Preface
This book has been a long time in gestation – nearly twenty years in fact, although when I started I did not envisage a book as the end result. The seeds were sown in 1981, when I started using electronic mail as part of a small European marketing team, whose members were working in Reading (England), Munich and Geneva, and who needed to communicate regularly with salespeople all over Europe, as well as head office in Massachusetts.
As computer networks evolved during the 1980s to connect together more people, and as they added extra facilities, such as computer conferencing, the business benefits of using them for communication and knowledge sharing became more apparent. Along with other professionals and managers within Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) I was discovering the power of knowledge networking. At the time, Digital was a pioneer in large-scale peer-to-peer computer networking (DECnet), although unbeknown to most business people, a global and interorganizational network, the Internet, had already started its inexorable growth. Today, the Internet provides a very important technology infrastructure for global knowledge networking.
But knowledge networking is more than just computer networks. It is about harnessing knowledge on a global scale. Without effective means of communicating and accessing information, knowledge remains fragmented in small pieces, often in people’s heads. The same is true between departments of a large organization, or of individuals who share a common interest but are geographically separated. Bring such knowledge together and the opportunities and benefits are huge. Whether you are seeking improved business performance, better public services, a better environment, the reduction of poverty in the world, or a more meaningful lifestyle for yourself, knowledge networking can help enormously.
The aim of this book is to inspire you to do so, and give you some practice guidance on your way. Because of my background it has a strong business bias, although in the nature of today’s business, it is equally applicable to large multinationals, small and medium enterprises and even micro-enterprises. In fact, knowledge networking allows small enterprises to work together and compete effectively in global markets against companies many times their size. The techniques of knowledge networking are universal, so the nature of your organization, or whether you are part of one at all, does not matter. As long as you seek to gain knowledge or to use your knowledge to help others, this book has something for you.
Outline of the book
The book is divided into four parts. Part A sets the context, the changing world we live and work in. Wherever you look, organizations and institutions are under pressure, many individuals seem less certain about the future and there are doubts over the relevance of today’s nation state. Individually and collectively we have still to adapt to the realities of a post-industrial knowledge economy, where the old recipes for success do not work. In the new world order, value is in knowledge and intangibles, power is distributed, careers are not for life, large organizations can disappear overnight and your business or lifestyle can be dramatically affected by developments on the other side of the world.
Part B of the book examines three main factors that are behind many of these changes. These are the role of knowledge, the impact of information and communications technologies (especially the Internet), and virtualization, where activities take place electronically over time and space rather than through physical means. While traditionalists may view these as threats, I view them as opportunities, and that is the focus taken in these chapters.
Part C of the book gets down to practicalities in a set of toolkits. Every day, I get besieged with questions (many of them coming via email from readers of my Internet website http://www.skyrme.com), such as ‘how do you make a virtual organization work?’, ‘where is it best to start with knowledge management?’, ‘how do you get people to share their knowl-edge?’. I’ve been through many of these situations myself and have learnt a lot on the way, and incidentally am still learning. Over time I have codified my knowledge along several domains, such as information and knowledge management, flexible working, Internet strategies and networking skills. However, a domain view continues to reinforce narrow perspectives. Success comes from taking a more holistic approach, blending together the knowledge and skills from each domain. Therefore, Part C is organized along the dimensions of individual, team, organization and interprise (an interorganizational enterprise).
The final part of the book looks at the wider policy agenda and takes a view of how the knowledge economy may unfold.
My journey of knowledge
During my career as a professional and manager and now an independent consultant, I have read many books, articles and (more recently) web pages. It seems to me that they fall into certain genres. One is the academic genre, with lots of concepts and theory, making sure that no important reference is left out. Another genre is the practical guide, based on a single approach, with scant reference to literature. Many are domain specific and often quite narrow. Thus, you will find books on the Internet, books on intellectual capital, books on virtual organizations. Some of the better business books are written by business school academics, who have some consultancy or business experience and give practical case examples. Others are written by journalists, who blend important ideas with good storytelling. Few, alas, are written by practising managers. They are generally too busy climbing the career ladder or constrained by what they can reveal.
My own career has been somewhat hybrid. Once a researcher, then a salesperson, product manager, marketing manager and strategic planning manager, I have seen organizational life from many sides. Now my hybrid life includes writing, consulting, working in joint ventures and a little academic work, both tutoring on strategic marketing workshops and supervising MBA business research projects. It goes without saying that I am an active Internet user and through that an active knowledge networker in all my endeavours. It is this blend of theory and practice, of technology and management, of a large multinational and a micro-enterprise perspective, that I hope gives you new insights through this book.
