Articles

Why do organisations seem to impose frictions on insights and ideas in ways that as individuals we find stupid and bureaucratic? Why do organisations fail to exploit the smarts and common sense of their people? In this paper, written for a Masterclass on Insight and Storytelling with Gary Klein and Shawn Callahan, Patrick Lamber explores the idea that social collectives have cognitive behaviours that sit above our individual cognitive awareness, and that have strong and often unperceived influences on how we behave and feel.

Posted on 1 September 2011

It is possible in marketing, as in any other field, to apply the principles of creativity and the processes of innovation, to find new ways of marketing effectively. This article is going to look at a slightly different issue around innovation: how innovation in the enterprise – innovations in products and services – creates special challenges for the marketing function. In fact, as we’ll see, true, radical innovation is a traditional marketeer’s nightmare.

Posted on 27 March 2003

Singapore has an innovation problem it doesn’t yet fully recognise, and that is the dominance of the engineering mindset here. It’s a theme I’ll explore more fully in a subsequent article, but for now it’s enough to notice that while engineers can be brilliant problem solvers, they can only address innovation in limited ways: as clearly defined problems, stable enough and specifiable enough to be able to plot routes towards a solution. And measurable enough to know whether you got there successfully. The result is an unambitious view of innovation as improvement rather than radical adaptation. A study we conducted early this year found that two thirds of managers here see innovation as a matter for incremental improvements rather than radically new ideas.

Posted on 20 December 2002

If you look at how Singapore approaches innovation, it looks very much like an engineering problem. Rule-bound, risk-averse Singapore is the problem, and the output we want is more innovation. So being engineers, we have to figure out what new input to the system will produce that output. Simple, right?

Posted on 20 December 2002

I have been asked to write about libraries and their role in an increasingly knowledge-powered economy. April 24-26, Singapore plays host to the World Library Summit, with the theme: “Global Knowledge Renaissance”. The best and the finest will gather to learn about the future of knowledge, knowledge management and knowledge opportunities in governance, society and business. “We want people, and especially businesses, to understand the critical role that libraries, and this summit, can play in creating knowledge opportunities for Singapore and the region” says National Library Board Assistant Chief Executive R. Ramachandran.

Posted on 20 December 2002

Innovation, like SPRING, is in the air. Creativity is all the rage. Entrepreneurship is on every agenda. But what does it all mean for how we run our organizations, and how do all these different ideas connect to each other? We don’t actually want too many people running around with too many crazy ideas, nor do we want unfocussed fragmentations of our core businesses by over-enthusiastic entrepreneurs. In this article we’ll look at the core capabilities that generate innovation. The experience of Singapore itself in its radical transformation and remarkable success over the past four decades, and research conducted by Straits Knowledge into perceptions of innovation among Singapore managers will serve to guide us along the way.

Posted on 1 April 2002

How-To Guides

This is a summary of contributions by participants in three rounds of Knowledge Café discussions at KM World on 5 November 2015, and facilitated by Patrick Lambe. We’d like to thank the 25 KM professionals who shared their challenges, experience and advice so generously. The topics covered in the discussion were: challenge of inexperience; what buy-in is and is not; where buy-in needs to come from; how to get support and buy-in; pitfalls; and, characteristics of effective knowledge managers.

Posted on 9 December 2015

This concept map catalogues all the elements of a KM communications strategy that we’ve found useful, with some ideas for messages, media and audiences. It is formatted for A3-size printing for easier reading.

Posted on 24 September 2007

Knowledge champions (otherwise known as KM Champions, Knowledge Activists, Knowledge Stewards, Knowledge Coordinators, KM Reps) perform an important role in distributing your KM messages and activities consistently across an organisation. In the earlier KM literature KM Champions were envisaged as senior level activists promoting KM at a strategic level. Very little guidance exists on the role of Knowledge Champions at the operational or line level. This paper is written to address that need. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the ACT-KM community in drawing up these guidelines, and the many lessons taught us by our clients. This document is in Word format for free adaptation to your local needs. Please acknowledge its source.

Posted on 18 April 2006