Summary: Ten Ways to Accelerate Your Organization’s Readiness for e-Knowledge

Engage the enterprise on the subject of e-knowledge. Use storytelling to explore how individuals already experience knowledge. Mobilize energies from grassroots to CEO and Board.

Organizational storytelling about experiencing e-knowledge is the way to engage your enterprise in understanding the changes and challenges of the next decade, Conversation is the coin of the realm of the Internet culture, But it’s not just about talk. You must also “walk the talk” by deploying technology tools that change the manner in which you use knowledge in decision making and in your core enterprise processes.

Develop a knowledge strategy for the enterprise that brings into alignment: 1) management of the enterprise’s knowledge assets, and 2) the enterprise’s business plans to achieve mission and goals.

A concise, cogent strategy sets the stage for more effective knowledge management and for initiatives that establish competitive advantage. Knowledge strategy must be explicitly stated in business plans.

Support a wide variety of knowledge management and community of practice pilots throughout the enterprise. Enable different expeditions and multiple trajectories, operating in parallel.

While the organization needs an integrated enterprise applications infrastructure for knowledge sharing, the practice of knowledge management may vary among different process teams and communities of practice. Your enterprise should encourage expeditionary experimentation and sharing of success stories among different communities of practice.

Scan the environment for examples of changing best practices, business models, and strategies; collect competitive intelligence on market leaders and innovators both from inside and outside the industry. Energetically benchmark e-knowledge practices.

Enterprises cannot afford to leave knowledge strategy and e-knowledge best practices to chance. Since most paradigm-busting innovations come from outside the circle of market leaders, enterprises must scan the e-knowledge horizon broadly for emerging concepts, innovations, best practices, business models, and strategies.

Establish reducing the cost of knowledge sharing as an important enterprise goal. Begin to put in place the infrastructures, policies, processes, and mechanisms place to achieve that goal

Reducing the cost of knowledge and enhancing knowledge sharing experiences are long-term goals but enterprises must begin to develop cost accounting capabilities immediately.

Take a “Value on Investment” (VOI) perspective to planning for your organization’s ICT infrastructure and knowledge ecology. Develop visions, plans, and strategies for your Enterprise Applications Infrastruc-ture and Solutions (EAIS), shaped by VOI and guided by perspectives on potential e-knowledge jump shifts.

VOI is a facile instrument for focusing your enterprise on the innovative and transformative uses of ICT. It attracts attention to infrastructure, applications, and solutions development as an essential strategic issue. See Chapter 5 for details.

Focus on key elements of Enterprise Applications Infrastructure and Solutions” (EAIS): a) Web site and portal capabilities to create the “experience gateway,” enabling progressive discovery of WINWINI; b) fusion of mission-central applications; c) progressive implementation of Web services; and d) wireless initiatives and mobile work/learning pilots.

These elements of EAIS are high priority and must engage a broad cross-section of the enterprise community; it’s too important to be left to technologists, alone. See Chapter 5 for details.

Initiate change in the enterprise knowledge ecology: a) process reinvention and innovation; b) change the knowledge culture; c) elevate the understanding of knowledge flows, communities of practice, and knowledge as social interactions; d) make the enhancement of individual and enterprise e-knowledge capabilities an organizational priority for human resources development.

Organizational storytelling about experiencing e-knowledge is the way to engage your enterprise in understanding the changes and challenges of the next decade, Conversation is the coin of the realm of the Internet culture, But it’s not just about talk. You must also “walk the talk” by deploying technology tools that change the manner in which you use knowledge in decision making and in your core enterprise processes.

Monitor the latest developments in standards and processes for knowledge sharing. Translate into clear explanations and stories about the implications of e-knowledge standards for the enterprise.

Developments in standards, technologies, and marketplaces provide a small working group with a sterling opportunity for storytelling. See Chapter 4 for details.

Develop policies, protocols, and infrastructures for knowledge asset management and external knowledge sharing. Participate in internal and external e-knowledge sharing to acquire experience and develop and hone these capabilities.

Enterprises need to roll up their sleeves and dig into the nuts and bolts of e-knowledge repositories and external knowledge sharing. See Chapter 4 for details.