Is Faith important for Knowledge Management?

The answer for this post’s question is ‘yes’. However, here I am NOT talking about religious faith but other types of faith. I will explain:

1. Faith on yourself
In order to share the knowledge you possess in a proactive fashion (or even as a response to one’s request), you must trust that what you have to say or do is important, valid, and right. In other words, motivation for knowledge sharing comes first as a result of self-confidence.

2. Faith on others
In the case of knowledge sharing, it is very important to trust that others will not harm you or use the knowledge you provide in a way that you do not see fit. Otherwise, you will not feel comfortable enough for giving away the knowledge you have gathered.

3. Faith on the importance of being ethical
Ethics is essential in a KM setting. Here are some examples of ethical behavior towards knowledge sharing: a) recognizing what others do on your behalf, b) not applying the knowledge you gain from others to do something harmful or inappropriate, and c) avoid hiding the knowledge you possess if this is going to solve an important problem. Like these three, there are many other examples of ethical behavior. In an organizational level, it is very important that this kind of attitude is encouraged and valued.

Now, a quick compliment to my Dutch friends : )). Regarding ethical behavior, I trully admire the Nederlanders (as they call themselves). Although many people in this country do not believe in a supreme power (something like God), they do consider ethics as an essential part of life. For example, they generally respect individuality, tolerate racial differences, and consider poverty and violence as things that should be baned. This has made me rethink my previous assumption that morality was connected somehow with religious beliefs and practices. And I wish such ethical attitudes towards one another would be spread throughout the whole world!

In Italy...

Hey friends,

I guess you wouldn't believe me if I told you that I missed writing in this blog only because I couldn't post on it in the last three days... I am really getting adicted to this stuff!!! : )))

I am now in Trento, Italy, working with my research colleagues at IRST/SRA. They are really great! I missed so much seeing these friendly faces, more than I even realized until I met everyone again yesterday. : )) Trento gives me a very homy feeling, which is quite funny because I just spent 4 months here last year...

Anyway, enough with this "personal bla", what I really mean to say is that they are great, great researchers and many of them work on KM. So, I hope to gather new insights to discuss here with you in the next few days.

About Knowledge Managements opportunities

Here is a paragraph written by Lilia Efimova:
"However, much of knowledge management research and practice is focused at the organisational level, aiming to develop an environment where knowledge is created, shared and used, as well as implementing specific interventions that support these processes. In many companies, because "no one seems to own the problem of knowledge-worker performance" (Davenport, Thomas, & Cantrell, 2002: 25), the personal side of KM is often neglected: interventions and systems are designed and implemented without thinking about how they would match the practices and daily routines of individual knowledge workers. As a result, knowledge workers often perceive new KM activities as an overhead instead of making work easier (Davenport & Glaser, 2002)."

Now here is one written by myself:
"The first Knowledge Management Systems (KMSs) were centrally based and followed a top-down design approach. The organization managers, supported by knowledge engineers, collected and structured the contents of an organizational memory as a finished product at design time (before the organizational memory was deployed) and then disseminated the product, expecting employees to use it and update it. However, employees often claimed that the knowledge stored in the repository was detached from their real working practices. This led to the development of evolutionary methods, which prescribe that the basic KM system is initially developed and evolves proactively in an on-going fashion. However, most of the initiatives are still based on building central repositories and portals, which assume standardized vocabularies, languages, and classification schemes. Consequently, employees’ lack of trust and motivation often lead to dissatisfaction."

How many points in common can we find in the above text? LOTS IN COMMON, RIGHT? Well, now let me tell you that Lilia and I work only one building apart in the same University and we had to go all the way to Graz, Austria (i-know'04 conference) to meet each other. Well, I guess this says something about the lack of knowledge management in our University... but we have to agree that this kind of situation is not so uncommon to find in other places as well.

Now, think how many great opportunities may be lost due to poor care for KM... have I conviced you to start a KM project yet? Well, at least promise me you will think about it, ok? : ))

The colours of the fall...

There is a tree in front of my living room window and you wouldn't belive its colour! It is this bright, vivid red... just amazing! Well, only seeing it in a beautiful day like today (leaves moving with the wind against the blue sky) makes me happy!!!

I know this seems to be only sentimental bla, but in fact this has everything to do with Knowledge Management. How? Well, if we want to take most of our own knowledge and of the knowledge of those who are around us, we must keep ourselves motivated. And besides, we must be able to distinct what is really important from the minor things in life, because of course we want to focus on the important issues and forget the minor details.

