Communities. Coaching.

The gap between inspiration and insignificance
The gap between action and thought
The gap between perseverance and pessimism
The gap between understanding and ignorance
The gap between enjoyment and boredom
The gap between I did it and If only I had done it
May quite easily be filled by the combination of......
......a competent coach and a capable and concerned community

Happy Chemicals in KM :-)

How to get a good D.O.S.E of the Happy Chemicals through KM. 

D-O-S-E: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphin. Don't ask. It just occurred to me. (All right, I came across the first three in many articles. Did a little bit of research and discovered the last one) 

Dopamine: When you find the knowledge asset you were looking for in the content sharing platform. Also, when you get a reward for writing the most popular asset in the repository - The reward chemical 

Oxytocin: When you discover, interact and bond with colleagues who have similar/complementary ideas or share your areas of interest via the social networking platforms - The trust chemical 

Serotonin: When you are the most favorite expert or most voted for expert in the expertise locator. When people approach you for help knowing that you have what it takes - The importance chemical 

Endorphin: When pain is replaced with happiness; When you solve a problem with the help of a knowledge asset someone shared, an expert you discovered or colleagues you connected with in the content and people platforms - The pain to pleasure chemical 

But, to start with, you need the action chemical:  

Adrenalin: When you present your thoughts and learnings in a meeting or write a blog to share your knowledge - The action chemical 

Trends in Collaborative Education/Learning

Thanks to Ferina Santos - @ferinasantos - for sharing this excellent article on trends in Education. I think it is a wonderful overview of what the future of education is going to be like. No prizes for guessing that the emphasis is on collective and collaborative learning techniques and mechanisms! 

Read the full article here: The author is: Miriam Clifford - @miriamoclifford on Twitter

http://newsroom.opencolleges.edu.au/features/facilitating-collaborative-learning-20-things-you-need-to-know-from-the-pros/ 

Here are some excerpts that appealed to my mind:

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Groups tend to learn through “discussion, clarification of ideas, and evaluation of other’s ideas”.  Perhaps information that is discussed is retained in long term memory.  Research by Webb suggests that students who worked collaboratively on math computational problems earned significantly higher scores than those who worked alone.  Plus, students who demonstrated lower levels of achievement improved when working in diverse groups. 

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Many studies such as those by Robert Slavin at Johns Hopkins have considered how cooperative learning helps children develop social and interpersonal skills.  Experts have argued that the social and psychological effect on self-esteem and personal development are just as important as the learning itself. 

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The quality of discussions is a predictor of the achievement of the group.  Instructors should provide a model of how a successful group functions.  Shared leadership is best.  Students should work together on the task and maintenance functions of a group.  Roles are important in group development. Task functions include:

• Initiating Discussions
• Clarifying points
• Summarizing
• Challenging assumptions/devil’s advocate
• Providing or researching information
• Reaching a consensus.

Maintenance involves the harmony and emotional well-being of a group.  Maintenance includes roles such as:

• Sensing group feelings
• Harmonizing
• Compromising and encouraging
• Time-keeping
• Relieving tension
• Bringing people into discussion

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Focus on enhancing problem-solving and critical thinking skills.  Design assignments that allow room for varied interpretations.  Different types of problems might focus on categorizing, planning, taking multiple perspectives, or forming solutions

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The article winds up by reminding us about the criticisms of collaboration (it may not allow for individual thinking) and asks us to beware of group-think (groups may end up going by the views of a few confident and dominant people and may not really reach a consensus) 

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I am passionate about how we can reinvent education and learning methods so children are more engaged, excited and enthusiastic to be life-long learners. Of course, the other dimension is that they must be able to apply what they learn in their lives and, furthermore, use it to determine what their lives must be like (find their passion and gift and share it with the world.) I hope we are on the verge of a revolution! :-)

5Cs of Social Technology

There are 5 key ways in which one can participate in the Social technology movement. Create, Co-Create, Collate and Curate, Comment, Consume. 

