. 

Consider “Remarkable People”. They tend to look at the world through different lenses often spanning disciplines.  Sometimes the counter-intuitive question, the fresh perspectives from people not immersed in the culture and beliefs of the organization is often extremely enriching – leading to breakthroughs.

Conversations that develop around around critical uncertainties (certain/important – just do it / uncertain/unimportant – why contemplate it) at the intersection of importance and uncertainty, tend to be more interesting and lead to more new perspectives.  Don’t you think?

]]> http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/05/04/communities-and-discovery/feed/ 0 http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/12/08/cops/ http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/12/08/cops/#comments Mon, 09 Dec 2002 04:28:53 +0000 Stuart http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/12/08/cops/

How to make a CoP fly? – 06 Dec 2002

The article by Diane Le Moult provides a collection of ideas developed within Siemens in order to “make a CoP fly”. Bullet point style provdes a useful set of action items followed with ten trick to help with managing your COP.

Noted via Seb’s Open Research

]]> http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/12/08/cops/feed/ 0 http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/11/11/collaborative-communities/ http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/11/11/collaborative-communities/#comments Tue, 12 Nov 2002 04:22:45 +0000 Stuart http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/11/11/collaborative-communities/

Participating in online communities is not only growing easier, the results more positive. Kuro5hin is also more than a weblog. It’s been around for awhile and yet today I ended up giving it much closer attention as I considered voting on an MLP posting on the Nickel Exchange, was asked for other help with editing, etc.

Various links took me to SCOOP and you learn quickly about the collaborative media application behind Kuro5hin and other communities.

My journey started today looking for methods improve my MT posting and reporting options. I’ve had in mind the opportunity for a MT based community. Clearly plausible yet not self-organizing. When one compares Smart Mobs with Kuro5hin it becomes clear how obvious this is. I will be looking at Scoop further.

Kuro5hin.org is a community of people who like to think. This is a site for people who want to discuss the world they live in. It’s a site for people who are on the ground in the modern world, and who sometimes look around and wonder what they have wrought.

Scoop empowers participants to play a role in the newsmaking. This is not the only application however. My searching located Eric Hanson andShouldExist around ideas;as an idea exchange. Check out their description Eric’s list also proved to me how sharing can close and create new links… Some we don’t even know. While looking at his “people” section I found myself linked back to Seb’s Open Resesearch. who has a great blog going on knowledge sharing, communities and innovation.

Note:”ShouldExist.org is a non-profit website, founded on the belief that individuals are more successful when we work together through open standards, modularity and decentralized control.” His project list also includes others. Check it out.

Part of my interest in the first place was driven by the question posed to me. Should the NICKEL EXCHANGE story be posted? I’m going to watch over the next couple of days. We will be revisiting “Nickel Exchange” for I still believe the next frontier is in solving highly decentralised P2P transactions. Frankly… the nickel exchange looks premature, needs consumer friendly content, and a little more to give it legitimacy. I didn’t yet try to see if it works.

Then today Movielink launched. This is the site offered by the movie moguls to provide downloadable movies to American broadband connections. Incredibly slow to appear, you would almost think the site is down. Obviously checking out my system for compatibility. I’m waiting for it to be cracked, then Kazaa movies etc might take on a whole new meaning.

Posted by henshall at 09:22 PM

]]> http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/11/11/collaborative-communities/feed/ 0 http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/10/28/cultivating-communities-of-practice/ http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/10/28/cultivating-communities-of-practice/#comments Mon, 28 Oct 2002 22:48:46 +0000 Stuart http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2002/10/28/cultivating-communities-of-practice/

Just received “Cultivating Communites of Practice” by Wenger, McDermott and Snyder. You can also contact them at CPSQUARE and link to the book which has favorable reivew at Amazon.

Look forward to adding my book review notes.

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