It's all about people and networks

Friendster acquires patent for social networking

Sun, 09 Jul 2006 14:13:14 GMT

Since Red Herring published the article "Friendster Wins Patent" last Friday, 7th of July, it only took 48 hours for more than 26,000 blogs on social networks to pick the news up. Most of the sites report the same news item: "as the generic patent offers opportunities to the once-beleaguered site to pursue licenses from similar social networks and competitors that offer the same services based on the idea of connecting people within a certain number of degrees of separation, Friendster president Kent Lindstrom tells Red Herring that “it is still too early to say” although Friendster “will do what we can to protect our intellectual property”. Check the patent out here. The problem debated around is of course that the foundation of this patent is the "small world theory" by Stanley Milgram.

It is argued that with the patent, Friendster can put itself up for sale, significantly increasing its value. This story - without a doubt - will be continued.

Social network Forum event wiki

Sun, 09 Jul 2006 13:21:03 GMT

The 2nd Social network Forum, which was organized by the Leeds University Business School and which was held from the 30th of June until the 1st of July, 2006, has finalized. Summaries of the presentations can be found online in the forum wiki, but the slides and proceedings have not been posted (yet) online.

Networks uncovered using Ontology Network Analysis

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:24:56 GMT

Ontocopi lets you infer the informal relations that define a community of practice from the presence of more formal relations. For instance, if A and B have no formal relation but they have both authored papers with C (formal relation), they might share interests (informal relation). Because Ontocopi works in this way, we cannot claim without qualification that it identifies communities of practice. Significant informal relations might have little or no connection to the formal ones. Here, we refer to the networks uncovered by Ontocopi as COPs and to informal social networks as communities of practice. We work under the assumption that COPs are sometimes decent proxies for communities of practice.

More background information for reading here (PDF paper)

Organizational Network Analysis and communities

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 21:56:32 GMT

A common objective for any CoP program is to encourage information flow, knowledge reuse, and learning among employees.This informational focus derives from early scholarship on the situated nature of learning and problem solving in communities.However, from a purely practical perspective, substantial efficiency and effectiveness benefits result from communities that promote effective knowledge creation and transfer. Unfortunately, in new communities, we typically see information flow and learning networks that are constrained by formal structure,homophilly, and to some degree personality or interests of those involved.These social forces create silos and a wide dispersion of connectivity that undermine knowledge transfer and performance benefits of communities.

Rob Cross in Assessing and Improving Communities of Practice with Organizational Network Analysis made by his team of the Network Round Table at the University of Virginia; the application of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) on communties of practice at fifteen participating organizations of the NRT. There's a couple of more resources there too.

Social networks and country-to-country transfer: dense and weak ties in the diffusion of knowledge

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 12:17:27 GMT

This article from Marie-Laure Djelic investigates the social network dimension in processes of cross-national transfer. The empirical focus is the conscious attempt to appropriate, in France after 1945, the American model of the large firm. Structural conditions—internal crisis and geopolitical dependence—created the context in which country-to-country transfer could take place. Our findings also show, however, that the transfer itself required the activation of concrete mechanisms and, there, social networks proved key. Our evidence shows in fact the tight and reciprocal interaction, the co-construction, as it were, of social networks on the one hand and processes of institutionalization on the other. Building upon our empirical findings, we propose furthermore that successful cross-national transfer hinges on a particular kind of network structure. In the story recounted here diffusion across national borders called for the smooth and successful articulation of two types of social networks—a cross-national “weak ties” network and national “strong ties” ones. In the end, this article accords with the current calls for cross-fertilization of institutional theory and social network theory. And we argue that both approaches are useful and complementary when dealing with country-to-country transfers.

Download the article in PDF here.

Modify and enhance the forum description

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 12:32:51 GMT

One of the improvements that can be made easily to the forum description (which is the part between the folder structure and the entries table on the "home page" of any forum) is an indication on how many entries are unread. There's opportunities to play around with the texts, messages and numbers and you don't even have to change code on the machine. It can all be done with the standard set of templates that is provided with SEF. For this example, copy the docshare_showfolder_sf to any forum using the administration web interface and add this to the code.

<%
    set entriesList [fc Docshare GetEntriesList]
    set entryCount [llength $entriesList]
    set docItemsList [fc Docshare GetUnseenList]
    set docCount [llength $docItemsList]
    %>
    Hello, <%=[fc User title]%>,
    <% if {![strequal $docCount "0"]} {
    %> no less than <%=$docCount%> out of <%=$entryCount%> are unseen!.
    <% } else { %>
    apparently you have seen all the entries!
    <% } %>
    <% if {[strequal $myphoto "default"]} { %>I notice you haven't put a photo in your profile - shame!<% } %>
    <% emit $foldertext %>

Yahoo! patents (parts of) social networks: Method and system for customizing views of information associated with a social network user

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 14:50:03 GMT

US Patent Office, application 20050177385:

A method, apparatus, and system are directed towards managing a view of a social network user’s personal information based, in part, on user-defined criteria. The user-defined criteria may be applied towards a user’s relationship with each prospective viewer. The user-defined criteria may include degrees of separation between members of the social network, a relationship to the prospective viewer, as well as criteria based, in part, on activities, such as dating, employment, hobbies, and the like. The user-defined criteria may also be based on a group membership, a strength of a relationship, and the like. Such user-defined relationship criteria may then be mapped against various categories of information associated with social network user to provide customized views of the social network user.

I caught this one through Ojo. What's next?

Making calendars more attractive

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 06:11:05 GMT

Though very basic, the usage of the Sitescape calendar can be very productive. There are some pluses and minuses, and I won't go into them here but to mention two of them. Definitely a plus from the calendar is that you can merge different calendars into one, for example by merging business calendars into your personal calendar or (as another example) several office/site calendars into a global calendar. It is very simple yet effective. The calendar on the other hand does not look very attractive and is many times not intuitive to use.
The good new is that ther are several (quite straightforward) things that can be done to improve that without having to change the Sitescape code on the server:

You can change the templates for the entries such that additional fields can be entered in the entries and subsequently displayed in the entry view. You need to make changes in the database by modifying the calendar_addmodity.html first, then alter the calendar_showappt.html template to show changes made.

Then you can use templates with style sheets to enhance the style colours of your calendar entries; for example if you have created a custom field you can use the stylesheet and the templates above to highlight entries (in the weekly or monthly views) that meet a certain condition. For instance, if a meeting is deemed to be important, and such field exists in the calendar, you can have it highlight red in the calendar view.

The owner of a calendar is something to remember!

While working with templates, remember that one (annoying) thing is that the calendar owner needs to be an existing user in the user database. This problem can come forward when you are migrating users to new useraccounts, etc. The calendar forum will crash because it tries to do a [user_info] for a non-existing user; this command is forced rather than attempted and there is no way around it other than going in the database and change the value for the owner. This is simply done by:

1. Going in to the avf-butler
2. Type make_current "zonename" "calendarname" (for instance make_current testzone c.groupcal)
3. Type wim open rw
4. Type wim property get owner -> it should return the username of the owner
5. To change, type wim property put owner wf_admin (or replace wf_admin for any other useraccount that needs to be owner)
6. Type wim close -> it should return rw

Forcing all entries to show (for FAQ)

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 09:33:25 GMT

It has been raised several times in the support forum and in the backchannels, but if you are using a forum to create a sort of FAQ, directory or listing that should display all entries in the forum at once, there is a simple solution. Using templates, which will increase the portability to other forums and newer versions, you can change the number of entries that is displayed and override the individual user setting (through display options) in the following way:

The template that returns the list of entries in the ‘forum view’ is called docshare_showfolder_sf.html. This template, when building the list uses a procedure called ShowFolderEntries which comes from another supporting templated called docshare_showentry_support.html.

The procedure showFolderEntries builds up a list of entries that has to be displayed. There are two important variables in this calculation:

docIdList which is the list of the entries that have to be shown on the current page

entriesList which is the list of all possible entries in that folder

Under normal circumstances, the difference in these lists is important for the ‘show next page’ navigation below the entries. If the variable docIdList is set to be the same as entriesList, by default all the entries are shown (no matter the user preference).

There are several ways to achieve this, but one of them is easily by editing the docshare_showentry_support.html template and right before the lines

<TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="100%">
<tr bgcolor="#666666"><td><img alt="" src="<%=[fc URL Graphic -pics 1pix.gif]%>">
</td></tr>
</table>

add the following line

set docIdList $entriesList

Now you're at it, consider also taking away the filter bar and the navigation bars (since the latter are pretty much obsolete for this forum, anyway)

Remove the filterbar from docshare_showfolder_sf.html by commenting out

#ShowFilterBar bottom

Comment out the navigation elements above and below the entries:

(above)

# if {![isnull $entriesList]} {
# #Show the navigation to additional pages
# ShowPageNavigation $listSupplied $startingCount $entryCount $totalEntryCount
# $entriesLeft $pageSize
# }

(below)

#
# Show the navigation to additional pages
# ShowPageNavigation $listSupplied $startingCount $entryCount $totalEntryCount
# $entriesLeft $pageSize

Background work on workflow

Sun, 14 Aug 2005 13:42:54 GMT

Working with the workflow capabilities has always been somewhat difficult. Though the application and the flexibility are outstanding, the documentation about what happens in the background is very poor. We came across this with two specific issues that were related to workflow:

1- Could the history of each workflow transition be logged (time, date) rather than only the most recent one?

2- What is the impact of user migration on workflow?

Especially the latter made us have a better look at what is stored in the database for the entries. The following example shows how to understand the logic of the fields:

1. Get started Use the SDK through the command window to get to the butler prompt. Since we do not wish to keep any production server busy with the example, we have chosen to look at a test server.

D:Forums>avf-butler
% make_current demoz wftest
% wim open r

After you get the butler command promt (%) you need to turn to the forum that need analysis. In this case, we used the wftest forum that exists in the demoz zone. After that we opened the database for reading (wim open r). After this has been done, fetch the workflow properties (called workflowState, which is case sensitive) for an entry in that forum using the docId number. In this case we used docId 100199.

% aval workflowState 100199

2. Analyze the information
The screen will return a list of information.

610511839 {Approved - No Further Action} {{a.Not Submitted} {Yes user1} {r.In Review (A)} group1 {r.In Review (B)} group2 replyCount1 {r.In Review (C)} group3 {r.In Review (D)} group4 {r.InReview (E)} group5 changedStateOn 2003/02/10-13:17:22 {r.In Review (F)} group6 {a.In Review (B)} {{Yes - no action required} user2} {r.Approved - Action Required} {group1 group2 group3 group4 group5 group6 group 7} {r.In Review (G)} group7 changedStateBy user2 {r.Approved - Action Required 1} wf_admin {r.Needs Revising} user5 {r.In Review (H)} group8 {r.In Review (I)} group8}

The first two fields are the workflow identifier (610511839) which differentiates this workflow from others, and the current workflow state the entry is in. The rest looks a little garbled. What ones needs to know at this point is that this rest contains the history of the workflow, with all arrays containing r. a possible workflow state (for instance {r.In Review (I)}) and where a. denominates a workflow state transition (a.In Review (B)}. And in between all that, there is the date 2003/02/10-13:17:22 which you'll find as the most recent state transition date, the one who caused that last state transition (changedStateBy user2) and replyCount. Note: this history of the workflow is merely displayed, for question-based transition directives.

3. Make sense of what is there
Knowing that are possible states and what are states is has gone through, we can re-construct the workflow, with a little bit of knowledgee from the time we created it in the first place.

The first state the workflow took was "Not Submitted" and the transition directive was a question which could be answered "Yes" to move it to a next state. We see this reflected as {a.Not Submitted} {Yes user1}{a.Not Submitted} {Yes user1}; in other words we can see that user1 did make the state transition. There were no less than eight possible states, which was chosen depending on a value in the custom command. All these states have next to them a (user)group entitled to change that state.

{r.In Review (A)} group1 {r.In Review (B)} group2 {r.In Review (C)} group3 {r.In Review (D)} group4 {r.InReview (E)} group5 {r.In Review (F)} group6 {r.In Review (G)} group7 {r.In Review (H)} group8

You can also see that one of these states was hit from the first transition, and that the directive (again a question) was answered by a user (note the a. instead of the r.):

{a.In Review (B)} {{Yes - no action required} user2}

Likewise you can go through the whole workflow and reconstruct it. As far as the original question is concerned, user migration, there is no impact since all of the workflow states in this example had usergroups associated with them for access control. That means that after user migration or user change, the group membership may be updated. However, if the access control for states was controlled by individual users, then a migration would be necessary not to lock out entries with workflow states. The assumption that only the current workflow state needs to be updated in not true since the workflow may go back to other states - which it has gone through yet (for example in a review cycle) for which the access control needs to be changed, too. We made a script that runs through all workflows in a forum and export it, so that the impact can be estimated, something worth pursuing if an user migration is considered.