Disclaimer: I have a vague feeling I read something on these lines more than a year ago in a blog, but don't recall the details. I am using this idea because it is an easy way to explain how one can be a part of the Social movement.


So, when you consider leveraging on the social technology platforms, it would be a good idea to consider what you are good at what you could possibly do more of based on your expertise and role.

Do you want to:

1) Create: Create white papers, PPTs, blog posts, tweets etc (Tools: Repositories, Blogs, Microblogs)

2) Co-Create: Create a bigger and collective body of knowledge via Wikis or Conversations (Tools: Wiki, Networking Tools, Workspaces)

3) Collate and Curate: Combine things you read from various sources, analyze, filter, add value and put them together for your own as well as others' benefit (Tools: Blogs, Repositories)


4) Comment: Leave your comments on others' blog posts, conversations, documents and tweets (Tools: Blogs, Workspaces, Repositories, Microblogs)

5) Consume: Simple! Just be open to content and knowledge from others and acknowledge it whenever you can! :-) 

Experts and Wikipedia

It is hard to resist the urge to share something that is one or more of the following. Isn't it? 

• Inspiring
• Thought-provoking
• Humorous
• Positive/optimistic/hopeful 
• Paradoxical 

In other words, one feels extremely compelled to share things that fall into one or more of these categories.  It is harder to resist the urge if you love to write and enjoy, like the Master would say, spreading sweetness and light.

I was reading a thought-provoking article on Wikipedia and how it has changed the way we perceive knowledge creation and generation, wherein Marshall McLuhan is quoted as saying that technology can alter cognition (and to think we've been fond of saying 'Technology is only the enabler, folks').

Here are some extracts that I liked.

".....The place where an idea could be owned by a single person. One of McLuhan's genius insights was his understanding of how the shift from an oral culture to one based on print gave rise to our modern notion of the individual as the originaator and owner of particular ideas."

McLuhan foresaw. "If the printing press empowered the individual, the digital world empowers collaboration."

McLuhan's chief insights centered around the idea that technology strongly affects not only the content of culture, but the mind that creates and consumes that culture. He maintained that technology alters cognition itself, all the way down to its deepest, most elemental processes.

"It is not only our material environment that is transformed by our machinery. We take our technology into the deepest recesses of our souls. Our view of reality, our structures of meaning, our sense of identity—all are touched and transformed by the technologies which we have allowed to mediate between ourselves and our world. We create machines in our own image and they, in turn, recreate us in theirs"

In a traditional encyclopedia, experts write articles that are permanently encased in authoritative editions. The writing and editing goes on behind the scenes, effectively hiding the process that produces the published article. [...] Jaron focuses on the "finished piece," ie. the latest version of a Wikipedia article. In fact what is most illuminative is the back-and-forth that occurs between a topic's many author/editors. I think there is a lot to be learned by studying the points of dissent. [...]

Quote

The real genius of organizations is the informal, impromptu, often inspired ways that real people solve real problems in ways that formal processes can’t anticipate. When you’re competing on knowledge, the name of the game is improvisation, not rote standardization — John Seeley Brown


 Hat Tip to @Oscarberg 

Leadership

Found this in an internal blog. Sharing it here. Credit to - Wayne Hays 


Extract:

Research conducted by Zenger & Folkman and published in their book "The Extraordinary Leader" revealed some interesting results. They found that leaders who were perceived as having at least one strength were rated significantly higher in their overall leadership effectiveness.  Leaders with no strengths but no clear weaknesses were rated lower than leaders with weaknesses but a few clear strengths.

Why were leaders with no weaknesses but no clear strengths perceived to be less effective?  The authors suggest they lack a redeeming quality, skill, or ability.  They may not be ineffective at anything, but they are also not terribly effective at anything.  A focus on building strengths will help improve overall effectiveness and as most of us have heard, individual development plans should include optimizing strengths.

That leads to the natural next question, "how do I develop an existing strength?"  Peterson & Hicks (Development First, Strategies for Self-Development) offer some suggestions.

