A Compound of Alchymie

Balanced Scorecard

As usual, I'm trying to read a number of business books at the same time. The latest addition to my bedside reading pile is 'Kaplan and Norton's 'Balanced Scorecard - Translating Strategy Into Action'. I've been aware of the Balanced Scorecard for quite a few years and though some clients do use it their engagement seems fairly shallow - possibly it's been forced on them by zealous senior executives. My interest stems from my current efforts to do some more joined-up thinking on the value of knowledge and intangibles in organisations. From what I've read so far it ties in quite well with both Karl-Erik Sveiby's and Leif Edvinsson's approaches to intellectual capital and I'm keen to draw some comparisons between the different approaches - Balanced Scorecard after all is much more prevalent that either Karl-Erik's Intellectual Asset Monitor (IAM) or Leif Edvinsson's IC Navigator.

Referring to the over reliance on financial measures in business Kaplan and Norton say:

"At its heart, an overemphasis on achieving and maintaining short-term financial results can cause companies to overinvest in short-term fixes and to underinvest in long term value creation, particularly in the intangible and intellectual assets that generate future growth."

And this of course is what intellectual capital is all about - exploring the realtive merits of investment in different intangibles in order to build long term value.

I will post an update once my research is complete but in the meantime Karl-Erik has already done a comparison between IAM and BS.

Knowledge and Innovation

Back in February I spoke at a London Knowledge Network event which ran in parallel with the British Women Inventors and Innovators Conference at the University of Greenwich. My presentation focussed on the links between effective information, knowledge and learning processes, and innovation. Innovation is currently high on many organisation's 'to do' lists but of course it's actually very difficult to be innovative. Innovation needs a special set of conditions to thrive and those conditions rarely exist in many of our industrial age organisations. A knowledge focussed approach can however be enormously useful in supporting innovation and I believe that some of the KM techniques can be particularly useful when used specifically to foster innovation. And they are certainly more useful than sending people on creativity workshops.

In addition to the conference there was also an exhibition of  new innovations by British women. One that particularly stood out was a new ergonomic approach to cookware - Celia Gates' sensual curvy handles have been attracting lots of coverage recently. She spoke before me at the LKN event and it was great to hear how she overcame much resistance to bring her idea to fruition. A theme that surfaced more than one during the day was that men make great inventors while women are better innovators.  I guess it depends on how you define invention and innovation?

ExLink: Handl Cookware

Technogeek or Technophobe?

I completed the recent short survey on Yahoo!  to establish where I was on the Technogeek/Technophobe continuum.  Happily I'm neither - just plain old Technormal:

Technormal
"Congratulations! You make the most of technology to lead a healthy up to date lifestyle and are fully in 2005. You've embraced the technical revolution but you've kept your feet on the ground. You're tech savvy and love it! The more you surf the more you enjoy being connected. You don't need an interpreter to tell your Wi-Fi from your WAP, but computers don't rule your life either. Naturally curious, you've learned to control your technology to take advantage of the web's benefits. You know the internet is not just for practical things in life not live - please can you change the spelling from live to life."

KM with less emphasis on the M

A few years ago whenever I mentioned knowledge management to a client I usually got a blank look in return. Things have changed considerably – people recognise the label but have widely differing views on what it means. This is understandable – ever since an early conference session with Karl-Erik Sveiby where he defined knowledge management (KM) as an oxymoron it has been clear that one thing KM was not going to be, was straightforward.

Most practitioners would agree that as awareness has grown so has confusion. This is understandable in that those new to the approach are clearly trying to fit it with their current world view while those who were there in the beginning have moved on considerably. To get a feel for these developments you only have to look at the KM view from someone like Dave Snowden – complexity theory, autopoetic systems, and social network analysis are some of the current hot KM topics.

The most common view of knowledge management though is little more than information management in a shiny new coat. There is much talk of knowledge bases, about sharing best practice and connecting with experts but these technology driven capabilities have been with us for years – they’ve just never been positioned as KM solutions before. It’s true that to some extent KM has re-vitalised the information and communications technology agenda but to see this as the purpose of KM is missing the point.

Going back to our oxymoron – the word ‘management’ is probably the key culprit. This implies a command and control model that sits uneasily with the whole concept of knowledge but  take a little time to think about how important knowledge is to the way we currently work and you will begin to understand why knowledge has crept into  almost all aspects of our 21^st century lives. The knowledge society, knowledge economy, knowledge companies, knowledge workers are all terms in common usage. Whether people actually understand what these terms mean is another matter but the fact that they exist indicates a growing awareness of the importance of knowledge as a key driver for organisational development.

So what does KM look like without the M? Depending upon your requirements it can look pretty similar - knowledge bases, CoPs, expert locators can all feature in your organisation’s approach to knowledge but dropping the M can open up entirely new views of the role of knowledge within your organisation.

Significantly, one of the most useful of these views is that pioneered by Karl Erik-Sveiby himself. His ‘intellectual capital’ model develops the idea of the knowledge organisation:

“..one must be able to see an organization as a knowledge organization, that is to see the business from the standpoint of knowledge, see it as consisting of nothing but knowledge in the broadest sense, and see that it is the manager’s job to manage and develop this knowledge.” 

From ‘The New Organizational Wealth – Managing and Measuring Knowledge Based Assets’, Karl-Erik Sveiby. You can read the Foreward to the latest edition (in Korean)  on Karl-Erik's web site.

I intend to develop this ‘view’ of KM and intellectual capital in future entries.