The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 20:49:33 GMT

Genrich S. Altshuller is te founding father of TRIZ, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. I am stuying the facilitation of knowledge networks and communities of practice in the application of methods like TRIZ. One of the better reference pages about TRIZ can be found here; an interesting part for that facilitation is the part where is described how Altshuller noted that the source of the solution required broader knowledge and more solutions to consider before an ideal one could be found.

Table 1. Levels of Inventiveness.
Level	Degree of inventiveness	% of solutions	Source of knowledge	Approximate # of solutions to consider
1	Apparent solution	32%	Personal knowledge	10
2	Minor improvement	45%	Knowledge within company	100
3	Major improvement	18%	Knowledge within the industry	1000
4	New concept	4%	Knowledge outside the industry	100,000
5	Discovery	1%	All that is knowable	1,000,000

What Altshuller tabulated was that over 90% of the problems engineers faced had been solved somewhere before. If engineers could follow a path to an ideal solution, starting with the lowest level, their personal knowledge and experience, and working their way to higher levels, most of the solutions could be derived from knowledge already present in the company, industry, or in another industry.

Social Network Analysis at BHP

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:24:17 GMT

There are very few papers on the usage of SNA for knowledge networking in the mining / industrial minerals industry. Some (undocumented) work has been done with Borax, but the most obvious one is a 2000 report from Laurence Lock Lee. In his paper, "Knowledge Sharing Metrics for Large Organisations" which can be downloaded here he provides some insight in the structure and creation of the BHP GMN (Global Maintenance Network), founded back in 1997.The Global Maintenance Network is formalized, and very much structured (facilitated, too), and according to the paper not a community of practice, which is largely unstructured.

The rationale for a facilitated network over a pure community of practice is the business need to meet performance targets and deadlines, which are less of a driver for communities of practice.

BHP has started a very simple yet (seemingly) effective social network mapping of the networks, using sociometric parameters. The fact that it was limited was not a problem, because it still enabled the assessment of the impacts of business unit membership (formal structure) and geographic location on network activity patterns. The paper itself reveals some of the more obvious findings, and some paths forward to overcome the hurdles of data collection for SNA through surveys.

Intervision and communities of practice

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 09:16:44 GMT

Yesterday we participated again in an informal interdepartamental (governmental) KM community members, where the central theme was intervision. Intervision is a problem-solving technique where employees in a team or group can request their colleagues to collectively think about problems. It is analytical more than solution-oriented, because the participants in the intervision are not requested to bring solutions to the table but ask questions about the context, background and approach of the problem.

Intervision is mostly based on self-reflection and collective capability development. It is very practical.

In many senses intervision looks like work that is common practice in healthy (problem-solving) communities of practice - bring people together with a common interest or within a knowledge domain, focus on the communication between the members, address the reflection and support between the participants, the (management) dilemma of making intervision part of the strategy and HRM, issues with roles / responsibilities and confidentiality, the participation of management - or not, etc, scope and boundaries of the personal and collective, etc.

In the past I have seen several problems with just intervision as a technique within the knowledge management domain;

Intervision is very much problem-oriented which limits it applications for (for example) knowledge stewarding. This also makes it hard to link up intervision groups to other groups, to form larger networks of people.
Intervision is not typically not generative;
Intervision requires the definition of an upfront structure by a leader. This makes it sometimes difficult (depending on the dominance) to distribute leadership;
Intervision is aimed at the improvement and renewal of existing processes, but does not address innovation because the domain of participants is limited to those within a (set) group of experts or even team members.
Intervision requires some sort of guidance (as argued by Jeroen Hendriksen, author of Intervision)

It can be argues nevertheless, that these weaknessess can be turned into positive qualities when the intervision approach is aligned with the strategy and implementation of communities of practice (bringing out some of the qualities and addressing most of the points above) and social network analysis (to support the point of group / team boundaries and overcome the limitation that intervision is more renewal than innovative. For example, SNA could show multiple intervision-group membership or informal intervision groups, similar to work done for communities of practice). The guidance aspect then remains an open-ended question, but it can very well be combined with a higher-level support that is typically also available for institutionalized communities.

Weak ties in communities of practice

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 22:26:57 GMT

Today I had to lead a very interesting and long (free and unfinished) discussion about the importance of strong ties and weak ties in a networked organization, especially in the context of communities of practice. "Communities" so it was argued don't build social capital because they mostly comprise of people with strong links. We used the following definition of social capital

Social Capital = The process and conditions of social networking among people and organizations that lead to accomplishing a goal of mutual social benefit, usually characterized by trust, cooperation, involvement in the community, and sharing.

Weak links are important because of their bridging function to other networks, their capability to leverag the social capital of these networks and bring in new ideas at a lower cost (these last words were put aside on a different note paper, as it lead to separate discussions about the cost of maintaining relationships between strong / weak ties, which is high for strong ties and low for weak ties). The question is whether weak ties can, when they bring in these qualities to the community, substantially contribute further to the capability development of the community participants with strong ties.

Suggestion & starting point for the next session: It may be, when strong ties attract weak ties as the community develops.

Corporate SNA in CIO magazine

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 20:04:02 GMT

In CIO magazine, Susannah Patton writes an introductionary article about the use of social network analysis (SNA) in the corporate world. It's fun for reading and brings forward some of the real challanges that corporate SNA face. Her point, based on an interview with Masterfoods USA:

Companies that have been frustrated by traditional knowledge management efforts, such as Mars, are increasingly looking for ways to find out how knowledge flows through their organizations. Looking at the company org chart, it turns out, often doesn't tell the real story about who holds influence, who gives the best advice and how employees are sharing information critical for success

Read the whole article

Introduction to UCINET and social network methods

Sun, 19 Jun 2005 11:46:48 GMT

Mark Riddle and Robert Hanneman from UCR have published their introductionary textbook on social network methods and graph theory online. The book can be download for free (68 MB) or seen in an HTML version here.

For those getting started with network analysis and especially UCINET as a tool, the introduction can be very helpful. The textbook is very much along the line of the most common usage and operations of UCINET

http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/nettext/

The navigational aspects of social networks

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 06:14:17 GMT

A very theoretical but interesting paper to read on the navigational aspects of social networks is the 2003 paper from Aaron Clauset and (now Dr) Cristopher Moore, written in their time at the Computer Science Department of the University of New Mexico. It's only a couple of pages and it can be downloaded here.

When they discuss rewiring in a social network they come to these conclusions:

This process has a naturalinterpretation: the topology of a social network is constantly being modified by its members, who update their personal connections as they explore and navigate the network. If a member becomes frustrated because the journey to a destination takes too long, they can be expected to change their connections to make similar journeys more quickly in the future.

It would be an interesting paper or study to follow up on their suggestions:

Our discussion contemplates a “social space” consisting of a finite-dimensional lattice, an obviously poor model for the complex social spaces we routinely navigate. An interesting study would be an analogous rewiring process for networks whose underlying structure is hierarchical, involves multiple group affiliations or is otherwise structured, as in the peer-to-peer network Freenet with the modifications described in.

Chris Moore is now a doctor at the Complexity Research of that same univerisity. Other papers that he wrote that people interested in social networks, complexity and communities of practice may wish to have a look at, are:

Finding community structure in very large networks (PDF)
Finding local community structure in networks (PDF)

I have added these three documents to my library, they're definitely "good to keep".

Power struggle in radical innovation communities

Wed, 18 May 2005 19:31:26 GMT

In her work about the construction of communities of practice for innovation [Management Learning.2002; 33: 477-496], Jacky Swan from the Warwick Business School puts down in a couple of paragraphs why communities are places where incremental innovation can foster yet radical innovation cannot (because of the boundaries). In 2003 I wrote about the community ecosystem and the need for boundary spanners which describes a similar thesis. It's been nearly fifteen years since Brown and Duguid linked the idea of communities of practice and organizational learning and innovation.

These characteristics of spontaneity and freedom from organizational constraints lead authors to link communities of practice positively to learning, knowledge flows and innovation. Evidence in support focuses on the ways innovation emerges incrementally from local adaptations of work practices within communities, in response to new problems.

Communities need to be emergent and adaptive to membership and domain changes.

However, it has also been noted that, whilst communities of practice may encourage the flow of knowledge and innovation within communities, they may limit the knowledge flows across communities and, therefore, can place constraints on innovation at the wider organizational level In particular, radical innovations often occur at the interstices across established groups and work activities – they are radical precisely because they disrupt or fundamentally alter current work practices. Established communities of practice may, then, pose problems for the development of radical innovations that cross such communities.

So, encouraging communities of practice than cross organizational boundaries such as business units or the corporation itself, can augment the individual and organizational capabilities to radical innovation. There's a problem though. The knowledge that each of the groups (organizations) in the emergent community have is tied to social relationships of the people that have created and maintained it. Radical innovation and subsequently creation of new knowledge requires new social relationships between the groups (organizations). The 'negotiation of meaning and identity' (like in Wenger) in the emergent community is highly conflictual, especially with the lack of institutionalized roles. A power struggle between the groups that form the emergent community is consequence.

The development of the power struggle is dependent on the commonalities in ethics, values and beliefs that the groups (organizations have). Yet each of them have two important organizational tools to support them:

Strategy (the determination of the long term goals, including resources to execute a course of action). Those who can shape or give meaning to the strategy (for instance, innovation strategy) will have more power in the community;

Structure (the framework and design of the formal organization that supports the groups, including lines of communication). It provides the groups with two important resources: information and authority. Groups that can control either will have more power. Changes in the (adaptive) community can highly influence the distribution of this power though.

Innovation communities of practice at P&G

Thu, 27 May 2004 07:25:05 GMT

Coming back from Madrid was reading this month's edition of Fortune Magazine and found myself surprised to see that there is a major article in it devoted to innovation and communities of practice. In the section "innovation special: P&G teaching and old dog new tricks" there is a five-page article on how diversity and cross-BU collaboration using communities (and they are actually called communities of practice in the article) has turned around the innovation process and 'made P&G into a brand-builder and model growth company again'. This emergence is remarkable because P&G is known for it's notoriously rule-bound culture.

They describe in brief how their 7,500 R&D scientists acoss nine countries work in communities and how it has been delivering results using innovation reviews. P&G CEO Lafley says that one of the things is that people (in the CoPs) are credited both for giving as well as taking, underlining the P&G uncommon viewpoint for the dominant role of the social dimension.

Social Business Networks and linking up people

Tue, 18 May 2004 12:45:56 GMT

Social Business Network platform Ecademy has positioned their feature to find and meet 'people similar to you' as I recently discovered. As I wrote in the blog on the 28th of April (here) Ecademy uses keywords in the profiles to describe who you are and what you want. Then, the 'find people like me' button can search other profiles and return those who have things in common. The more keywords in common, the higher the score.

It itself not an uncommon social software feature, and to my surprise they have added an automated banner on the homepage which selects (presumably at random) someone from the results list that 'has a profile like me'. The idea is good, yet I have questions about the value of this feature for me. Take this example.

Just now I was recommended Tom Smith because he has things in common with me. When I started to look at his profile, I found that there were just two keywords (of 50) that he shared with me (incidentally, "social software" and "virtual communities"). The other 48 did not resonate very much with me. Going back to the homepage and refreshing a couple of times, other names popped up and I checked their profiles likewise. Very little in common - it seems that

Ecademy is trying to use the power of volume in their attempt to create networks of people rather than quality (or perceived quality I should say). Tom Smith was not even on the list of people that 'look like me' when I forced to show a list - meaning he has less than 17% in common (...) which appears to be very much true.

The quality of this selection process can be perceived as quite shaky because Ecademy does not know which keywords are more important to me than others. I would contact Tom for his 'virtual communities' keyword but not if we shared 'tapas' in common. It's just that these keywords represent who I am and what I want, yet the engine does not discriminate between the two. Splitting the list would be much better. Ryze started off with that quite well (I have...) and (I want..) but did not implement an engine to link people with that. Perhaps it can come still, Social Business Network platforms are on the move and they go very fast.. they just have to stay away from the volume..

Social Learning, Social Networks and Social Knowledge

Mon, 10 May 2004 21:14:53 GMT

At the end of last week there was an interesting moment when in a community of practice Beverly trainer rightfully corrected John Maloney from KM Cluster about his misrepresentation of the term 'social network as a lingua franca for communities of practice (~practicioners). I am glad that she did, because there is an increasing confusion and even misuse of the right terminology and understanding about many concepts. Everything that is "social network"-ed seems to fall victim of this trend, so her correction was reason for me to quote her response. She said:

Am I right that "Social Networks" and "Social Network Analysis" as part of the current discourse of Knowledge Mangagement (with roots in sociometrics and graph theory?) Whereas "Social Learning Theory" is part of the discourse of socio-cultural theories of learning (Vygotsky, Bandura, Lave) and "Social Knowledge" is part of the discourse of sociology of knowledge (Kuhn, Mannheim, Berger, Luckman).

