Rob Lewis published an article on the Knowledge Board giving an inside view into IBMs internal knowledge management and web 2.0 systems. He also describes IBMs way from the centralized knowledge management system to what he calls a organic system.
IBM also faced to motivation problem of centralized systems. But know the rely on communities. Each of them working in their field and by this keeping the information up to date. What I see as a huge advantage of the community approach vs. an anonymous centralized system is the motivation. Persons are part of their community and so they are motivates to contribute as well as they take responsibility. By keeping the tools company internal all other community member are also company members. So each contributor can be sure to help the company he is working for. A colleagues is much nearer than an anonymous person outside in a open to all web 2.0 system. For example, the article describes IBM social bookmarking tool Dogear. Like
deli.ico.us, it allows to subscribe tag. But what I think more important is the possibility to contact the person who’s bookmark tag has been subscripted. This person is also inside the company, talking the same language, following the same company goals and is much more likely to help. A perfect solution to find the experts in an international enterprise like IBM.
Also IBM does not reinvent the wheels. The tools follow the same function like famous social web tool on the net. Now employes can have the same function like the tools they already use - and you can be sure they use it - inside the company letting company’s knowledge grow. Employees use social bookmark tools or YouTube. Fragmenting their knowledge outside into the net without possibilities to mash it up and of course without the possibility to work on business criterial secrets. Now they can have theirs tools internal. This will not happens if internal tools are centralized strict knowledge management systems.
There is no tools which can give all functions of these famous web 2.0 tools. Having different tools one for each task allows development of cleaner tools. One application have to work as of roof over all those specialized tools to create mash-ups. At IBM this is called QEDWiki. So every one aggregates knowledge of elements from the different sources and by creating this networks they create new knowledge and learn informal.
Having different tools leads also to an advantage during implementation and the necessary change management. The implementation can go step by step one tool after the other, allowing the user to learn and to see the advantages. Allowing the management to get used to e more self-determined knowledge management and communication. Not a big bang of the huge application changing everything forcing users to change their habits completely from one second to another.
Nothing is better than create real experiences in implementation. Doing implementation tools by tool, with every new tool learning from experiences of the ones already there can improve the next one.
I think there is one small draw back when reading articles about such impressive social media implementation in IT firms. It is the fact that they are IT companies and their employees are addicted to IT, by this they may much more interested in such new tools. Getting motivation in non IT branches can be harder.
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