The aesthetics of life is all we need to learn how to do the above. And this is everywhere in this planet, we just need to keep ourselves attentive enough to see. So, start asking yourself: what is beautiful for you? what would make you happy to see every morning? If necessary, take the longer path to work, knowing that you will be a little later but much happier and motivated.

You will definetely gain in productivity. And you will be a much more pleasant person to have around! : ))

Collablogging

Today, I am much more motivated to write! Perhaps because I've just had a very interesting conversation with my brother about blogs, collaboration and knowledge sharing. In fact, he also has his own blog, which I recommend: Engenho - Cafe moido a brasileira. He is a great software engineer! So, for those interested in Java programming, it's definetely worth taking a look at it. Only one thing: it's in Portuguese... oh well, nothing is perfect! : )

Anyway, I was telling him how much fun I've been having so far with Collablogging. I am not sure if you realized this yet but, for me, this is much more than a way to share knowledge. It is actually a real experiment for someone who defines herself as a Knowledge Management researcher: myself! : )). Anyway, by sharing my thoughts with you all, I'd like to get a feeling of what can or cannot be achieved by using blogs for KM purposes. Here is what I found so far:

• blogging is a great way to externalize your own knowledge, turning it from tacit to explicit. Who hasn't heard that saying that 'when you teach, you learn much more than your students'. The principle is simple: explicitating knowledge makes you think what is the best way to make it clear for others. In this process, you learn a lot about: what you know, what you do not know, how to express yourself, etc;
• blogging lets you to record the knowledge you have now for your own future reference. In other words, if you forget some needed information, you can always refer back to your blog to find it. Here, I have to say that the blogging technology needs to be much enhanced (with searching, filtering, among other functionalities) to make this reference process more efficient;
• blogging allows others to provide feedback on your thoughts, which in turn generates for you new knowledge about that specific topic -- this is actually the principle of collablogation!!!! : ))
• blogging works as some kind of informal copyright, because it is a dated record of what you think or say;
• blogging may give you more confidence on expressing your own ideas.

Well, this is what I have to say about collablogging so far... and these thoughts have been also a result of another kind of collaboration: a debate with my brother (Vitor) using MSN Messenger. I just love the Internet!!! How in the world this kind of interaction would be possible between me (in the Netherlands) and Vitor (in Brazil) without the big Net? That's why I strongly support the use of technology in KM and learning processes.

SCALE - Supporting Community Awareness, Learning, and Evolvement

Today I don't have much inspiration to write... I guess I am just too tired! I had too much work to do! So, I decided to do something that won't require too much of my brain now. : )

Here is a project in which I am involved and find very, very interesting:

SCALE - Supporting Community Awareness, Learning, and Evolvement

SCALE is about supporting Communities of Practice to share knowledge
by: a) proposing a consistent methodology to develop KM projects, and
b) by developing an integrated tool to support knowledge sharing
according to the Distributed Knowledge Management Approach.

The SCALE tool is based on the peer-to-peer approach, in which each
individual is allowed to keep control of their knowledge assets. Our
tool provides different ways of sharing knowledge, based on local
conceptualizations named context, semantic network visualization, and
pro-active agent-based recommendations.

To know more, please refer to: http://sra.itc.it/people/soller/SCALE/
Or else, you can also post me a note and I will tell you more!

I guess that's it for today folks! Good night!

Reference to Liu & Yu's paper

Hey, forgot to mention... If someone is interested to read the paper commented in my last post, please find it in http://www.cs.toronto.edu/pub/eric/STRAW01-R2A.pdf
It's worth checking it out. Have fun!

From Requirements to Architectural Design - Using Goals and Scenarios (Liu & Yu)

Today I'd like to comment this brilliant paper from Liu & Yu. I couldn't stop reading it and I think it is just a must for whoever is interested in Software Engineering and/or KM (business process) methodological support, like myself. Just check how well their use of goals is justified in the following paragraph: "In general, goals describe the objectives that the system should achieve through the cooperation of agents in the software-to-be and in the environment. It captures "why" the data and functions are there, and whether they are sufficient for achieving the high-level objectives that arise naturally in the requirements engineering process."