Since she phrased it very well, it's worth having a better look at what she is saying; Social Network Analysis. Social Network analysis is a sociometric, which means that it combines aspects of sociology with mathematical representation using structural models to represent human interactions. [Science Week 2001]: In social network analysis, discrete mathematics and statistics are combined with the emerging epistemology of complex systems to explore processes and phenomena as diverse as the diffusion of information through an organization, the adoption of innovations in society, and the spread of infectious disease in a population. Researchers working on social network analysis draw upon many disciplines: sociology, anthropology, psychology, geography, mathematics, statistics, and computer science.

She continues

Perhaps I misunderstood, but I'd be uneasy if you were claiming that there is A lingua franca which should be used by THE CoP community. I see the landscape more as overlapping, complementary and competing discourses between different (CoP) communities. And in fact, Wenger's research agenda looks very much to me like a search(ing) for a transdisciplinary discourse, and not an affiliation to any one discourse community.

Wenger also comes from the social learning theory side. He and Lave wrote Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation (1991). Because Lave and Wenger put learning in a participative context through communities of practice, they state that "theacquisition of knowledge by individuals so much as a process of social participation. The nature of the situation impacts significantly on the process. More of Wengers work in his new research, where he takes his vision one step further.

Using profile in social business networks (Ecademy)

Wed, 28 Apr 2004 05:54:50 GMT

Though I like the way social business network platforms such as Ecademy use the 'personal profile' to place yourself in the network, there's some considerations I have.

First I need to admit that unlike a community, where your identity is also built through participation and quality of conversation, there is a lot of ongoing work that needs to be done in the profile. You almost start off with a framework and incrementally build a decent profile that matches your business needs and describes your ambitions (whether personal or business).

For this, most of them seem to use keyworks. "Describe yourself in 50 keywords" is a very good exercise to bring down "You" - your identity - down to a couple of elements. I tried to stay away from the business keywords only and introduce personal ones as well. To do this I started off with 15 personal keywords and 15 business keywords. Then I let my associates put in four new ones of each category and take one or two out from the ones I came up with (as long as they are motivated..). I did the same with some friends who were able to describe me better than I myself. The result is that I have a list of words that could describe me from my personal perspective (who I think I am, or want to become) and from the perspective of people that know me (who people think I am, or have been).

But how does one emphasize on one keyword? I would really like to make sure that some things are more important than others with these keywords. As long as I cannot do that, the value of "seach people like me" feature (which looks for people with likewise keywords) is heavily inflated. I am not sure that the description inside the profile will make a difference - so I have included the Ryze'izm "What I have" and "What I need" to make sure that people are aware of what I am looking for and what I can offer, complementary to the keywords.

Dave Pollard on business innovation and networks

Tue, 20 Apr 2004 21:57:15 GMT

What does all this mean for today's company looking to jump-start its innovation programs and processes, and today's individual looking to participate in making his or her own, or his or her employer's, enterprise more innovative?

Dave Pollard has continued his great work on networked organizations and innovation paper.

Hierarchy and Autocracy are the Enemies of Innovation: There is a strong creative tension between individuals and the communities they elect to or are asked to be part of, caused by divergent needs, drivers, and behaviours. Each individual and each community needs its own space. Flat, small, responsive, democratic organizations are inherently more innovative.

Innovation Needs an Urgent Problem: True innovation only occurs where there is consensus that there is an important problem to solve and a sense of urgency to solve it.

Cooperation is Replacing Competition: Competition is now dysfunctional, a vestige of earlier times of resource scarcity, and cooperation is now essential to effective innovation.

The Customer Rules: The customer is now king and needs only better decision making tools to become the sole driver of economic activity, rendering obsolete the need for marketing, branding, and other producer-driven mechanisms of influencing customer actions.

Female Organizational Style is More Innovative Than Male: As shown in the table below, organizational structures, processes and behaviours more commonly associated with businesses run by women are gaining traction in the New Economy, and that bodes well for innovation.

The Emerging New Economy Will Accelerate Innovation: Despite the current waves of globalization, corporatism and increased concentration of wealth and power, the Internet and other new technologies will inexorably break the strangle-hold of riak-averse oligopolies and unleash a new age of astonishing innovation.

What are you still reading here ??? - go and check the whole story out in his blog.

HP: How to search a social network, Finding Communities in Linear Time

Tue, 20 Apr 2004 18:43:34 GMT

Implicit Structure and the Dynamics of Blogspace and more papers from HP Information Dynamics Lab.

It's always like that: looking for one thing you find many others.

Full paper behind Blog Epidemic Analyzer (for Anjo and Rogier :) - Implicit Structure and the Dynamics of Blogspace by Eytan Adar, Li Zhang, Lada A. Adamic, and Rajan M. Lukose

And other papers from HP Information Dynamics Lab, especially those with titles that I found interesting:

[Mathemagenic]

An experiment in social innovation: Pow-Wow of the Dutch Connection

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:31:45 GMT

Tonight was the first event of the "Dutch Connection" group that is starting to emerge from a group of people that have formally or informally met in Ecademy over the last weeks. Lead by Colby Stuart it has been both refreshing and inspiring (time well spent). Once again it becomes apparent that the potential of co-creation and social / business innovation happens at the boundaries of networks. Bringing these people together (and they are revolutionists) will spark many creative conversations and ideas.

One of the themes that was spent talking about was the value of identity in social network platforms by properly using the personal profile. A profile is much more than a banner to lure business opportunties in, it is a reflection of all the facets of your ambition and the context in which that has been creation. Ambition says something about what your personal objectives, the tools and inspiration.

A small group exercise I proposed to the group may help bring out such group identity - but the emergence of such identity can only be attained if we convey our personal one.And that this is not always about business, was reflected in the list of attributes that was co-created in the group.

It recalled what Prusak / Cohen said in "In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work" about the Xerox teams as well..

Analysis of Social Software

Fri, 09 Apr 2004 18:07:10 GMT

Alicia L. Cervini has published on her website a thesis called "Network Connections: An Analysis of Social Software that Turns Online Introductions into Offline Interactions " which takes a look at the modern social software platforms. There is an extensive analysis in the capabilities of these platforms with a touch of social networking theory, but the conclusions are too little founded on the theory of social networking to make a lasting impression. Though it'll be outdated soon, if you are interested now in these platforms and their role in the SN world, check it out at:

http://stage.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~alc287/thesis/

Creativity, innovators and social networks

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 22:49:17 GMT

MonkeyMagic reported on Ton Zijlstra's and Lilia's Blogwalk (sorry, circumstances lead me that I could not be there); a perception of direction, trust and creativity

Creativity In lots of ways I think Ton makes good sense. Certainly in terms of picking out those diamond signals from the noise. Ton suggests that

"Knowledge workers ... need to be exposed to as much background noise as possible, to open up as much opportunities to respond as possible."

... and it rings true. It certainly seems to be true in the creative sphere. Amateurs, for example, can and do make great leaps of intuition. (Perhaps because their filters are less restrictive, they get more signals?). Equally artists have a long and fruitful history of opening their doors of perception.

I think that the 'exposure to noise' translates back to the multi-community membership properties that creative people and innovators have; they tend to have access to many networks and know how to translate noise to signals, depending on the direction and purpose of the network. Some other starting point was on the CoP theme on KB last year (with contributions from Dr. Patricia Wolf).

Social Network Analysis (see here for more information on that) is a must when it comes to supporting the conversation with revolutionist. In the article above there are many references to that, but Rob Cross has a nice sample for this application as well (pointer by Patti).

Disruptive innovation and strategic learning

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 21:18:07 GMT

There are more and more articles available on the relationships between leadership, knowledge ecology and management and (disruptive) innovation. When we started working on the position papers that created an understanding of the crucial relationship between communities of practice and disruptive / radical innovation (see documents) there were hardly any academic or commercial papers on these topics.

Even the San Francisco Chronical published a piece on Clayton Christensen (if you still do not have 'the innovator's solution, buy it now)

Also, BN net released a new paper the other day, which has some of these elements and (again) they seem to use the action-learning cycle (they called it "learn, focus, align and execute). They say on their website about this 'strategic learning' (though they never come clear on why they put the focus on learning?) paper, which is free of charge:

How can established organizations create the capacity for ongoing adaptation? This paper provides a practical leadership process for creating an adaptive enterprise by mobilizing a dynamic cycle of four steps: learn, focus, align and execute.

Visualization and management of (personal) social networks

Thu, 01 Jan 2004 13:40:47 GMT

While looking at Wallop's design team, I noticed that one of the designers in the MS Research group, Steven Drucker, has written some interesting social-network related papers from 1999 on the The Social Life of Small Graphical Chat Spaces (PDF), together with Marc A. Smith and Shelly D. Farnham.

This data [..] illustrates the usage patterns of graphical chat systems, and highlights the ways physical proxemics are translated into social interactions in online environments.

The other paper is Visualizations of Collaborative Information for End-Users which illustrates some of Microsoft's early work with social network analysis (?) that, judging from the images and stories about the Wallop project, served its purpose well.

While network interaction media are increasingly popular, there are a number of problems facing their users. The interaction context, or information about the kind of space, group and activity taking place, is often missing or ambiguous in the spaces created by these systems.

Steven's colleague, Shelly Farnham has done quite some work in the social network arena as well and her 2002 paper on "Visualizing Discourse Architectures with Automatically Generated Person-Centric Social Networks" was one of the basis of a report that I read from Essex University: The Generation Gap: Managing technology-mediated personal social networks (Chimera Working Paper, Smith / Rogers / Brady in a PDF document)

Our research has shown that an overwhelming need for all groups is better support for the management of social contact and received content arising out of the mix of online communications people engage in. Furthermore, this should be able to transform what is normally perceived as time-consuming and onerous tasks into ones that are viewed as being more enjoyable pottering kinds of activity.

Best KM blog and community of 2003

Wed, 31 Dec 2003 16:24:45 GMT

Looking back at 2003 here are my favourite KM blog and KM community:

	My blog of the year 2003: Denham Gray's "Knowledge-At-Work". Profound, challenging and diverse make it an attractive and meaningful blog in the Knowledge Management area. Together with George Siemens' , Sebastian Fiedler's, Jim McGee's and Lilia Efimova's one of the best around.
	My community of the year 2003: The Association of Knowledge Work's "AOK Star Series" had very interesting guests and facilitated good conversation with a growing group of members.

Opportunities for 2004:

Social Networking software, such as LinkedIn, Ryze and more recently the "international" ones such as econozco (Spanish) are very promising and hyped, but unless they standardize on a protocol they will fail due to their diversity.
Multi-lingual blogging; I will start to blog in Spanish as well in the beginning of 2004. Work with Ton Zijlstra to get more Dutch blogging going.

Limits to innovation? Steve Jobs at Apple.

Tue, 30 Dec 2003 10:12:04 GMT

But wait. What can possibly be wrong with that? After all, we worship innovation as an absolute corporate good, along with such things as teamwork and leadership. Even more than these virtues, it has come to be seen as synonymous with growth. Political economists have assigned tremendous significance to it since at least the mid-20th century. Innovation is at the heart of Joseph Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction, for example: the process of "industrial mutation" that keeps markets healthy and progressive. Management theorists embraced the notion in the intervening decades, and a stream of academic papers and books promoting innovation as the critical element of business success issued forth from the likes of Peters and Drucker, Foster and Christensen. Innovate or die, we were told. It's the core of excellence and the root of entrepreneurship. It's the attacker's advantage, the new imperative, the explosion, the dilemma and the solution. (You can play this game at home, too, with any of the 49,529 titles that come up for "innovation" on Amazon.) And yet it's hard to look at Apple without wondering if innovation is really all it's cracked up to be.

Very interesting article from the January 2004 edition of Fast Company about Steve Jobs and Innovation at Apple. My suggestion is to read the sidebar (at the end) first, then the whole article.

Sidebar: Getting Innovation Right

If Apple teaches us anything, it's that effective innovation is about more than building beautiful cool things. A few thoughts for innovating well in your own shop:

Not All Innovation Is Equal
Technical innovation will earn you lots of adoring fans (think Apple). Business-model innovation will earn you lots of money (think Dell).
Innovate for Cash, Not Cachet
If your cool new thing doesn't generate enough money to cover costs and make a profit, it isn't innovation. It's art.
Don't Hoard Your Goodies
Getting to market on time and at the right price is vital. If that means licensing your idea to an outside manufacturer or marketer, do it.
Innovation Doesn't Generate Growth. Management Does
If you covet awards for creativity, go to Hollywood. Managers get rewarded for results, which come from customers.
Attention Deficit Has No Place Here
Every innovation worth doing deserves your commitment. Don't leap from one new thing to another. If your creation doesn't appear important to you, it won't be important to anyone else.

