IFLA 2010: Why should we roll-out global KM initiatives (1/3)?

This blog post is a part of a presentation I gave at the 76th World Library and Information Congress. In the presentation, I explained why we should embrace KM initiatives, how we should do this, and how a global KM initiative has successfully been implemented. 

In this weblog post I describe two incentives why there is a need for global KM initiatives in particular global development aid. The first one is a domain specific incentive within global development aid and is known as the brain drain of countries in the Global South. The second one is a specific incentive to the domain of KM which argues that organisations should move from managing knowledge stocks to distributing knowledge flows.

Incentive 1: brain gain vs brain drain

To develop as a country, people open doors that were locked before, and they need therefore explore new territories. To make sense of these new territories and decide over the new things they see, feel and hear, the newest knowledge is required. So, what I want to say is that every country is in this process of developing itself and entering new territories. But it depends on the level of knowledge within the countries to successfully make sense of and decide over these new situations. 

And when you are successfully steering your country through new developments, your country will most probably become more developed than the others, and the developed country ends up in a state of prosperity. This prosperity in often wealth, but also happiness and health, creates a magnet to the ones who live in less developed countries and who want to come enjoy the same prosperity. And the ones who can make such a move are often the intellectuals or well-resourced people from a less-developed country. So, you can see that through this the already well-developed countries would then get a brain gain and the less-developed countries a brain drain. 

The brain drain is not only something that is typical to global development cooperation. It is also something that happens among businesses in - especially - Europe and North- America.

On one side, businesses experience that many people will soon retire and, on the other side, there are not enough people to fill in the empty spaces because young people are studying longer. So even though technology is connecting the digital world as a whole through the Internet and mobile communication; the current situation in - especially - Europe and North America - is disconnecting the real world as a whole. 

That’s why there is an increasing notion that we all need to become better in knowledge sharing in a network-based working environment - with the assistance of technology. 

Most people can nowadays get information at very low or no cost without any difficulties. They then can make sense of this information through their social networks. The one who can run this process most successfully will generate new knowledge rapidly and eventually make decisions faster which can be more innovative than others. This shows that information sharing and collaboration tools are crucial to be successful.

Incentive 2: Knowledge Flows

This brings me to the second incentive why organisations should focus on a collaborative platform to share and create knowledge between the global North and South. This has to do with the way how we share knowledge.

Around 15 years ago we experienced the first big focus from organisations in the discipline of KM. Nonaka and Takeuchi introduced a first generation of KM by arguing that tacit knowledge could be transferred to explicit knowledge. And in the same period, computer technology was seen as the solution to every organisational problem. That‘s why organisations started implementing computer technologies for capturing and codifying all of the staff members’ knowledge. But the degree of transfer from tacit to explicit knowledge depended on the necessity; Nonaka and Tackeuchi did not argue that all of the knowledge in the heads and conversations had, should or could have been made explicit. Nonetheless, at that time, IT companies jumped in this new market of KM and promoted a strategy that was aimed at changing knowledge from an organisational liability to an organisational asset by focussing on knowledge stocks.

These knowledge stocks grew out into massive databases in which users increasingly experienced problems finding an answer on their information query, and the database administrators were using excessive resources to keep running the databases. So, KM became a failure and more and more organisations did not understand the added-value of all the financial and human resources it had used to stock the knowledge.

But years after that and with the introduction and implementation of social technology, KM luckily attracted much of the attention back. A reason of this upheaval was that these social technologies, or I prefer to say information sharing and collaboration tools, let us work collaboratively by means of relationships. Because through these relations we can easily start with cross-border and cross-cultural conversations.

Just think about platforms such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Through all of these initiatives, people share knowledge through conversations - even though these people are spread over the world. That’s why the newest technologies enhances knowledge sharing by not focussing on knowledge stocks, but on knowledge flows. I therefore want to argue that in order to be successful in launching a KM initiative, we should apply these latest technologies.

Comments

[Roan Yong]

Hi Richard,

I agree with you that (1) the first-world countries (and big companies) will attract talents. This could create a brain drain for the third-world countries (and SMEs). (2) conversations should be at the heart of knowledge sharing. And social computing helps to facillitate it. More people in improverished countries like Indonesia are getting access to internet - and this means the potential for knowledge sharing between rich and poor countries, is great.

I would like to add that while tapping to social network is useful, there has to be concerted capacity building (which the UN has initiates to some countries) from rich countries to the poor ones. Capacity building will catalyze the knowledge sharing and surely to ensure learning becomes permanent, we can set up social networking tools like wikis, discussion forums, and blogs.

Best Regards,

Roan Yong
(twitter: @roanyong)

[Richard Santos Lalleman]

Dear Roan Yong,

I couldn't agree with you more. Capacity building is a very crucial elements in order to be successful in global KM initiatives. This weblog post is a part of a presentation. The next message will outline how we should roll-out such an initiative and the third, and finally, message will cover more about the Focuss.Info Initiative (www.focuss.info) which is focussing on capacity building.

Regards,
Richard