Articles
Wittgenstein’s Ladder: The Coming Irrelevance of Knowledge Managers
In 1920, the brilliant Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein abandoned philosophy after having written what he felt was the ultimate analysis of how language and meaning work (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922). He first became a primary school teacher, but quarrelled with his colleagues and some of the parents, and turned to gardening. It was nine years before he just as suddenly decided to return to philosophy, taking up a fellowship at Cambridge University, declaring that he had got it wrong the first time round. He spent the next twenty-two years quarrelling with students and colleagues and working on his next work, Philosophical Investigations (1953).
This article appeared as a chapter in Rethinking Knowledge edited by Kim Sbarcea (Lexis-Nexis Australia, 2002)
Posted by edgar on 01/07/01 at 02:30 PM | Categories: KM Competencies | Permalink
Building the People Infrastructure for Your E-Busines
In late 2000, Forrester Research predicted that Net commerce, both B2B and B2C, would expand at “hypergrowth” in Asia Pacific over the next three years. From US$64 billion in 2000, it would reach US$1.7 trillion by 2004 – a rate of 130% to 150% each year. These are extravagant numbers – especially when you consider that this is in a region where 50-80% of the workforce is employed by small and medium enterprises, where technology infrastructure is patchy and
inconsistent, and where IT literacy rates are still cause for concern among ageing workforce populations.
Posted by edgar on 21/03/01 at 02:22 PM | Categories: KM Applied | Permalink
From Rhetoric to Reality: KM and Success in the SME World
When you look at success in business, you get a compelling sense of the true momentum behind the old economy. Almost half of the 500 most successful SMEs in Singapore are in the construction and manufacturing related industries, and when you look at this year’s top fifty companies, that figure rises to 60%. The highly touted new economy sectors of logistics and financial and business services barely register in the top fifty companies, and make up only a quarter of the
top five hundred.
Posted by edgar on 23/11/00 at 02:18 PM | Categories: KM Critiqued | Permalink
The Blind Tour Guide: Leadership in the New Economy
Imagine, if you will, that you are arriving for the first time in Singapore on a special holiday package, with your own individual tour guide as part of the package. You arrive at the airport, and there, as promised, is your tour guide. He is tall, about 50 years old, and very distinguished looking, but he is almost completely blind. He first started going blind in 1968, the year he graduated from tour guiding school, the year of flower power in California and student revolts in Paris, before man ever got to the Moon. Before you gird up your loins for an assault on your tour operator for short-changing you, imagine two more small things. First, you live in a world where all tour guides start going blind as soon as they graduate, and second, you live in a world that accords great respect and deference to tour guides. You never ever question a tour guide’s ability to show you around.
Posted by edgar on 15/08/00 at 02:10 PM | Categories: Leadership | Permalink
Sick Companies
In Part one of this series I argued that there was a deeper digital divide between old economy and new economy workers than simply the ability to manipulate technology. In Part two I laid part of the blame for our discontinuities on the failure of leaders to adopt new models of leadership more appropriate to the transitions we must undergo. In this article I want to focus on that other, more difficult area of resistance to change: the interplay between leadership and corporate culture.
Posted by edgar on 08/08/00 at 02:06 PM | Categories: Culture, Leadership | Permalink
How The Mighty Are Fallen
In ancient Nordic legend, when warrior heroes die they go to Valhalla, a place of great feasting, golden mead and limitless food. After sating themselves on wine women and song, they turn to their favourite sport, mortal combat. They fight till only one is left standing. Yet in the morning they rise again, whole and complete, to start their heavenly round of feeding and fighting again.
Posted by edgar on 18/07/00 at 02:04 PM | Categories: KM Competencies, Leadership | Permalink
Becoming A New Economy Manager
There is no single digital divide. The digital divide is not simply a matter of the gap between technology haves and have-nots. Behind this simple description of the rift there are deeper and bleaker gaps in literacy, skill and attitude that few of us see – even in ourselves. While commonly described as a special problem with the lesser-educated older worker in Singapore, these fault lines actually cross the entire spectrum of employment from operator to chief executive, and across the range of organisational forms. Failure to address these gaps will mean failure for workers in the market for employment and it will mean failure for organisations in the market for customers.
Posted by edgar on 11/07/00 at 01:58 PM | Categories: KM Competencies, Leadership | Permalink
The New Landscape of Risk
Why then are we suddenly asking our managers to pursue risk? It is not that the manager’s job in the new economy has changed, and risk of itself suddenly brings automatic rewards. It doesn’t. We are as prone today to loss through folly, fraud and failed predictions as we ever have been – indeed, in these volatile times, some would say more prone. We desperately need sound and prudent management of the risks we are pursuing – and that means risk aversion on a scale to balance the risk pursuance of the markets.
Posted by edgar on 25/04/00 at 01:52 PM | Categories: Risk & Uncertainty | Permalink
Buying Into Risk
Investors love risk, managers dislike it. Risk provides an alternative to making money by the sweat of your brow. Putting money into a risky situation is what makes profit. For those who doubt this, take a look at the insurance industry – a business wholly devoted to the assessment and conversion of risk to financial premium. In Singapore alone, about 35,000 people (almost 2% of the workforce) are either wholly or partly employed in this industry. The assets of the industry in Singapore grew by more than 50% in the two years of the Asian financial crisis to S$31 billion. Over the last five years the annual growth rate has
averaged 16%, reaching revenues of almost S$8 billion in 1998. There is a lot of money in risk.
Posted by edgar on 18/04/00 at 01:48 PM | Categories: Risk & Uncertainty | Permalink
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the Technology Trap
There is a type of obsessive compulsive disorder which involves a mania for counting, cataloguing, tidying mundane objects over and over again. It is classified as an anxiety disorder, and 23 million Americans suffer from it. We all suffer from it in one form or another, if you loosen up the definition a little. Do you remember the examination study schedules drawn up meticulously in different coloured inks, which took so long to perfect, that your study plan fell behind, and you had to revise the plan? Pretty soon, you are spending most of your time on getting the plan right, and not doing much actual studying.
Posted by edgar on 07/03/00 at 12:31 PM | Categories: KM Critiqued | Permalink