• Seek experience in new, complex situations.  Force yourself to face challenges that push your limits.
• Spend time with experts.  Benchmark yourself against others you feel are experts in the area.  Watch what they do and continue to push your own performance.
• Cross-train.  Pursue learning in related areas and search for synergies, connections, and parallel ideas.
• Share the wealth by teaching others.  Others will benefit from your expertise and teaching requires that you deepen or stay sharp in your expertise.

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Needless to say, three of these points are things that KMers and KM tools attempt to enable! ;-)

Why is it difficult to explain KM?

I spent some time answering an old but good KM question (on Linked In, after a long time)


(Why it is tough for a Knowledge Manager to make others understand what exactly he/she does?)


IMHO, it is difficult to explain because of the following reasons (in no particular order)

> There are multiple (sometimes radically different) interpretations of what Knowledge Management is, both at the organizational level as well as at the individual level. No wonder KM departments fit into different streams in different organizations (HR, IT, Quality, Sales etc)

> It is a constantly and fast evolving field (most fields are, but - for example - just when we thought people were clear about what the KM function typically does, E2.0 happened and the KM R&R changed radically to reflect something highly social rather than asset-based)

> Knowledge, by itself, is an abstract subject. Pursuit of knowledge is for a few. Pursuit of the more tangible profits is for many

> People are more interested in "What's in it for them" and would hardly be fascinated by topics like sharing, collaboration (if you were to approach KM purely from that angle) etc - simply because people don't scratch the surface to see what's beneath is actually something that is good for everyone

> A slightly different flavor arising out of the combination of the first and second point - It is a multidimensional field involving a) culture, processes, technology, content quality etc b) reuse, sharing, communities, collaboration, search, filtering, semantics, etc c) psychology, organizational behavior, group-thinking, brainstorming, mentoring etc                   

Personal Knowledge Portfolio

1. Does this chart make sense? Please note that it is to be seen in the context of an organization and not just an individual. 
2. Does this consider/address at least the top few platforms and top few benefits?
3. Is there something wrong in this picture? For example, any block that is not in the appropriate place, in your opinion?
4. Any other feedback for improvement?

Learning and The Dangers of Expertise

This talk provides good food for thought. Do watch it if you're interested in KM, Collaboration or Learning. The speaker warns us about the dangers of blindly believing so-called experts and not questioning them enough and about societies having to feel more comfortable about managing dissent. 


Someone from the audience asks a very valid question - About the impact that this might have on how we teach children. Here's what methinks:


Maybe this points to a clear need for collective learning amongst children? Rather than a teacher standing up in front of the class and preaching? And of course, the need for education to accommodate questions from students, Montessori style.


And, finally, consider this post in juxtaposition with the previous C&H strip. See the joke? :-)

Hole in the Wall

Emergence. Self-Organizing Learning Systems. Children. Education. Knowledge. Collaboration. Plenty of lessons in there!

Guest Post by Alexis Bonari on KM

Augmented KM Success: Just Add Collaboration

Knowledge management is an invaluable tool for any business, but it’s best when collaboration is an active contributor. Where KM meets collaboration, information shouldn’t just be managed; it should be exchanged, archived, and made available to the entire company. Because all employees have the potential to contribute to a company’s strategies, tactics, and capabilities, a communal unit of stored knowledge is an ideal concept. But how can that idea become reality?

The Benefits of Collaborative KM

Traditional management techniques assign constrained, prioritized duties to employees and leave the brainstorming to a select few. That’s starting to look like a dated and myopic strategy as collaborative KM arrives at a variety of businesses and companies. Baseline, which identifies itself as a guide dedicated to planning and implementing next-generation IT solutions in business, has conducted a recent study of collaboration’s role in KM. Out of 342 managers, 33% stated that KM strategies had helped them to achieve their original KM business goals. However, out of the managers who used collaborative KM strategies, 58% achieved their goals. The collaborative facet of KM is revolutionizing the way companies run, interact with customers and partners, and relate to employees. 