Social networks deconstructed

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 13:09:11 GMT

Having been idle for the last two weeks, today I found that Jon Lebkowsky, one of the co-founding members of the Social Software Alliance (SSA) is writing two interesting pieces in his blog about social networks

Aesthetics of Social Networks elaborates on the idea that technology must be used to leverage the benefits of the social dimension (social networks) - not as a consequence of its mere existence - but from the design & build stage yet. His ideas for now (though still in early forming and rudimentary stage) are the usage of:

visual aspects (network maps) and
the concept of a social aesthetic (harmonious group-forming).

In another post from the 17th of December, Jon mentiones that Mitch Ratcliffe notes that social network sites aren't as effective when relationships are overstated

At the same time, what is interesting about the social networking technology is that it forces requests into a semi-public venue, making us think about them more explicitly. I'm not sure that does much in terms of making successful connections today, though it certainly makes the "pain" social networking software hopes to address more explicit.

Phase change explained in CP Square

Wed, 10 Dec 2003 20:25:56 GMT

In CPSquare there is a series of very interesting discussions and collaborative action about 'phase change in communities'. If you're not a member, this may well be one of the best reasons to join it, some great materials are coming out of the last gathering in Amsterdam during the C&T 2003 conference.

Someone pointed to the article The journey from WIIFM to WOMII (here) that touches upon the mental (innovation!) mode conveyed in the CP2 work group.

A key driver for learning in a CoP context is the development of the individual’s identify within the group

Created connectedness though social networks

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 18:16:04 GMT

Jon Husband in his blog points to an interesting article that appeared in the NY times yesterday on Decoding the New Cues in Online Society, about the power and improper or misues of social network tools - as a semi-interview with Danah Boyd (see her blog, too).

But friendship develops in social contexts, Ms. Boyd says; it doesn't just flow through the pipes of a network. "Just because you're friends with somebody doesn't mean their friends are similar in the type of context you are with your friends," she said. Unless the social networking sites adapt to how people need to use them, she said, the sites will not succeed

Giving large companies the capability for disruptive innovation, with communities

Wed, 26 Nov 2003 00:05:55 GMT

Clayton M. Christensen in his book "Harvard Business Review on Innovation" (2001) the author explains why it is usually not large companies with resources, capabilities and staff that initiate the disruptive innovations but rather support sustaining (incremental~) innovations.

Sustaining innovations are nearly always developed and introduced by established industry leaders. But the same companies never introduce - or cope well with - disruptive innovations. Why? Our resource-process framework holds the answer. Industry leaders are organized to develop and introduce sustaining technologies.

He goes on by telling:

Disruptive innovations occur so intermittently that no company has the routine process for handling them.

The issue is that smaller companies may lack the resources , "but that does not matter" because they have qualities that allow them to respond to emerging growth markets: their processes for R&D and market research and the fact that not all decisions need to be backed up by management, give them some unique capabilities.

Interestingly enough, larger companies can create for themselves these capabilities in various ways. Though he does not elaborate on this very much (he mentions the 'superteams'), communities of practice provide exactly the advantageous attributes that smaller companies have (the leadership and role of management, decision making by the collective). "Organizational boundaries are an impediment" Clayton says; communities of practice in their very nature cross these formal organizational boundaries and support the emergence and creation of new processes to support radical innovation in a unparalleled way.

Crossing boundaries of the formal organization, be more flexible
Allow creating of processes for radical innovation
Manage different ways of leadership and and the role of management

Fiona Lettice wrote a nice article with a more general scrope of disruptive innovation (not in relationship to communities) in the Knowledgeboard "Q&A on Disruptive Innovation: The Challenges for Managing Knowledge"

Social Networking in Business 2.0

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 13:09:09 GMT

Stowe Boyd talks in Darwin Magazine Online about a social networking article he read in the November edition of Business 2.0. Though there is not much news in his observations of the growing attention to the social network marketplace, he outlines three (in his opinion) critical barriers to its success:

Critical mass (more is better)
Buy in and pay back (WIIFM)
Here versus There (SN integrated in business technology, not separately sold)

Stowe's article once again tells me that the market for social networks is very hot - given the amount of attention it has been having in mainstream business magazines since the summer.

The Next Big Thing - or many Next Big Things?

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 13:26:07 GMT

In BusinessWeek (edition 17-November) there is an interesting column from Samuel Palmisano about "How the US can keep its innovation going". He says:

"Innovation is occuring within a global - not national ecosystem. It has multiple points of intersection amongst business, government and academia, and in industries ranging from biotechnology to transportation, energy, telecommunications, and information technology, and in the public sector. That is why there is not going to be a single Next Big Thing. There will be many"

Remarkable is his comment later in the column, where he asked a very valid question (but fails to answer it)

"How do we define and measure innovation in ways that capture the realities of a new century?"

- will understanding the role of global networks and innovation potential of these networks give insight..?

Skype

Tue, 30 Sep 2003 12:14:22 GMT

Skypememe: Record a call.

Phil Wolff wants Skype calls recording. I'm thinking of using Skype to do the same - I'm thinking of using it for interviews... Is there any quick solution before Skype developers come up with this functionality? [Mathemagenic]

So Lilia pointed to Phil Wolff's blog where the latter is gathering ideas for improvement for the now-popular p2p tool Skype.

Phil's way to drive innovation for Skype using the blog and thus gathering ideas from other users and people all around the world is great. It shows again that blogs are an enabler of ad-hoc communities (around Skyping, in this case) - and I would like to add my two cents on this as well. I am missing in Skype:

To record conversations (Phil mentioned this in his blog, and last week I spoke/skyped about the very same issue with Stuart Henshall) so I can keep them and include them in the blog entries I am writing.
To have the ability to leave a voicemail if a user is not answering, but is online (if the user is online, I suppose the p2p mechanism does not allow for messages to be dropped on the remote pc anyway)
Skype needs to be based on an open technology, if not it will limit itself in its development and market share, and end up like many of its predecessors. Take a look at the P2P file sharing market.
If a user on my list is in conversation (skype~) with someone else, I would like to be able to see that before I call; alternatively the opportunity to switch between calls.
The technology needs to be more stable - I am having regularly these ones:

Globalization, innovation and KM

Thu, 25 Sep 2003 21:46:49 GMT

Juan Jose Goñi Zabala from Ibermatica writes in Gestion del Conocimiento (KM) about innovation and knowledge management, from the perspective of diversity and globalization. It is a very high level article - he considers all the external influences and asks himself why it is necessary but leaves out the how it can be addressed in organizations.

Serious threats and diffuse opportunities appear to us, the horizon becomes less precise and the uncertainty increases, becomes the reason why it is essential to take again the strengths of the technological and organizational capacities to reconsider the way in which knowledge can be applied to innovate.

The full text is in Spanish but you can use Google to translate it into English.

Overall Growth Via Disruptive Innovation

Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:55:02 GMT

MIT Sloan Management Review:

Disruptive innovation in an industry always creates new markets and new net growth.

...

But the real story behind disruptive innovation is not one of destruction, but of its opposite: In every industry changed by disruption, the net effect has been total market growth.

...

Disruption creates net growth in the form of new markets and customers long before it directly encroaches on an established business. Examples from many industries, both recent and decades old, show how new entrants did not start out as competition to the established players; they were serving customers who could find nothing acceptable in the established market. Only as the newcomers moved upmarket did they create problems for the incumbent companies.

...

Disruption actually develops in three distinct phases. In the first, the innovation creates a new, noncompetitive market independent of the established business. In the second, the new market expands and slows the growth of the established business. In the third phase, the disruptive innovation, having improved greatly over time, significantly reduces the size of the old market.

...

Second, new customers must be found outside the established market. Disruptive innovations serve those who are currently nonconsuming but want to move upmarket and accomplish things they can't with available products or services. By definition, existing customers don't match that description.

Third, disruptive technology is never disruptive to the customers who buy it. Balloon angioplasty was viewed as a poor solution to heart disease by cardiac surgeons but as a breakthrough by cardiologists. Part of the key to successful disruptive innovation is finding customers who will more than welcome it, even if it delivers less than the standard in the established market.

Fourth, the new customer will make the disruptive path clear. In other words, the needs of the new customer should dictate the new business model. Products should be built according to the outcomes demanded by the new market, and the legacy costs and undervalued features associated with the established products should be abandoned.

Finally, a disruptive new business should start small and not be forced to grow quickly. Starting small enables managers to figure out what the new customers require and don't require, adjusting business models and product architectures early before huge resources are poured into the new business. It also eases pressures to make the disruption conform to the established market.

found through the [OSG Blog]

SAP introduces community of practice to accelerate products, and blog

Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:24:23 GMT

Shai Agassi from SAP announced to use communities of practice (though sometimes he just referred to as 'networks') to:

..facilitate the transfer of knowledge and information among all of the various technical groups who are working with SAP NetWeaver and SAP xApps. SAP customers, partners and newcomers to the SAP ecosystem will find detailed technical information on evaluating, implementing, using and building with these technologies..

Not only that, but SAP also seems to include blog technology in their suite of collaborative tools. In their internal blog Vis Naidu makes a strange statement:

In the endless pursuit of creating a more manageable Portal, segregating content by interest group or organizational unit could be the most ideal approach!

(read it in his entry 'Communities of Practice' - could they be the solution to better Portal content management ? if you can)

To be continued..

Turning your network position into a competitive (innovation) advantage

Thu, 28 Aug 2003 20:23:59 GMT

IDEO does not only understand that innovation comes from structure, practice and culture. It also realizes that the potential is in the position your have in the network, and how to use that to your benefit:

IDEO has recently recognized the full potential of its network position. By moving among so many small worlds, it has acquired more than just a lot of good objects and ideas. IDEO has also acquired links to a range of vendors, suppliers and manufacturers that are particularly innovative or easy to work with, to research scientists with deep knowledge of emerging materials, to product companies that are central to particular markets. IDEO has realized it is not just in the business of combining existing objects and ideas in novel ways, but also in the business of building communities around those recombinant innovations.

And they even go further than that:

Building on its ability to create new applications that combine emerging technologies with other objects and ideas, IDEO then uses its vast network of people and firms to build a community around those innovative new products and processes.

I came across this through George Siemens' Elearningspace but captured the concept in the full article only.

RIAA: Using SNA to make the network weaker

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 10:47:04 GMT

In his blog GimJim wrote an article on the 27th of June about Social Network Analysis and the power of the nodes with high inbetweenness - in a scale free network such as the peer-to-peer networks of Kazaa.

I believe the RIAA is applying social network analysis (SNA) in its current battle against P2P systems. This piece in Time dated 4 August 2003 is telling:

[The RIAA] has declined to say whom it is targeting or how many more subpoenas it plans to issue... "We're focused on the supply side," RIAA president Cary Sherman says. "If you can get at the 10% of people who are offering 90% of the files, that makes a significant dent."
However, that comment has revealed their game plan. The P2P network that is Kazaa presumably reflects the underlying scale-free nature of the Internet as a whole. Now consider this PhysicsWeb article from 20 July 2000:

Barabasi and co-workers studied the effect that removing random nodes from a scale-free network had on the ability of the remaining nodes to communicate with each other, and the degree to which the network became fragmented. They found that the network's performance remained constant, even after they had removed as many of 5% of the nodes, and that it was resistant to fragmentation. But when the team simulated an intelligent attack by targeting the highly connected nodes, it was a different story: the network became fragmented very quickly, and with 5% of the nodes missing, its ability to communicate was halved.
By breaking the Kazaa P2P network into isolated islands, they greatly reduce the utility of the network. College campuses with student networks are potentially superhubs, and have thus been targeted as well, though via college administrations. I therefore conclude that the RIAA strategy is solidly grounded in recent discoveries about scale-free networks.

More on scale free networks blogged here.

Innovation and Small Worlds: Bridging vs Merging

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 10:24:35 GMT

Innovation and Small Worlds: Bridging vs Merging

One last set of comments on Andrew Hargadons How Breakthroughs Happen: As I said before, I'm focused primarily on his idea that innovation happens when technology brokers bridge otherwise disconnected worlds. Hargadon wants firms to allow technology brokers to move within the small worlds" that already exist in most firms: There are many places within firms between project teams, between divisions, between plants where competition, politics, geography, and lack of communication have created small worlds by creating gaps in the flow of ideas and people across the organization."

So when innovation fails or isn't happening, does that mean these gaps are being mis-managed? I think so, and to understand that better I think it's important to look at the characteristics of the gaps themselves. [Corante: IdeaFlow]

Renee Hopkins is reading the "How Breakthrough happens.." book which was delivered to me by Amazon just earlier this week. As a small experiment, I will track his vision and comments on the actual book and context in which it was written - then read the book and respond to it (or blog about it).

