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 on 21 March 2001

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 on 1 July 2001

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 on 7 March 2000

Knowledge Management is one of the biggest buzz words to hit management practice in Singapore since the ISO 9001 bandwagon started four or five years ago. If, as a Training or HR Manager, you are hoping it will pass you by, you are sorely mistaken. The Singapore government is deeply committed to investing in the human capital of Singapore, and the concept of the “knowledge based economy” is almost a national mantra. Just do some sums: if the Productivity and Standards Board and the Skills Development Fund are committed to supporting half the workforce (approximately 1.2 million people) on the national Critical Enabling Skills Training (CREST) programme by the year 2003, at a maximum of $320 per person for each of seven modules, that is a commitment worth S$1.4 billion over 4 years.

Posted on 1 September 1999

This is a piece of research we did about 12 years ago, on KM Implementation Challenges. The case studies inside are constructed as learning games (“decision games” ) and we regularly use them in workshops to explore the implementation challenges and potential pitfalls in KM. Based on anonymised interviews with KM practitioners, they are still relevant today. Somehow, they never made it onto our blog, so here they are! 

23 March 2015

Most people treat PKM as if it’s a full suite of skills that everybody now needs to have: skills like identifying sources of knowledge, searching, navigating, analyzing, organizing, linking, mapping, converting back and forth between tacit (head) knowledge and explicit (written down) knowledge, relationship building skills, communication, presentation, knowledge packaging, and so on. But in fact, like most things, different people have different personality types, and different personality profiles in relation to their personal knowledge affinities and capabilities.

Posted on 23 April 2003

Narrative-Based KM Competency Framework

This video was made for the Cognitive Edge network as a mini-case study of using narrative techniques. It describes an iKMS (Information and Knowledge Management Society) project to develop a self-development competencies framework for knowledge managers in Singapore. We started with anecdote circles to collect stories of knowledge manager experiences, and from them and prior research on typical KM roles the participants built archetypes. Knowledge managers subsequently built "competency wheels" for each archetype using Dave Snowden's ASHEN framework as a base. The research was conducted by Awie Foong for iKMS, directed and supported by Patrick Lambe, and was published by iKMS in October 2008.

Team Knowledge: A Conversation with Gary Klein: Part I

This is a video podcast of a conversation between Gary Klein, Patrick Lambe and Cynthia Dominguez on 3 December 2007 in Singapore. The topic was on how teams tune into each other build and maintain their common ground, what kind of competencies they need to bring to teams, how a team culture affects its performance, how teams learn, and how they avoid error.

Team Knowledge: A Conversation with Gary Klein: Part II

This is a video podcast of a conversation between Gary Klein, Patrick Lambe and Cynthia Dominguez on 3 December 2007 in Singapore. The topic was on how teams tune into each other build and maintain their common ground, what kind of competencies they need to bring to teams, how a team culture affects its performance, how teams learn, and how they avoid error.