Stepping Higher - Reflections on the Knowledge Age

Yesterday, I was serving as resource person for knowledge management on a “One-Day Forum on Exemplar KM Practices in Regional/Global Networks” hosted by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) , an inter-government organization among 11 Southeast Asian countries which was inviting organizations like WHO, ILO. UNISDR, CGIAR and UNDP to share their knowledge management (KM) experiences. One of the questions the online audience asked was “ What are the key success factors for implementing knowledge management in an organization? ” Now this is a big one, which probably deserves its own book! I asked the participants to take my comments with a grain of salt, as was just writing from the top of my head the first ideas that came to mind. Incidentally, I often experience that the first response to a question is often the most genuine one, so I’m just gonna share what I wrote without any filter, knowing that itwill be far from giving a complete picture of all possi...

There is an increasing acknowledgement within the organisational development and management sector that Web 2.0 can bring concrete benefits to organisations - labeled under the tag "Enterprise 2.0". If you want so see some examples, Mashable.com published a list of 35 corporate social media examples in action and I was also very happy to see that players like IBM indicate a shift to Web 2.0 in their own organisational development. In addition, as a tool for self-assessment, Brett Bonfield compiled a set of indicators whether your organisation is ready to benefit from Web 2.0 approaches. However, the Web 2.0 community also realizes that something is different, when you want to apply the benefits of Web 2.0 from your personal development to an organisational environment. I found the analogy of the "two tunnels" by Thomas Vander Wal quite striking in this regard. He argues that while Web 2.0 is like building a tunnel through a mountain, where imperfections and leaks ...