Encouraging Collaboration

The first step to pursuing a knowledge-sharing initiative is to increase knowledge productivity among employees. One strategy to achieve this goal is the implementation of collaboration tools and applications. There’s a lot of software (such as CenterStage or KnowledgeBase Manager) aimed at the idea of collaborative KM, so it’s relatively easy to choose a set of tools for a specific business. Introducing collaborative tools to employees is the hard part, but successful implementers have some strong advice for managers who want to try out the tools. Staying serious about the company-wide use of the new tools is effective, but it’s also important to manage expectations and introduce the tools with deliberate care. With a younger set of employees, it helps to choose collaborative tools that use social network-based interfaces. Not only do these tools enjoy considerable popularity, but they also encourage employees to spend less time on Facebook and more time on the constructive, work-related version during office hours. Although 58% of managers stipulated that collaborative tools and systems had to be customized to maximize their potential, they agreed that collaborative KM benefits are worth the extra cost. 

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at onlinedegrees.org, researching areas of online degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Photo: Public Domain
URL: http://www.pmthink.com/KnowledgeManagementITSM01.jpg

Conversations

Apparently, some body of research conducted - surprise, surprise - research on conversations and came to the conclusion that 43% of the conversations we have are meaningless. Not sure if that means the conversations themselves are meaningless or they are ultimately meaningless because we don't do anything (take action, change behaviour etc) after we have had a meaningful conversation. ;-)

Incidentally, this morning, I wrote something on conversations for my official blog. Thought I'd reproduce it here for some, well, meaningful conversations on the topic of conversations. :-)

So, here are some random thoughts (on the remaining 57% of the conversations we have):

- Sometimes, you need to have a conversation to know what's on your own mind

- A real conversation is one which involves a genuine effort to understand the other person's perspectives and share your own insights and experiences

- A conversation is, arguably, not one where you start off with an inflexible and pre-determined objective to get the other person to toe your line or do something. This may prevent you from identifying the 'actual' objectives, challenges, concerns, solutions etc. Though you may have to state the objective of your conversation at times, you must be prepared to see it undergoing changes...

- Unless we are talking about extremely focused people, a conversation that gets the best out of both the parties having it is one wherein both are approachable, understanding, patient and aware of multiple perspectives

- Sometimes, a conversation involves compromising on something a la a tough negotiation

- A controlled conversation (largely led and guided in a particular direction by perhaps one of the parties) is necessary during certain situations but may not always lead to great consequences. A free-flowing conversation that is allowed to chart its own path may lead to more serendipitous discoveries and get the best out of the participants  

Caveat: However, there is a likelihood of one of the parties completely hijacking the conversation if the other person involved displays an open mind, seems vulnerable and fails to be assertive. Tch.

What?

The Social Intranet

There was a strong sense of deja vu as I read this blog post by @oscarberg , a KM/E2.0 expert from Sweden.  


In his post, Oscar effectively outlines what he thinks ought to be the ideal principles of the modern-day Intranet – The Social Intranet. It's an extremely well-written post and is a must-read for everyone wanting to make the transformation from traditional KM to E2.0 enabled KM.


http://www.thecontenteconomy.com/2010/07/serving-long-tail-of-information-needs.html

The sense of deja vu, by the way, is because I had the wonderful opportunity to conceptualize, design and roll out such a social Intranet in my own organization just a few months ago! Quite glad to note that the principles of the app we rolled out are in alignment with some of Oscar's thoughts. PS: I've written a full paper on the work that I was involved in and am actually hoping to present it at an appropriate conference. 

Key views (from Oscar's post) that coincide with the approach I adopted for our E2.0 app: (Highlights mine)

To help people find and discover information that is relevant to their tasks when they need it, we also need to create powerful pull mechanisms which allow relevant information to automatically surface and be placed at the fingertips of knowledge workers just when they need it. It is also critical that they have access to ALL information that is available, including collaborative content produced by teams, content produced by external resources, tacit knowledge captured in conversations, and so forth.

