Vol. 2. No. 9 – 01 March 1999

Interesting Reading:
Here’s some articles, web sites, or books that I’ve found interesting.

  • Turning capabilities into advantages
    The McKinsey Quarterly
    - Organizational Capabilities can become a source for sustained competitive advantage. What are capabilities? The authors of this article define it as the skills, assets, and relationships that companies assemble. This definition goes well beyond what we in the KM world generally view as organizational capabilities — skills embedded in an organizations people, processes, and institutional knowledge — to include privileged assets, growth-enabling skills, and special relationships. Read this excellent article to find out what these three classes of resources are all about.
    http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/strategy/tuca99.htm
  • Hot Tips — CEO’s Notebook
    Inc. Magazine
    - You’ll have to scroll part way down the page, but it’s worth the effort to read Dorothy Yu’s (of PwC) 5 tips for how your company can effectively capture and use knowledge.
    http://www.inc.com/incmagazine/archives/03990831.html
  • Protecting Innovation
    Information Week
    - This article gives a good overall view of the issues around intellectual property, and who owns what (or what they think they own). It’s a touchy area, especially as it relates to KM, and the ownership of an individuals knowledge vs. the organizations knowledge. As I’m sure any IP attorney would tell us, there is a large body of case law that pertains to most of the issues raised in this article, but the times they are a changin.
    http://www.informationweek.com/722/intellect.htm
  • Who Owns Ideas-And Employees
    Information Week
    - A little feedback on the item above “Protecting Innovation”. As we focus on harvesting employee knowledge, issues around ownership will become more onerous, and play a big part in attracting and retaining the most innovative employees. The other issue that hasn’t been addressed is how all this is managed in the free agent economy.
    http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?IWK19990301S0043
  • cXML A new taxonomy for E-commerce
    Internetworld
    - We haven’t had an XML article in a few weeks…Will Commerce XML change the way e-business is done? That’s what about 40 companies that are part of the cXML initiative believe. Just like in KM, there’s value in a common “language” (taxonomy) and cXML should help extend the value and usefulness of information and transactions. If there isn’t one already, I imagine one of the new KM consortiums will eventually focus on kXML.
    http://www.webreference.com/ecommerce/mm/column21/index.html
  • Making knowledge mean business
    InfoWorld
    - It’s nice to see a technology trade publication talk about KM as a discipline as opposed to just technology. This article’s focus is mainly about, well I’m not sure exactly, but it does talk about organizations/consortiums that have been established to “define” KM. I suppose they are trying to say that the KM business is now business.
    http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayArchive.pl?/99/08/e02-08.69.htm
  • Study Opportunity
    - a carry over from last week — The Next Generation Research Group, part of Arthur Andersen’s Knowledge Services, is launching a collaborative research study on communities of practice. Companies interested in having representatives on the research team should download the proposal on http://www.ngrg.com. Participation is limited to seven companies, and the study will kick off in mid-March with a COP workshop.
KM Jobs & Links:
KM Career Opportunities and Links — let me know of any opportunities and I’ll post them here (and don’t forget to tell me when the positions are filled). An asterisks (*) denotes a new item.

Upcoming Events:
This is a list of events I’m interested in, and think you should be too. As I come across web sites that have detailed listings of events, I’ll post them here. An asterisks (*) denotes a new item.

Products/Tools:
I’ll try and point you to interesting products, tools, and companies that are dabbling in the KM space.

Webforia Organizer from Webforia, Inc.
- If you’re like me you sometimes have trouble finding information that you’ve already tracked down on the web and then squirreled away somewhere for later use. This product may be the answer to the problem. The Webforia Organizer is billed as a personal librarian who stores, indexes, and tracks the information you select. This tool provides the ability to go beyond simple book marks or favorites (I’ve literally got thousands of those) by automatically abstracting and indexing web research. It even refreshes selected information, and has a tickler to remind you to check to review or update documents.
http://www.webforia.com

If you’ve seen or are using a cool and useful product that falls into the KM space (or close to it), let me know about it, I’ll include it here and you’ll get the credit for it.

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