Paradigm shift and disruptive innovation

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 23:08:34 GMT

Steve Hannaford on disruptive innovation, and the paradigm shift:

"However, having a new paradigm is not enough. "for a discontinuous innovation to be disruptive, successful exploitation is vital, which, results in significant transformation of the mainstream market and its value proposition." Disruption in the market is a big threat to established companies, who are often blindsided by the changes."

Bob McBroom on Borax' innovation forum

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 13:18:15 GMT

Threaded discussion software helps Borax generate new ideas globally and manage content - an article that appeared last month in the online Line56 business magazine about the work that we did on the innovation forum of Borax.

Bob McBroom says : "The international character of threaded discussions is a familiar benefit to those who use the Web for recreation, but McBroom adds another explicitly corporate benefit by way of an example. "Someone has an idea on how to use borates in, say, road building," he says. "We have a sales manager in France who has contacts at a road building institute. We can all get suggestions to him with different levels of expertise -- marketing, chemistry. We can give him advice. It's cross-functional."

Patti Anklam in the AOK Star-series dialogue on SNA

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:52:44 GMT

Charles Savage is interviewing Social Network Analysis expert Patti Anklam, in the AOK Star-series dialogue.

Charles: "Patti, as you are into networking analysis and social networking, I have a question: do people really like to reveal their networks?"

Patti: "I remember how John Galloway developed Netmap to do just this, but found that, in general, people preferred to keep their social capital to themselves, rather than reveal them. On the other hand, with the development of Social Software and Blogging, social networking seems to be taking on a life of its own."

[..]

Patti's interesting ! opening piece can be found at www.kwork.org/Stars/anklam/anklam.html

K-Log Productivity: Time to find and availability

Tue, 05 Aug 2003 21:31:13 GMT

Last week John Robb summarized the benefits of K-logs for the information worker; quoting a report from WC of CIOs "knowledge workers spend 35% of their productive time searching for information, while 40% of the corporate users report that they cannot find the information they need to do their jobs on their Intranets"

Three major reasons why companies can benefit from using K-logs:

they break down the silos
they simplify information finding
easier to capture meaningful information

The full article can be read here.

I would add myself to that that K-logs allow individuals or groups to put information in a certain context, turning information to knowledge (hence the K).

Valdis Krebs about technology to discover social relations

Tue, 05 Aug 2003 20:59:37 GMT

Valis Krebs talks in an interview in the Detroit News - technology section about social network tracking software and Visible Path (which scans email and web logs to discover social patterns of interaction and relationships):

But the big question is whether people will reject these technologies as too intrusive. "Anything that disrupts how we normally interact with each other will not work," said Valdis Krebs, who developed seminal software 15 years ago that maps interactions in an organization. "We often get the technology right, but we screw up the sociology."

Valdis goes even one step further questioning whether the technology will be adopted by the people in the network, or whether it will drive them to have a 'dual social personality'

Consultants like Krebs also wonder whether such software is truly able to detect nuances in people's relationships or prompt them to share valuable resources with someone they don't know well.

(the article also appeared in USA today)

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know: Work in the Information Age

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:01:10 GMT

"It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know: Work in the Information Age" is a paper by Bonnie Nardi, Steve Whittaker and Heinrich Schwarz (circa 2000).

We discuss our ethnographic research on personal social networks in the workplace, arguing that traditional institutional resources are being replaced by resources that workers mine from their own networks. Social networks are key sources of labor and information in a rapidly transforming economy characterized by less institutional stability and fewer reliable corporate resources. The personal social network is fast becoming the only sensible alternative to the traditional "org chart" for many everyday transactions in today's economy.

This is a great paper by very respectable researchers, revealing some of the reasons that there is such motivation to empower individual's use of their social network.

NB : It also has an extensive list of references at the bottom of the paper.

From: zephoria weblog entry here

Iranian authorities are keeping a close eye on blogs

Sun, 20 Jul 2003 12:26:41 GMT

Iranian authorities are keeping a close eye on the Internet amid growing online access and the popularity of weblogs.

One weblog under the name Hossein Derakhshan received 6,000 hits a day before the government blocked it, the Canadian-based author said in an e-mail to CNN.

The site contains musings with titles like "Five Things to Help Non-Iranians Know More About Iran," political observations and links to news stories.

"In absence of free papers, (weblogs) are performing an important role for spreading internal news that is very risky to publish in Iran," said Derakhshan.

He added that weblogs help young people in Iran socialize, date and keep in touch with exiled friends, help emerging writers publish their work, produce Persian content on search engines, introduce surfers to new technology -- and allow access to pornography.

Source: CNN

Meet the people behind the blogs: call to get together

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:17:44 GMT

A call for bloggers in The Netherlands! I have been thinking with Lilia Efimova and Ton Zijlstra about getting bloggers together during the holidays and get to meet the people behind the blogs...we're thinking about doing something fun and informal, perhaps a picknick, on a Saturday?

Who is in? Go to the comments field of this entry and let us know who you are, where you live and what period would best suit you. If you cannot attend, syndicate this entry to your blog or email your blogofriends.

Of course, it's going to a be a Dutch treat! And: you don't have to actually have a blog to come. It's going to be fun!

-Erik

PS I have made a category for this so you can track updates.

RSS works again

Sat, 12 Jul 2003 00:47:43 GMT

The RSS feed works again; it has been broken since April and after several support tickets and reinstalls of Radio Userland, it seems to be working again. Sorry for all of those that had subscribed but did not get updates..

Doug's vision on an investment a the new future

Mon, 07 Jul 2003 22:05:08 GMT

Doug Engelbart from the Bootstrap alliance in a one year old but very good presentation called "Improving Our Ability to Improve: A Call for Investment in a New Future" in which he lays out the foundation for his own, disruptive and innovative thinking.

His key point is how to build new capabilities using collective IQ. In doing so, he travels from his vision of infrastructure of capabilities to the compelling co-evolution and his well-known ABC of improvement infrastructure.

Great, great stuff.

All credits to Doug's bootstrap alliance.. until I have found the location where I got it back, you can download the slides here.

LinkedIn social network

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 08:33:05 GMT

Over the last week, I have been invited by Patti and Ton to join the LinkedIn community, which is in my opinion an experiment in social network analysis. When I joined there were mainly people in the US and Canada (I think I was the only one outside North America) but now some Europeans and people from Japan have chimes in. I dediced to take on the challenge.

Some things that LinkedIn does not support at all (asked around, other people could not find it either) is that you cannot visualize your network and you can only see your personal network. Especially when in the invitation email they set the expectation as it says:

Ton Zijlstra has invited you to connect and share LinkedIn networks.

So much for SNA.

Removing obstacles to radical innovation presentation is online

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 13:48:22 GMT

The slides from the Virtual Communities 2003 presentation "removing obstacles to radical innovation" are up.

The full presentation can be downloaded in PPS format here - for the other presentations of the same conference (in PDF) follow this link.

Miranda Mowbray on the 'grid' for virtual communities

Tue, 17 Jun 2003 09:17:35 GMT

Miranda Mowbray (HP) said that the "grid" means that its a type of parallel and distrubted system that enables sharing, selection and aggregation of resources distributed across multiple administrative domains.. (Rajikuma Buyya).

It is not (just) peer-to-peer, distributed or clustered computing, she says. To give examples she talks about the Oxford University cancer drug distributed computing (achieving over 190,000 CPU power years); other stories are grid storage for mammograms in the US and the UK.

In the virtual communities sense some examples are crisis management team, the access grid teleconferencing system, IBM's Butterfly net (for multiplayer online video games) and others. The other way around the Grid requires communities to develop its R&D but also support and training.

About the future of the grid she predicts:

inerter company collaborative use
wide public non commercial use (by virtual communities for example)

And even much later:

general commercial trading of resources, for example receiving financial compensation for the use of resources that anyone can buy and sell.

The consequences could mean the commoditization of standard resources (storage space, processing power) and current vendors lose advantages of brand, bundling, lock-in, distibution and marketing. Consider also arbitrage opportunities for communities and community applications which will bloom.

Ali Hosseini on personal empowerment in online communities

Tue, 17 Jun 2003 08:46:24 GMT

Ali Hosseini in his presentation asks

How can use online communitication tools to create a social circuit between those who need and those who need to know..

In addressing those issues, he sets out what online communities are and how they can be categorized (informational, social, commerical etc) and also what their impact on personal publishing, opinionating and political empowerment means.

Pete Bradshaw on learning communities

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 15:21:18 GMT

Pete Bradshaw and Stephen Powell on "online communities for school leaders"

The community is based around learning (formal, informal and diguised learning). One of the interesting initiatives that they have started is learning communities between young students who have problems going to school because of social reasons (bullied, young maternity etc.). By connecting them through a community they can find trust in their peers and be offered a learning environment that is safe in their perspective.

My comment to this is that the learning experience may actually not come from the learning in academic sense, but merely by having students that passed the (school-)learning, back into the community to assist and facilitate. They understand the sensitive context and problems, and learning may arise from peer-to-peer trust building and helping.

Alexander Hagmeister on SAP and their missed opportunity

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:17:54 GMT

Alexander Hagmeister, from SAP in Germany, has given an impression of "community reward programs" in the marketing context. In their communities, which involved customers and sales leads, they use the following methods to engage participant:

Website with webcast
Newsletter with information
Discussion forums with SAP experts from all parts of the organization (with email notification)

Who is the SAP community?

decision makers (c-level)
global and growing
topics (CRM, technology, busin. intelligence, ent. portals, ERP)

The membership rewards program is design for commitment and incentive - with points rewarded for questions, login, filling out profile etc and ratings by other users (quality rather than quantity). At a certain level of points (1000) people can redeem their points voucher to buy goodies from SAP.

The social improvement due to the communities (on the external side) comes forward in a bi-annual survey in which 70% is content with the initiative.The SAP employees that participate are not rewarded other than the customers - and the justification of their time and effort is not part of their job. Volunteers they are.

According to Alexander, thehe SAP dedication to the community in resources, is 10 FTE. In the Q&A I asked him what the future of this community model is going to be; whether he had been considering releasing the community to the non-SAP users (giving them more ownership) perhaps turning it into an open-source-ish self-regulating community. He told me he did not know.

I think there is a great opportunity for them to do this, because they could turn a cost-center (10 FTE) into a profit-center by having the community do the market research, account work and co-development for niche markets!

Denise Schilling on HP and the M&A with Compaq

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 11:02:18 GMT

Denise Schilling (HP) had an interesting discussion about the pre- and post-merger communities of HP/Compaq.

She talked about merger and acquisition in general, from a business perspective, and the background of the HP / Compaq merger process. According to her, the expected cost saving was approximately 2.5 billion US$- at a combined mutual sale power of 78 billion.

She showed the process of how the communities facilitated the merger between the two companies, where she pointed out that some of the key areas for integration were procurment, supply chain, closure of administrative facilities and IT integration. Also organizationl restructuring was one of the attenion key areas of the merger.

George afterwards said that he had noticed that in the pre- and post-merger situation the focus of the communities of each of the companies has been totally different. After the merger it seems that much of the old Compaq-communities focus has vanished. I think the differences had to do with the cultures of the two companies, but I am not sure how in the next few years these communities develop to metacommunities between the two.

Tim Butler of Sitescape on the collaborative foundation

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 10:34:21 GMT

Tim Butler talks about how collaboration brings business environments for ERP, Portal, CM and CRM together (unites them). In his presentation he calls this the collaborative foundation. According to him, the role of collaboration has shifted these isolated components from up to two, three years ago to a more cohesive environment. As a case for this he talks about "creating a cop to facilitate BPI" about their customer Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto is a large and very global environment where each of the PG's there are different environment variables when it comes to tools, applications etc. One of their product groups, Energy, started more than a year ago with a community of practice initiative.

Now one year later you could say that the needs for the communities of practice have been very common inside Rio tinto and also throughout the different industries: email overflow, finding information, sharing new items..

One particular issues has been the problems of the different way of working with email and shared folders. Both of these methods have specific advantages, but for collaboration it has heavy disadvantages. Now with the communities, people cannot only share in a global platform but also put things in context around a document or discussion. The technology then also allows features such as unseen entries, tracking, version control.

To illustrate the communities concept in their vision, he shows the Shell EP "what do others know.." - which I think is still a quite powerful diagram to illustrate the concept. There was a little twist to it however, because the difference between the "what is already known" (the knowledge base idea) and "what do others know" (the community idea) was not conveyed in the style Shell designed the template.

Stepping out of the community and looking into KB he says : Advantages of a Knowledge base include: build a corporate asset, breaks down barriers, mitigates geographical distances, etc. Then he moves over to the essential ingredients for KM: people, process, technology.