It equips everyone with the tools that allows them to participate, contribute, attract, discover, find and connect with each other to exchange information and knowledge and/or collaborate.

Although too many options can decrease your performance and create stress, information abundance does not equal an abundance of choice; the social intranet is a pull platform with mechanisms for automatically attracting relevant information and people to you. What’s important is that the options you are presented with are relevant and usable.

Deliberately hindering information to reach people is not the way to avoid the sensation commonly called information overload, because as Clay Shirky argues the problem is not the amount of information but rather that the filters we have fail to sort it properly for us. We need to get the filters in place instead of blaming and emonizing ("Tsunami of data", "firehose of information" etc) information supply and arguing that the only way to solve this "problem" is to limit supply.

The social intranet also has an important part to play when it comes to supporting serendipity; enabling people to find both information and people they didn’t know they were looking for.

Spending time and effort searching for relevant information and people where there is information abundance just won’t pay off. We must have ways that “automagically” attract useful information and connections to us.

Working in Heaven

I'm saying it. Working with a bunch of genuine, intelligent, humble, energetic, positive-attitude people means you are blessed.


In other words, what might it be like to work in Heaven? 


If you're a "realist", I know you might want to wake me up now. Please don't. I am already awake. This is was just a dream. 

The Power of Social Networks

Fascinating and Insightful. Some of it though is obvious. Don't miss it if you are a KMer.
The hidden influence of social networks - Share Ideas, Happiness, Tackle Challenges....

A KM Project, Employee Engagement, MBA in KM, Collaboration Skills

I feel like I've been neglecting myself. Not a single blog post since April 23rd! Gasp! I am almost sure this has not happened before. I've earlier remained silent for a week +/- a few days, but this time the silence has lasted more than 20 days!! Though, I am aware that the silence is totally explainable and justified. I've been absorbed in the development and implementation of a new KM & Collaboration application that I conceived 6 months back. Yet again, it becomes crystal clear to me that...

And also....one must be lucky to have a great team if not a perfect team. If the team isn't world class, then it's only passion and perseverance that keeps it going.

Aside: So, my blog posts are beginning to look different now, I realize. Mostly made up of sporadic twitter moments later connected and weaved together in a clumsy manner. Uh? ;-)


Anyway, getting back to the project, I am hoping I will have an opportunity to present it at an appropriate conference and see what the rest of the KM crowd thinks. I have positioned the tool as a personal knowledge management and cognitive networking application within the org. The tool automatically bubbles up knowledge assets relevant to the employee from various sources within the organization and also allows them to connect with and view their colleagues' knowledge profiles. 


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Once we were through with the first release, I immediately jumped into phase 2 of the project plan but, as expected, some other entities do not want to keep running at the same speed. So, I'm trying to relax and slow down a bit for a while. But all said and done, I truly believe that....

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Last week, I came across this interesting consulting organization called Engage for Change. (Thanks to my Twitter circle) Their values and approaches resonate with me and intrigue me. It would be wonderful to watch them go about one of their projects, help organizations engage with their employees and implement the concepts of 'Distributed Leadership'. Such projects are enormously more complex and satisfying than a business strategy formulation project.

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In other news, I think this will fit into one of the top slots in my list of regrets - My missing Nanyang's MBA in KM - though there is absolutely nothing I could have done about it because this course did not exist when I graduated. 

I was looking up the current MBA curriculum in various B-Schools when I bumped into Nanyang's MBA in KM. Slurp. But doing this now would be absurd. Too late. Had I seen this after 2-3 years of corporate experience, it may have been a good idea to pursue it. After all, my entry into KM was an overnight incident and was influenced by my need to find a worthwhile job rather than any specific desire to get into KM. It was destiny that brought me into KM and, luckily, I just happened to get fascinated by the subject once I was introduced to it.