In writing this book, I drew on many sources. In one respect it is an example of knowledge networking in practice. In part it is a coagulation of personal knowledge that was formerly fragmented. Thus it draws on many of the short pieces that I have written over the last ten to fifteen years – management reports, presentations, guidelines and check lists, frameworks for thinking, trend analyses, articles and so on. More importantly it draws on the knowledge that exists within my personal and professional network. Over the years, this network has become multi-generational, multidisciplinary, global and large. I therefore acknowledge the many knowledge exchanges, with insightful people, too numerous to name, that have influenced my thinking which is captured in this book.
Acknowledging my knowledge network
There are a few people, however, to whom I want to pay particular tribute for their encouragement and the way in which they have freely given of their time, and more importantly, their knowledge. The first of these is Debra M. Amidon, founder of ENTOVATION International, of which my company is a networked business partner. A former colleague in Digital’s globally distributed Management Systems Research group, Debra, based in Massachusetts, and myself, based in Newbury, England, went our separate ways after leaving Digital. However, as is virtually inevitable when individuals work in related fields and exchange information over global networks, our paths came together again in a variety of joint projects. It was Debra’s insistence that I had to write this book, asserting that it was time to share my knowledge and experience with a wider audience. When I flagged, because my consulting work was taking precedence and my very patient publisher wondered if it would ever get done, she goaded me back into action. Without her active and practical support you would not be reading this book today.
There are several other members in my inner network, whom I would particularly like to acknowledge. Jan Wyllie, founder of Trend Monitor International, has a unique talent at taking voluminous information and distilling the underlying trends, helping me sort the wheat from the chaff. Another Trend colleague, Sheila Evers, plays the role, in her own words, of being a lead balloon: ‘bringing cloud cuckoo thinking down to earth’. Others whose help I have treasured include John Farago, a former board director in a large multinational and now an active networker in learning organization circles; he knows who to connect to in order to expedite knowledge networking. John Gundry, a colleague in Digital and now of Knowledge Ability, helped formulate the process and management models of Chapter 6 that helps make computer conferencing successful. Ron Smart, now based in Australia, was instrumental in getting me involved in Digital’s Management Systems Research (MSR) team, and gave valuable insights into the challenges of organizational structuring within large multinationals, who wrestle simultaneously with multiple dimensions of business including products, customers, markets and geographic regions.
In my Digital days, my colleagues in our multidisciplinary ‘People for the 90s team’, Tony Attew, Ramsay Maclaren and Philip Scott, were a great influence. We were building and piloting the elements of self-managed teams, augmented by technology but taking on board the essential human and organizational factors. Tony Attew, in particular, as a human resources professional, taught us a lot about team process and behaviour that has stood me in good stead. That team also drew in some academic researchers who helped articulate our management and professional actions in models that are draw upon in this book. Particular mention should be made of Professor Roy Payne, then professor of organizational behaviour at Manchester Business School, Dr Barbara Farbey, then of London Business School and Jane Cooper, then of Roffey Park College and now Director of Learning at Thomas Miller & Co.
Members of others networks since leaving Digital that have helped to inform this book include those of ASLIB’s (Association for Information Management) IRM (Information Resources Management) Network and the Shipley Group whose mission is the valuation of intangible assets. In the field of telework, teletrade and telecooperation, colleagues on the European Telework Development project, most notably project director Horace Mitchell, have stimulated new thinking and identified successful practitioners. Also, there are many practitioners in the field of knowledge management, whose practical approaches to day-to-day management issues have informed me a great deal. In this group are Leif Edvinsson of Skandia, Bipin Junnarkar, formerly of Monsanto, Gordon Petrash formerly of Dow Chemical, and Elizabeth Lank of ICL.
I also acknowledge help received from those at Butterworth-Heinemann who have steered this book to completion despite my foot dragging. These include commissioning editors Jacquie Shanahan and Grace Evans, editorial assistant Sally North and production director Annie Martin, all based in Oxford. A debt is also owed to Karen Speerstra, based in Boston, who has established knowledge management as an important strand of Butterworth-Heinemann’s offerings, and who has created a knowledge network of its knowledge management authors.
Last, but not least, thanks are due to another former colleague and Butterworth-Heinemann author, Charles Savage, writer of Fifth Generation Management (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996). It was he who seeded my brain with the term ‘knowledge networking’, which struck a chord that is still resonating and guiding my actions into the future. I hope it will resonate with you as well so we can knowledge network together.