Joanne Self on Rolls-Royce communities

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 10:15:35 GMT

Joanne Self, from Rolls-Royce corporation:

Communities of Practice exist on a global scale in Rolls-Royce (RR);

they support integration between indiv. members of the RR family.
support working effectively ona global basis (share best practices)

Joanne has an interesting story from beginning to end on the communities in the last two years. How did they get started? They started off with 10 small communities in a pilot and then expanded to 40 after putting in place some improvements; guidelines were produced to support this effort. After that, some benefits were identified (time reduction, less email conversation, improved information sharing).

Their future expectation is to grow both in size and scale and have more and better participation in the community networks. When she was asked one question asked about resources she responded that in Rolls-Royce they use approximately 2 hours per week for a community on facilitation.

Dave Snowden

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 08:53:48 GMT

Dave Snowden from IBM about "managing in the shadow" Dave does not use slides.

He says that "Best practice comes from the fact that in management science, for he last 100 years we have believed that knowledge is ordered (since Taylor). This is not true - it confuses properties with qualities." Then he goes really fast with some interesting and compelling observations. He continues by saying that "Ordered systems are mechanical (things happen time and time again, like a pendulum). In unordered we can look at retrospective coherence (looking back it's fine, but does not tell about looking forward in the future).". According to him then things happen by accident, not by design.

Structured (process) versus unstructured:

The analogy of the creation of a crystal like a snowflake: the shape and design of the snowflak asre driven by factors such as temperate and cohesion. Once the snowflake has been formed out of chrystals, any scienticst can deduce the origin, structure and coherence; however no-one could have predicted the shape and properties of the snowflake upfront.

Another example about structured versus unstructured knowledge through patter recognition and best practice is about the US Marines in Virginia: the marines organized and excursion to New York, to Wall Street and played with real brokers in a stock simulation program. The marines lost all the games played (as expected). Then they turned it around and the dealers came to the Marine's base to play with their (war-game) simulation tools. To Marines this time lost again which was totally unexepcted. Why did this happen? The secret is in the process and control of structure: the dealers when they played in the base in VA worked with pattern recognition: they destabilized the patters they did not want and controlled the ones they wanted. The marines on the other hand handled out of best practice.

About tools: everything in community of practice tools, blogs, etc. is written down is only partially the knowledge that exists. Another truth is that kKnowledge can only volunteerd - i.e. you cannot know when someone has given up al knowledge, but you can see when someone has someone complied with all the process.

Dave has struggled to fight the problem of addiction to email inside IBM's management, where executives are requested to respond to up to 250 emails per day. So they went to Betty Ford clinic to learn how to stop additction through detoxification then applied it to the email addiction in IBM. So, people would work less in email and more in collaborative tools - no more cc:ing on the emails and no more attachments to the email..

About Etienne Wengers book ("cultivating communities of practice") he says that his work is based on the experience of as many as 30 or 40 companies, and then made into a structural. This will not work - you take cultivated practices into best practice! You need to organize KM like you do a party for a 12-year old. Set your boundaries on what they can do and provide them tools. If they cross the boundary, you either intervene or you change the tools that enhave the group activity.

Context is everything; do you trust firemen the same way as business people?

Communities have a social behaviour: typing things into a website, for example as part of the community tools, is a typical UK-US thing and does not work in central or southern europe or asia.

Scaling of networks: a group of 15 people is maximum for sufficient level of trust to exchange knowledge (but you can be member of multiple such groups). Then a group of 150 people is the maximum for having social acquitanship with. Therefore you need to stimulate informally the 15-group and reduce the formal communities of 150 as much as you can. Do not try to scale the latter, it will not work!

Dave does not like to shift gears down and speeds up in his talk: "People are receptive to new. He discusses the Hawthorne effect and how good community ideas after a year fade away and people do not realize why this is happening - yellow pages CV updates will not work, because people are not motivated after a while to update and work on this."

He goes on about narrative storytelling.

Something that we certainly have to pay more attention to is that the stories of failure are more effective because they spread easier (context is set better) - opposed to success stories.

Greg Searle on communities, fish and the US Army

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 08:12:56 GMT

Greg Searle is talking about communities of practice - using in his introduction the analogy to the guild networks in the Middle Ages as a knowlegde and innovation network.

Now, 500 years later, Greg elaborates on his first experience with global communities of practice initiated by the World Bank, on fishing (addressing intranational problems, such as fish parasites that can enter the food chain and caus e major health problems) - the program still exists and is called "One Fish".

About the US-Army community of practice, which staryed as a front-porch converation in Hawai and addresses the sharing of best-practices across stovepiptes in the Army. The conversation grew into a book, the book (taking the guidon) - purchased by many arrmy commanders around the world - into a community of practice (companycommand.com) and the started the revolution of Knowledge Management strategy in the US Army.

His best practices that came out of this community building exercise are:

being pragmatic and magnetic
invite participation
get rhythm (for instance, using teamblog, email newsletters, regular guest speakers and chat)
know your audience (interests, lexicon)
delegate thoughtfully (good leadership, look for emotianal intelligence, look for alignment between individual belief and community belief; trust first and doubt later; enable mentorship)
"arm the peasants" - put power in the hand of the coordinators and participants (empower, delegate, control)
facilitate lurking ; it is a term for cognitive apprenticeship for legitimate peripheral participation); give lurkers FAQ, updates of activity, the chance to participate in conversation, give personalization and give community builders tools to reach the lurkers in digest

Virtual Communities 2003 starts Monday

Sun, 15 Jun 2003 20:50:14 GMT

Tomorrow the Virtual Communities 2003 is starting; amongst George Por and me there are interesting speakers such as IBM's Dave Snowden about self-organizing power (he'll repeat the talk in Gurteen's meeting on Wednesday) - Greg Searle from Tomoye about six steps to create successful communities online - HP's Denise Schilling about CoP's in a post-merger environment and many others.

I'll try to see if I can blog some of the experience and ambiance here and/or in the ECCOP blog.

(London seen from the venue on Monday)

Blogs and visual innovation.

Sat, 14 Jun 2003 16:37:34 GMT

Today I have been reading an article written by Eileen Clegg about visual learning - building knowledge, innovation and collaboration. As part of the work I am doing to drive radical innovation with communities, I think that these ideas are very powerful in the creativity (or ideation) phase. She says that:

Images can be used to elicit creative ideas from a group by tapping into the source of innovation, ideas that tend to be more holistic than linear, more intuitive than rational. Creativity is enhanced when people interact with images. Seeing is personal and draws on unconscious elements. When looking at the same image, everyone has a somewhat different interpretation of what they are seeing, based on past experiences

Though her part about visual collaboration and storytelling is equally compelling, I see a huge potential in the ideation stage when an visual application is used in combination with blogs. Blogs are an excellent tool to use within a community to drive radical innovation - and if visual images of blogs can be used to enhance creativity, there's an interesting potential.

Imagine corporate use of the feedster image engine - just showing images of blogs recently created. Now if this is mixed with the taxonomy / categorization of Google images that'd be something.

Driving innovation with communities of practice

Thu, 12 Jun 2003 23:49:57 GMT

I have started to prepare for the virtual communities 2003 meeting in London next week. Some of the work we will talk about is communities of practice and innovation - and here is how I perceive that it all comes together;

Driving innovation with communities of practice - finding the right balance.

Note - the image is actually 3-D (there is a guidance text on the bottom - left more about this). If you click on it, it'll open a new window with a full-size picture (195 kB)

Differences between creativity and innovation

Thu, 12 Jun 2003 23:42:53 GMT

More On Differences Between Creativity & Innovation

Renee ... thanks for continuing this conversation. I agree ... creativity is more than idea fluency and innovation is more than project management. While some people dismiss this as "semantics," I think it's important to understand the terms and the relationship between them ... at least for those of us who are trying to advance the discipline of innovation. As we developed, reworked and reworked again the InnovationDNA over the years, we realized that creativity is a piece of innovation (using a life/human body metaphor, I think of it as the brain of innovation), critical, but only one of several critical elements -- the others being:

Challenge (what we're trying to change or accomplish -- the "pull"),
Customer Focus (we have to be creating value for someone -- the "push"),
Creativity (generating and sharing ideas is everyone's job -- "the brain")
Communication (the flow of information and ideas is the "lifeblood"),
Collaboration (innovation is only done by people working together -- the "heart"),
Completion (implementing the new ideas -- the "muscle"),
Contemplation (learning and sharing lessons leads to ever higher competency -- the "ladder"),
Culture (the playing field of innovation) includes:
- Leadership (sees the possibilities and positions the team for action -- the role model)
- People (diverse groups of radically empowered people innovate -- the source of innovation)
- Basic Values (trust and respect define and distinguish an innovation organization -- the backbone)
- Innovation Values (certain values stoke the fires that make the impossible possible -- the spark)
- Context (innovation is shaped by interactions with the world)

A recent Harvard alert stated that 70% of all business initiatives fail. That is a horrifying thought that plays out in human terms as well as bottom line terms -- lost jobs, stress, untapped or misused skills and talents, and lost opportunities to improve our organizations and the world.

I think a huge part of this high level of failure is not understanding the underlying principles of all change initiatives. Our culture is so focused on doing that we jump into projects and initiatives without understanding the ramifications of our actions. We look for "best practices" that we can replicate rather than understanding the principles and then thinking about how we can forward the principles within the unique environment of each organization. Then, six months later when we don't have the results we wanted, we brush our hands together and say, "Well, we tried innovation (or quality, or continuous improvement, or ...) and that didn't work." If we understood the principles, we would know that the problem wasn't the principle, it was the implementation and we could keep moving forward in our own way toward the ideal of the principle.

Clay Christensen talked in the same vein recently in a Harvard teleconference about the importance of sound theories. It's easy for writers in this area to study a few companies and synthesize a few practices into a "best practice" or theory. One best practice does not make a theory or a principle.

And I'm sure I've gone on too long about this. It's a bit of a hot button!

[Corante: IdeaFlow]

Blogshares, down?

Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:01:17 GMT

Blogshares.com - the promising and creative initiative seems to be out of the air. What did William Robb do?

Last news item I saw from them was only five days ago:

Network problems

We're experiencing some network problems which are being looked at by our hosting provider. It's the reason for the exceptional slowness over the past day and some errors as pages fail to load.

Thank you for your patience whilst the problem is being looked at.

Read full item. Discuss.

Posted 04:11 06 Jun 2003

Scalability of community as networks

Thu, 12 Jun 2003 19:53:16 GMT

Clay Shirky talks about the scalability - or not - of communities as networks of relationships between its members. I came across this article because Sam Ruby had been blogging the same as I did about scale-free networks (Scientific American, May 2003) as me. He blogged it two days earlier because I did not get the magazine until I flew back from San Francisco to Amsterdam.

So, I am using feedster to see how many others have written about the same article in the magazine:

Jeff from the Nichols group
Friedrich in blowhard blog
Chris Gulker in this blog

Connected Innovation

Thu, 12 Jun 2003 18:58:55 GMT

In a paper produced by Richard Gabriel and Ron Goldman (CGEY) about the role of how communities can be part of the innovation process in the organization, they use the open-source software model to analyze the potential benefits for corporate application:

"We believe this strategy (the open source) is indicative of a more complex view of open source, in which individuals or companies join collaborative communities in order to mutually benefit from one another’s expertise. We call this strategy “Innovation Happens Elsewhere” (IHE)."

They marked this as part of a larger discussion called 'demistyfing innovation'. About a conglomerate of different communities (or sub-communities) they turn to the basics of communities and say:

"Each community will flourish or wither depending on how well its interests are met by the community resources." and later "New ones will spring up, grow, and possibly become dormant or die. As long as there are always some thriving communities, the larger open source project can be considered alive and well. Note that death of a community does not equal failure. Consider a community that arose to develop a new standard."

In the second part of the document, they give three points to get to an organization that would emabrace the IHE (Innovation Happened Elsewhere) model:

Understand the true proprietary value and technology of the company
Be confident (and make sure) you can be swifter than the competition
Create a company culture that embraces innovation, wherever they occur

"Next, an outside company using gifts from the IHE company recognizes that these tools, technology, and prototypes can be combined with its own company’s technology to produce products at lower cost, less risk, and of great value to its customer base. Again, this is done for selfish reasons, but such decisions help expand the customer base for the IHE company. Sometimes a company or organization will think of an application or variation of the gift that will open the IHE company up to entirely unexpected markets. This is one of the most important return gifts the IHE strategy can provide. "

There is a more clear statement in another paper on why they'd assume this is the case for some organizations:

"When a given firm’s design rules become known and accepted by a number of firms, industry standards emerge. At this point, the vertically integrated firm no longer maintains extensive control over the product architecture. In an effort to compete on the bases of reliability, customization, and price, incumbents outsource to specialty firms that focus solely on the production of a particular module. This precipitates a shift in firm structure away from vertical integration toward a more horizontal model. The end result is an industry that resembles a networked cluster of specialized firms. "

and even:

Organizations have been trying to streamline and improve their development processes for decades. Portfolio analysis, stage-gate processes, options pricing models, and numerous other tools and techniques have decreased time to market and increased average returns on investments in nearly every industry. These gains are certainly attractive, and firms that are not already trying such approaches should do so. Still, these techniques primarily focus on internal, linear processes. There is a whole new horizon for what kinds of gains are possible when connectivity is leveraged. The age-old idea of letting a thousand (innovation) flowers bloom becomes a much more tenable proposition if the gardeners are working together.