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HT to @DavidGurteen

Finally, check out this wonderful video on the importance of prototyping and quick collaboration skills for a team's success. Collaboration skills are increasingly important in today's global environment and I think KM initiatives need to be well supported by training programs on collaboration and team-work. 

Random Thoughts

I am going to give myself the luxury of wandering a bit in this post. Will talk about this and that....things that are not necessarily related or associated with one another. Something on KM, something on leadership and E 2.0 and some interesting twitter moments. 

I was preparing a post for my internal (corporate) KM blog and thought it would be good to share that here as well. I've already shared it on Twitter but I realize I have the opportunity to dwell on it a little longer here (read beyond 140 characters), so I will do that. 

I came across this wonderful poem here and decided to extract what I perceive to be the 'KM' portions of it for my office blog. Allow me to reproduce that here.

"If you wish to learn, then take some time to teach. If you wish to climb higher, then lift others up. If you wish to be wise, then share what you know" Ralph Marston  (I googled for Marston and discovered that he is an author, motivational speaker and personal development expert)

This quote is wonderful and a true reflection of KM in so many ways. When people ask you "What's in it for me?", show them this quote and ask them to introspect on it for a few minutes. Even better, ask them to practice it just for a few weeks and see/feel the difference. I am convinced most of them will 'convert' to KM. I think this quote also goes a long way to show that KM is as much about personal development and individual competence improvement as it is about organizational development and benefits.

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Coming to leadership and E 2.0 (KM in its new avatar ;-)) I was going through a nice Twitter moment and came up with this Tweet - "Leadership is as much about tapping into collective intelligence as it is about being visionary, influential & setting the overall direction". Nothing new in it, of course. It is obviously something that a lot of leadership experts have been talking about for ages now - especially after the increase in the number of KM initiatives within Organizations. 

But I was pondering over the fact that a wide-spread, exhaustive and intense implementation of E 2.0 tools is bound to really challenge and disrupt the routine of people who don't subscribe to this form of leadership. Most of the time, many leaders (or perhaps managers) are looking to do things very quickly and do not have the patience to consult, discuss, debate, reconsider and change their minds when needed. More importantly perhaps, they have a considerable ego or fear (like most of us human beings) that prevents them from listening to different and opposing perspectives or confessing that they made a mistake or engage in open discussions that pose a challenge in public. But E 2.0 initiatives will forcefully take them through this challenging path. A blog post can be questioned and challenged in public. A solution can be dismissed. An idea can be rejected. And so forth. Leaders must learn to and be ready to face these tough moments. Additionally, they must believe that well channeled collective intelligence is, more often than not, more valuable than individual opinions (even if it is their own) and also have the willingness, energy and the skills to tap into the former. When leaders fail to cope with this challenge, E 2.0 initiatives will fail miserably. In other words, when otherwise well-planned E 2.0 initiatives fail miserably, it can be taken as a sure sign of weak leadership.  

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Here are some of my random Twitter moments:

It's sad how we want to brush aside the meaning of natural calamities & focus impatiently on how they do not allow us to get on with routine - (In response to the volcanic ash that is throwing people around or rather leaving them stranded)  - I observed that most of us react with anger and frustration and wonder why we are not allowed to go about our work/routine when such disasters strike. Even I would do the same. But shouldn't we ideally pause and wonder what the meaning of such a calamity is and what we need to do in order to salvage what is left of Mother Earth? Shouldn't we let that teach us where things are going wrong? Shouldn't we let that change our ways, thoughts and attitudes for the better? I guess there is likely to be a minute fraction of us who make such events life-changing for themselves and for others.