The Conference Board of Canada reports that “firms that collaborate are . . . significantly more likely to introduce breakthrough (world-first) innovations.” Collaborations include inter-firm but also working relationships with universities and government labs. This represents the power of multiple members of an economic “web” of relationships working together. Firms can take advantage of connectivity to enhance innovation development in two new ways: dealing with disruptive innovations by managing networks of modules, and leveraging the power of many through distributed development.

Their papers support the earlier submitted model for innovation architecture in this weblog. The full articles can be downloaded at their center of business innovation

(ECCOP) Measures to help CPs foster radical innovation

Mon, 09 Jun 2003 17:28:41 GMT

[extract from Value Creation with Communities of Practice]

Measures to help CPs foster radical innovation

Dear friends and colleagues,

What if communities of practice could contribute not only to incremental but radical innovation? How can they be organized and supported for achieving that? If you were your company’s Director of Communities, what would be the 2 or 3 most important measures or initiatives that you would introduce to enable them?

Why are these questions important? Because radical innovation can lead to 100x or 1000x more value to business and society than what incremental innovation networks can achieve.

So, what is “radical innovation,” anyway? It is non-linear and discontinuous innovation in products, services or processes which alter some social, technical or business practice. If you want to find out more about its relationship with “communities of practice”, you may want to read our whitepaper (a .pdf file).

Your answer to the questions at the top is your entry to a free and exciting community learning experience. As some of you know, I’ve been working with Erik van Bekkum in the European Collaborative for Communities of Practice on the link between radical innovation and communities..

See the whole thread about this exciting learning expedition we have started - and comment there or email me to contribute.

Philips Semiconductor community case

Sat, 31 May 2003 23:26:27 GMT

I have posted the cleared slides about the Philips Semiconductor community, that was presented during CP Week together with Suzanne Verdonschot, online.

Though the discussion continues on the members' platform of CP Square, one of the most remarkable discussion parts was about the courage that it took Philips to start off with communities using high profile selected 'hot-shots' within the organization. If the exercise would succeed, they would surely understand by practice the value of collaboration and communities - which would be of great value in the next couple of years when some of them become general managers (GM's) or managing directors (MD's) in the organization. On the other side however, failing to create value would mean the that the future leaders of the organization may be resistent to supporting / sponsoring these initiatives.

Another interesting fact about these people is that they now form the bottom line in their business unit, but will eventually (in some years) become leaders. So the approach taken here is bottom-up right now (using support from their executive managers) but will be reversed to top-down as well if the communities of practice for the course extend over the course of years. New people with similar aspirations and backgrounds will flow in the course and the (hopefully sustained) community, which will then have increased leadership and a pyramid model with respect to the formal organization. That in itself is worth a whole discussion!

Noteworthy here is the role of the coordinating team to keep on creating incentive within the group by not allowing participants (but also coordinators) to tell 'how' ("you have to do the following..") but rather ask why. In the light of the participants' background this was not an easy task, but it eliminated the risk of turning into a dead end with the discussions. And by doing so, they started to discover that they had much more in common (as far as problems, leadership issues etc.) were concerned than was apparent at the start of the community. This helped to establish trust (together with the phonecalls) and invited them to come back and participate (incentive).

Social networking and the future of KM

Sat, 31 May 2003 17:19:22 GMT

SOCIAL NETWORKING, SOCIAL SOFTWARE AND THE FUTURE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT.

[Dave Pollard: Business Innovation]

Scale free networks

Fri, 30 May 2003 04:37:14 GMT

Liked the article of John Udell last year about scale-free networks? Want to know why on average, every page on the WWW is only 17 clicks away from any other one (compare: Six Degrees of freedom from Milgram).

In the May edition of Scientific American (p60-p68) Albert-László Barabási and Eric Bonabeau have an interesting article on that very same topic. It's copyrighted and cannot be posted here, but the public summary of the article comes on their website:

Networks are everywhere. The brain is a network of nerve cells connected by axons, and cells themselves are networks of molecules connected by biochemical reactions. Societies, too, are networks of people linked by friendships, familial relationships and professional ties. On a larger scale, food webs and ecosystems can be represented as networks of species. And networks pervade technology: the Internet, power grids and transportation systems are but a few examples. Even the language we are using to convey these thoughts to you is a network, made up of words connected by syntactic relationships.

Yet despite the importance and pervasiveness of networks, scientists have had little understanding of their structure and properties. How do the interactions of several malfunctioning nodes in a complex genetic network result in cancer? How does diffusion occur so rapidly in certain social and communications systems, leading to epidemics of diseases and computer viruses? How do some networks continue to function even after the vast majority of their nodes have failed?...

[The Internet as a scale-free network visualization; image by KC Claffy]

The mathematical background of the publication comes apparently from a whitepaper that they wrote last year for the University of Notre Dame - and which is publicly available in PDF here. If you're not into the maths of networks, skip this one - if you are, it'll help you replicate the examples mentioned in Scientific American about Cellular Metabolism (2001), the Internet (1999-), protein networks and sexual relationships.

The various articles show that in a scale free network, such as social networks and the Internet, the distribution of nodes linkage follows the power law in which most nodes have just a few connections and some nodes have a great number of those.

Consider that Google became a much more powerful node in the search-engine network than AltaVista, but any of the competitors with strong linkage (through innovative features) can take over Google's #1 ranking anytime.

Also see: Albert-László Barabási's website http://www.nd.edu/~alb/

[Blogged from 35,000 feet]

The state of the Community of Practice, 2003

Fri, 23 May 2003 22:00:51 GMT

The state of the Community of Practice 2003

One of the most valuable and open discussions leaving us with most to discuss and think about. Etienne and Bill had prepared a single slide about the state of the practice as it is now, and sparked more opportunities for debate than available. (photo: Noel Dickover)

Communities of practice as a social movement

Fri, 23 May 2003 21:42:17 GMT

Why communities of practice have the potential to be a social movement that can make a lasting change:

Communities of Practice span business, social, knowledge and techology
Communities of Practice creates and re-creates an area of social responsibility, ownership and belonging
Communities of Practice as a social movement is about trust, not about friendship, equality or liberation

The first two points were quite obvious to me but I came to realize that the third point is actually what will be the differentiation between communities and long-gone other social movements (inspired by CP Week)

Trust relationship between the community and formal organization

Thu, 22 May 2003 17:18:17 GMT

Trust, says Etienne Wenger, does not only exist between members of the community but also between the community and the (formal) organization. If the trust relationship is profound and well-established, you can use that relationship to mutually beneft.

He mentioned the example of the Daimler-Chrysler tech clubs, where the organization had to shave off 15% of the budget throughout the business units. In seeing how this substantial reduction could be reached, the communities had an important role in consulting the formal organization (BU's) where and how to make this happen.

In this example it becomes apparent where communities have become part of the organization as a body, that lives in the ecosystem of formal institutions, and has it's own power and value contribution. Trust is essential in this relationship.

Leadership in communities

Thu, 22 May 2003 17:12:16 GMT

Good discussion inCP Week about leadership and communities of practice:

Greag Searle said "recognizing and establishing (some sort of-) roles in the community will help speed up the evolution of the community, because you establish some framework. The downside is that you can get locked into roles because roles have been established and not spontaneously emerged from the participants"

Margaret Rudolf on the roles of the community and leadership: "there is a creative tension between the assigned roles (funded roles, formalized) and the people that take upon leadership themselves - at any level (organic). This tension is almost inevitable and something that should be observed by the community support team - ask yourself how much you formalize roles and how much you recognize roles at any stage of the community lifecycle."

Academic communities blog

Thu, 22 May 2003 05:20:53 GMT

Debby Kilburn has been blogging about CP Week as well. We have decided to continue our discussions about communities in the educational world as a blogging venture to find commonalities, stories, thoughts and ideas. We're doing this together with Lisa Petrides from the ISKME institute (also from KM Cluster) - who does not have a blog at this time yet.

The objective is to create a blog which would support free forming ideas to emerge by sharing insights from different backgrounds and inclinations, creating value by weaving seemingly disparate differences together from cases and stories and finding new ways to leverage succcess for academic communities.

Leadership in communities (Etienne)

Thu, 22 May 2003 04:46:21 GMT

Etienne Wenger in the closing notes for todays event:

"Leadership in a community is not about a single person, but merely an ecosystem of leadership on different levels by different people"

Communities of practice in the e-government model

Wed, 21 May 2003 20:48:57 GMT

Thanks to Margaret Rudolf from the Treasury of Canada for starting this open discussion -

In an open group session at CP Week we have been talking about organization readiness within the e-government and the people side of the communities that form part of that. The discussion fell out in two conversations: the first one was about the federated government which has a lot in common with corporate organizations dealing with metanational issues. Though not leading to anything conclusive, the BP model for dual citizenship ignited further thinking in this area (which will be continued as an exploration in CP Square).

The other issue came along when talking about control and power in the organization. I reflected to her that whereas in corporate organizations moving to the network-enabled structure the leadership is quite constant, this may not be the case in the (political) government organization. The consideration: when moving to a network-enabled or dynamic organization, the role of the middle management is shifting from gatekeepers to a leadership role that needs to guide the communities and act as a beacon for information and network structure and flows. This role, as identified in many communities that already exist, is very important. In the case of the government however exactly these positions are the ones that are most sensitive to political change (elections!) - which could potentially mean that the leaders of the community are actually being put in a very vunerable or maybe even instable situation. The community members or the bottom line of the community, is not so much sensitive to this change. That could mean that they actually have more control over the leadership functions than in the corporate situation, because the networked leader will be emerged in a community with a legacy which would be difficult to influence or even change.

That possibility leads to the thought that the shift to the dynamic organization is actually going to shift power to the bottom line and community members, less affected by political change.An interesting thought that I'd love to further explore with the group.

Hyperdocument from Doug Engelbart

Wed, 21 May 2003 20:32:51 GMT

Yesterday I had a compelling follow up discussion with Doug Engelbart - from the Bootstrap alliance - about his hyperdocument theory and the fact that pieces information can become networks itself. The concept is very old (1950's)and has been discussed by others as well, but understanding the potential is a true eye-opener. Once the slides have been emailed around they can be posted here in the blog.

Interesting of couse is the opportunity to have information turn into contextual knowledge by seeing how information was created and in which ecosystem of considerations and other information snippets. For instance, you'd not be able to see what someone opinionates with information in a conflict situation, but also understand what construed this information that lead to the conflict. There are many more discussion items that we did not have time to, but he invited me to continue talking next week Friday in his office.

Some issues to address - what can the hyperdocument (i-file) model contribute to the changing way of driving disruptive or even radical innovation?

Blogs and power in network analysis

Mon, 19 May 2003 06:04:32 GMT

CP Week has informally started! Today I have spent some time off the beaten track with some of the participants in Marin county and later during a dim-sum lunch, but we could not resist talking about communities, networks and our visions and practices. One of the things that I brought up (through a drawing on the back of a napkin, copied below) talking to Chris Blackmore is my that social network relationships work in blogs also have an imporant meaning, like it does for communities and networks.

Blogs - perceived as tools for driving individual capabilities - also form networks of people with similar thoughts. Be it through subscription or RSS, bloggers read other people's blogs when they consider it relevant or interesting. This is how the network is created, comparable to voluntary membership in communities.

My diagram shows the blog as the center of the network. The circle represents the clique of people that I am subscribed to - which are people that I relate to because of my work or interest. I form with them a community, but only in my perception (they themselves may have a different vision of the network).

The people that I relate to, themselves relate to others in a similar way. I use these links to understand the way the people that I directly relate to, think. These second tier relationships however may have little or nothing to do with my personal interest, otherwise they would be first tier relationships. They help me to innovate my thoughts nevertheless, because they are out of the box I am thinking in with my personal first-tier network.

The more tiers I reach and understand in the network (this is plain SNA) the lower the energy gets related to my interests or practice. This is fine, because the number of actors in the network at this level has also increased tremendously.

We did not get anywhere with the discussion - but we concluded that social network analysis related to these thoughts, but the difference is that the power in the network is only perceived and based on an individual as the center of the network.. results cannot be applied to anyone else.