Another Twitter moment: Do we really know how to get to the Truth or see it in a jiffy? Truth is a thoroughly camouflaged impersonator who is also, well, elusive.  - I have some really strong thoughts on this. I think most of us make up for incomplete information and fill in the gaps and 'create' our own version of the truth. I find it hard to digest when people jump to their own conclusions and judge others in a jiffy. I would be surprised if even 1% of the people who indulge in judging others as innocent or guilty - celebrities or otherwise - know enough to do so. I suspect for most people it is just a form of entertainment or an ego-boosting exercise. There are rare occasions when I am inclined to listen to and believe such 'judgments' and those are based on clear undisputed facts, availability of multiple angles of the story, reliable statements from the person involved or involved parties, logical and unprejudiced analysis of events, specified intents and potential consequences.   

Twitter moment #3: Genuine positive energy that well-wishers shower on you is mega-powerful. It really pays to be compassionate & helpful- w/o any expectations - I am a strong believer in the concept of the existence of positive and negative energy auras around people. I recently witnessed yet another episode that proved this. I think it is really important to work on building a positive and compassionate aura around oneself. It really does wonders. When we are out to genuinely help others and be good to others, it most certainly results in them reciprocating (in intent or action) and the accumulation of such positive and compassionate auras can only result in great things. Trust me. I think each one of us ought to start such a virtual account and try hard to keep up with it till it becomes a natural habit.

KM & Innovation are the Best of Friends

Well, a long time ago......but not a very long time ago, a passionate innovation evangelist wondered whether KM 'disables' innovation. Yours truly was shocked, stunned, concerned, curious and disturbed enough to want to vehemently deny it. Ironically, one of the reasons why this blogger loves KM is because of the potential role it can play in Innovation! You see the thing now? So, I decided to ramble non-stop (politely and smilingly though) in response to the post by the aforementioned person. Not sure whether that had any impact but this morning I found a student from Singapore posing a similar but milder question, in Linked In, on whether KM and Innovation are on the opposite sides of the table. So, I decided to refer back to the post that I'd come across last year and knew I could pick up my comment on it and sort of quote myself in response to the Linked In query. But to my surprise, the comment I'd left on the post was missing! No trace of it at all. Whatsoever. Strange, eh? You know what that meant....I had to ramble all over again on Linked In. Sad for the student perhaps, for I may have put in more energy into it this time around ;-) 


Here we go. If you believe KM does not enable innovation or, err, 'disables' innovation, then please get a cuppa or a chocolate bar, put aside your belief for just a few moments and consider my ramblings. But please do let me know if what I say makes no sense or if you have better and more points to add to this post. 


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This is a topic very close to my heart. I am quite passionate about removing (or at least debating furiously upon) this not so uncommon belief that KM and Innovation don't go along together or are detrimental to each other. Like many responses above indicate, this is far from the truth, IMHO. It all depends on the KM objectives and strategy, overall corporate culture and its ability to focus on the objectives as well as balance different approaches. 


If the organization is exclusively focused on cost cutting and productivity improvements via KM, then obviously the KM team and the management may chant the 'reuse knowledge material' and 'collaborate to avoid redundancy' mantras more than anything else. But if the focus is on combining views in creative ways (which is nothing but innovation) there's nothing like KM for it! KM is about bringing people together, helping them learn from each other, collaborate in creative ways and add each other's learnings and experiences to create something fresh and new! Think of brainstorming sessions. Think of communities of practice! Think of team work. Think of experts in different areas coming together to combine their expertise and making something cool out of almost nothing. 


And, even otherwise, please note that KM strategies have undergone a significant transformation over the last few years. Long gone are the days when organizations and KM teams only used to emphasize on documenting and sharing knowledge via document repositories. Organizations started shifting toward tools for expertise location, social networking, collaboration spaces and now Enterprise 2.0 - which is all about connecting people and letting them innovate as a collective force! All said and done, the culture and the environment must help employees balance reuse and innovation via appropriate KM approaches. 


Finally, I think Nick Milton puts it well - KM should be used only to kill unnecessary innovation! Each individual needs to introspect on the context and the situation  in order to decide whether it calls for a quick reuse of material or independent introspection that could even later be complemented with some reusable material. And do remember - Innovation is generally considered to be the art of looking at old ideas in new ways or combining two or more old ideas in a 'new' way. :-)