Showing weakness in communities - Philips case

Sun, 18 May 2003 17:21:01 GMT

Tuesday morning I am presenting the case of Philips Semiconductors business-community of practice. I have worked on this with Suzanne Verdonschot who has been involved in the project since November - and we will create a fishbowl case for the CP Week attendees. The case has some interesting points, of which the issue of 'getting participants to get over the issue of showing weakness in communities' is the most compelling. Creating some thoughts on that in the blog would be interesting especially to compare them with the fishbowl findings, afterwards.

Social Network Analysis by Patti - KM Magazine

Wed, 14 May 2003 23:48:11 GMT

Social Network Analysis Article Has Been Published!. My working paper, "Social Network Analysis for Knowledge Management", has been published by Knowledge Management Maqazine. They have retitled it KM and the Social Network and posted it online. You do not need to be a subscriber to view it. [Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness]

Patti has done a good job with this article (a pity she cannot make it to Santa Cruz next week), which can be used both to introduce social network analysis (SNA) as a method in the KM arena, but also how to use it as an intervention in business processes. Between the lines and in the paragraph there is more information on how SNA fits in the ecosystem of tools that are available - yet

"Social-network analysis is a tool that can be used, with discretion and sensitivity, on an ongoing basis in the context of continuous organisational improvement."

Blogging value creation at CP Week

Tue, 13 May 2003 23:59:51 GMT

Next week we'll be blogging live from CP Week, in Santa Cruz. John Smith and Etienne Wenger have published the most recent program for the 4-day event online on the CP Square website. On Tuesday I am presenting a community of practice case about Philips Semiconductors - and the next day with Noel Dickover about the coordinator PG. Other highlights include:

Connecting technologies and people—Doug Engelbart
Novell case on launching a virtual community knowledge initiative (Lauren Klein)

And of course the value creation of all participants, present. Beverly Trayner might also blog parts of the event - more updates soon to follow.

If have time next week (because you wanted to attend this week the elearning forum at Microsoft's premises anyway!) and you wish to attent this event, contact Amy Keill or use the registration page

Abstraction of ideas in innovation communities to facilitate larger social networks

Tue, 06 May 2003 22:40:18 GMT

Is innovation almost always a recombination of existing ideas, fed by different insights and driven by opposition of the existing (or past) ideas and concepts?

This central question has come up in the discussion and conceptualization I was having about innovation communities of practice I am gearing up; one of the central issues was whether increasing the network around (in) an innovation community will actually not make the discussion items, or topics, more abstract.

This abstraction in my opinion will be inevitable if the number of people that is contributing to the (intellectual) value creation increases, and these people have different backgrounds and insights.

The collective thinking in these innovation communities, can only be facilitated by abstraction of ideas - then taking them away from this state and branching off to further concrete ideas and concepts.

Social interaction vs. isolated thinkers and innovation communities

Tue, 06 May 2003 22:31:42 GMT

Innovation or thought leadership can take place only in a socially networked environment; energy for individual thoughts formed by social interaction and anticipations on future relationships will determine success - isolated thinkers will be left with cliches of their own thoughts.

This means that recombination of ideas can never occur on individual level, but requires a (social) network. In that way innovation through communities does not become more predictable, but establishes a controllable environment for these opportunities to occur.

Ways to diversify in innovation communities

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 18:10:54 GMT

Ways to diversify innovation communities Erik van Bekkum says in the ECCOP blog

So, three ways 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. brining customers into the innovation community)

As soon as the innovation community is gearing up for radical innovation, the latter might be the key component for the transition....but as always: diversity is good in innovation communities, but control the 'patches'!

Read the complete article

Introducing diversity in innovation communities

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 17:26:21 GMT

In a project recently finished for a large industrial minerals company, we have been looking at their innovation community and tried to find trends, changes in the way people collaborate and new ways to encourage innovation. Part of the job was doing a social network analysis to see patterns in relationships between the two main (geographical) groups inside the community - and the other part was mapping the amount of innovation that came out of the community to this SNA.

Some of the findings were interesting; for instance it became apparent that the role of the innovation coordinator, once prominent in the community, was steadily declining after time - while the rest of the community was increasing activity in the various ways measured. More than sixty percent of the participants in the innovation community was not linked to the innovation coordinator, quite an exceptional figure given the role of the coordinator in business terms.

Taking a step back in this particular case, the community used to be formed by innovation participants of only one geographical region. In this setup, the innovation coordinator (himself located in this region) was dominant in the activity and accounted for the largest degree centrality in the network. After a couple of months another group from a different geographical region was let into the community, and from this point onwards the presence of the coordinator in the community decreased - both in relative as well as absolute terms - just because the diversity of the two groups sparked such debate that people started to form links by themselves. The amount of innovation that came out of these new ties, increased strongly.

Linking this example out of the business back to the theory (23rd of April posting) it was very clear that the context and sharing elements had been present, but it did not lead to the desired debate and innovation. Why? Since there was a lack of diversity (all the participants were from the same background, same geographical location) there had been idea submissions but little innovation - just due to the fact that most of the innovation processes for these ideas had been distilled in other offline networks. The innovation community in the first stage perhaps was more a repository of ideas, innovated somewhere else. After the new group came in, the third element of diversity removed this obstacle to innovation inside the community and lead to a strong increase in debate, conversation and new visions and insights.

The combination of the social network analysis and the threads, put into context by the management with all the insights of the people in the networks, seconded this conclusion. Just right after that, a third geographical location was added to the innovation community and local coordinators were appointed to support the community model.

Diversity is a key element for innovation communities - otherwise the innovation may happen outside the community due to offline networks and not due to the community.

This apparently simple change to the community - increasing the diversity - recently also lead to an increase in participation (more 80% of the members are denoted 'active') most likely because the community is more interesting than before - when its value outcome was at par with other offline networks.

Diversity and innovation can drive the attractiveness of the community, increasing the visibility and opportunity for value creation.

It has to be said that diversity must be limited to the context and domain of the community itself though - an approach where gradual introduction of different groups and participants is taken typically works best since it allows participants to build trust and identity with the community. If not, the risk of a patchwork of community members, held together by context and coordinators, may be too brittle for the community to ever find its way to bringing innovation..

The changing role of the middle managers in the knowledge-enabled organization

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 15:32:10 GMT

Self Initiation at Work. Hubert Saint-Onge says in the ECCOP blog

The person who assumes an entitlement contract with the organization where they work expects to be given what they need to perform in order to perform. They believe that the organization provides them with shelter form the big bad world. The self-intiated person on the other hand believe that only they provide security for themselves and that they do so by acquiring capabilties as a "usines of one".

As an editor of this blog I was challenged to respond to this comment and frankly I think he made a very valid point in his post. Elaborating somewhat more on the changes that current managers in the traditional organizations will face, I commented "The middle managers on the other side are traditionally gatekeepers of knowledge and information, will have to abandon their role and become networked leaders instead. New leaders and managers will be those who give most knowledge (knowledge hubs) and not the ones who controls it. Value creation as you mention will follow from that assumption."

I found an analogy (at least to some extent) with the forming of trade unions in the early 20th century. The complete post is a comment and can be read here.

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 12:19:48 GMT

blogging and communities; blog not suitable as cop tool because of the lack of interaction with other people (discussion is hard- and conversation is the heart and soul of cops).

Individual capabilities.

Google's trackback links and SNA

Mon, 28 Apr 2003 19:30:06 GMT

Spotted at Patti Anklam's blog on social network analysis (and within CP Square too): visualizing and combining Google and SNA:

Touchgraph (http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html)

The world map of blogs

Sat, 26 Apr 2003 16:08:40 GMT

The World Blogmap. via TeledyN: Mikel Maron's The World as a Blog combines the GIS ICBM from blogs pinging weblog.com with the "Blue Marble (NASA's amazing hi-res earth image":http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/ to produce a real time world-map display of... [Channel 'social_software']

I noticed the same as Gary Lawrence, that these are individual posts picked up by RSS feed and does not reflect any relationship between them. Perhaps there should be a link between Valdis Krebs' work with SNA and blogs and this tool, to visualize how entries use RSS to travel around the world. Another thing would be using this tool as a plugin for your own blog, to see how your own articles are being picked up and move around the globe..

Innovation community ecosystem

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 16:32:43 GMT

I have been thinking a little further on the previous discussion on the role of the innovation community and it's ecosystem of other communities. I believe that there are four basic ingredients to innovation - inside or outside a community - that can be seen as pillars:

Context
Sharing
Diversity
Debate

You need context to understand what an idea is about, how it relates to demand and feasibility etc. You need to work in a sharing environment where there is an opportunity for people to speak freely, capture ideas, experiment and take risks. This sharing environment needs to be more or less uncontrolled (that is what the freely refers to). Then, there is a need for diversity of the participants: put people together from different backgrounds, jobs, departments or even geographical locations - and even junior and senior staff - to maximinze the potential in the community. The fact that all these people, due to their different features and backgrounds are most likely member of their own core communities as well, is the strong relationship that an innovation community must have to other sources (communities). All of these lead to debate, which is the process of innovation. It can be immediate, it can happen after months only.

Now put these four elements into perspective and you will get something that I depicted in the diagram above. The matching of the lower elements 'context' and 'sharing' to existing communities are just for illustrative purposes; the real ties are in the 'diversity' element which bounds the communities to the innovation one.

Community ecosystem (1)

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 15:24:42 GMT

[I featured this in The CP in the community ecosystem, click to see the whole thread]

Thanks Lilia Efimova for kicking this subject off. In her blog she responds to George's whitepapers on "Radical Innovation with communities of practice" - and notes that

For me George contributes to answering not an easy question from practice "how can we support a community of practice in moving from problem-solving to innovation". The question is not correct: this is not about a community, this is about an ecosystem of communities.

It seems like an open invitation to see how actually the CP as a vehicle for innovation, itself relates to other vehicles and its ecosystem. There seems to be no question about the fact that the communities span different domains - but still I was talking about that same innovation community [here]. What is the relationship of the innovation community to other communities? Which ones do exist in the ecosystem, and what is their influence of added value to the innovation community?

[Value-Creation by Communities of Practice]

Individuality and ownership - in communities of practice

Mon, 21 Apr 2003 23:16:22 GMT

Today I wrote a short note about the role of weblogs and communities in business strategy. Without going through the whole entry, I wrote about communities and weblogs that they have a high degree of the -what I call - I/O exponent:

"[they are] based on individuality as part of a community and personal ownership as part of your organization"

One of the best low-key approaches to introduce this I mentioned onwards in the thread, is to use a subtile but disarming method of introducing the concept behind the I/O exponent. Just imagine you are a manager in a large organization. What does individuality mean inside the organization? And what does ownership of processes, decisions and ideas mean? Being the manager, you have to read back to the sentence; it says individuality as part of a community and ownership as part of the organization. It does seem contradictionary, but it's a very important relationship.

Did the people that worked on Henry Ford's assembly line, feel they worked for Ford Motor Company after their ownership had been reduced to a single nut or buckle? Most likely, they did. But did they sense belonging? I would not say so.

Anyway as a manager even discovering what ownership and individuality mean in the corporate organization, can be a discovery process. I described the mentioned low-key approach for this (I have tried it actually, with surprising results). Give everyone a coffee mug with the company logo. It looks simple, but people started to write their names on the mug; after some weeks, by turns someone from the group would collect all the mugs and bring coffee back. A short but regular contact moment- similar to the 'coffee machine' analogy. The company logo without doubt, added a flavour of belonging to this emerging ritual.

The other thing in the plan was to hand out a pencil and paper during meetings and asking people to take notes on their plans, thoughts etc. After some time, these notes were picked up by the manager and randomly redistributed. Later on, the notes could be brought forward in the group. It seems simple, to have a weblog - knowlegde and idea-sharing system for 20 cents per participant. But it raised awareness about the values and importance of the concepts to the staff and insights in a changing role for the manager.

Rhythm in communities

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 20:03:08 GMT

Yesterday I joined the ECCOP blog on value creation with communities of practice, which is going to be a multi-author but public blog on how to create and maintain value in CoP's. The first topic I addressed there is the continuous stress between individual and community rhythm.

The use of the high traffic area seems a simple yet constructive solution for large communities, but for medium and smaller communities (or communities with a very limited domain and therefore a high degree of specialization) this concept will not work. I would question the effect in that circumstance - perhaps it would even have a negative effect on the members! In most cases, in the end it's the coordinator(s) (whether he is global or local) with his sense of community needs and vibrance and the tools he has to change the rhythm to meed current and future demand:

Know what is relevant in the community
Know what community members are up to
Understand and convey how the community can help them continuously
Look for the tools to meet the community requirements (forum, phone, face-to-face, IM) to adjust the rhythm
Identify milestones in the rythm (regular calls, mail notifications, meetings) and work towards that point to increase the energy and momentum

It's potentially a very complex role, the coordinator. But didn't we already know that!