On the other hand, as the methodology proposed in my work also applies goals also for making explicit the objectives of humans and institutions involved in an organizational setting, I'd give a few more reasons for it:

- analysing human and institutional goals helps the business analyst to find inconsistencies among the real aims of an individual (or even a whole department) and the objectives that have been attributed to it by the organizational management;
- this analysis also allows us to find some unbalanced dependencies that may cause problems, such as the lack of motivation by one party to meet the goals delegated by another;
- the explicitation of human and institutional goals supports a kind of tracing back action, in case something goes wrong in the process, in order to find out why the clash occurred (not with the intention of punishing anyone, but rather aiming at correction of mistakes).

If you would like to learn more about the methodology we propose, please refer to the paper "Providing Knowledge Management Support to Communities of Practice through Agent-oriented Analysis. ", written in collaboration with Anna Perini and Virginia Dignum and presented at i-know'04.

Back to Liu & Yu's paper, I also found quite interesting the idea of combining scenarios and goals and this made me consider the possibility of applying use cases in our methodology. Maybe this is something worth discussing with Gerd, Virginia and Anna...

Re-planning about summaries

I am not sure how many of you agree with me but the idea about posting the summaries is not really so great after all, is it? I think last post is just too big to motivate anyone to actually read it. So, here is what I decided: from now on, I will just include my own thoughts about the publication (something like the section IDEAS THAT OCCURRED TO ME WHILE READING) and if anyone would like to have the summary, please just leave me a note with your email address and I will send you the word file, deal? I guess it's better like this!

Paper Summary: Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation (Nonaka & Takeuchi)

Warnings: (1) as this is a quite long post, I supressed the sections that I did not use in this summary. For the complete summary model, read the previous post; (2) if you are acquainted to this book chapter, please skip the main ideas and go straight to the section entitled "IDEAS THAT OCURRED DURING READING" (down this page) where I include my own comments on it.

TITLE: Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation
AUTHORS: Nonaka, Icujiro, Takeuchi, Hirotaka
DATE OF PUBLICATION: 1995
KEYWORDS: tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, knowledge conversion, knowledge spiral, enabling conditions for organizational knowledge creation (intention, autonomy, redundancy of information, creative chaos, requisite diversity).
LOCATION (WHERE IT CAN BE FOUND): chapter 2 (pp 56-94) of the book The Knowledge Creating Company, How Japanese Companies created the Dynamics of Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press. 1995. 284 p.

MAIN IDEAS
· In our theory of organizational knowledge, we adopt the traditional definition of knowledge as “justified true belief”. However (…), we highlight the nature of knowledge as “justified belief”. We consider knowledge as a dynamic human process of justifying personal belief toward the truth.
· Knowledge conversion is the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge. It should be noted that this conversion is a “social” process between individuals and not confined within an individual. There are four different modes of knowledge conversion: (1) from tacit knowledge to tacit knowledge, which we call socialization; (2) from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, or externalization; (3) from explicit knowledge to explicit knowledge, or combination and (4) from explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge, or internalization.
· Socialization is a process of sharing experiences and thereby creating tacit knowledge such as shared mental models and technical skills. Externalization is a process of articulating tacit knowledge into explicit concepts. It is a quintessential knowledge-creation process in that tacit knowledge becomes explicit, taking the shapes of metaphors, analogies, concepts, hypotheses or models. Combination is a process of systemizing concepts into a knowledge system. This mode of knowledge conversion involves combining different bodies of explicit knowledge. Reconfiguration of existing information through sorting, adding, combining and categorizing of explicit knowledge can lead to new knowledge. Internalization is a process of embodying explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge. It is closely related to “learning by doing”. When experiences through socialization, externalization, and combination are internalized into individuals’ tacit knowledge bases in the form of shared mental models or technical know-how, they become valuable assets.
· When tacit and explicit knowledge interact, an innovation emerges. This interaction is shaped by shifts between different modes of knowledge conversion, which are in turn induced by several triggers (see fig. 3-3). First, the socialization mode usually starts with building a “field” of interaction. Second, the externalization mode is triggered by meaningful “dialogue and collective reflection”, in which using appropriate metaphor and analogy helps team members to articulate hidden tacit knowledge that is otherwise hard to communicate. Third, the combination mode is triggered by “networking” newly created knowledge and existing knowledge from other sections of the organization, thereby crystallizing them into a new product, service, or managerial system. Finally, “learning by doing” triggers internalization.
· The role of the organization in the organizational knowledge-creation process is to provide the proper context for facilitating group activities as well as the creation and accumulation of knowledge at the individual level. In this section we will discuss five conditions required at the organizational level to promote the knowledge spiral [: intention, autonomy, fluctuation and creative chaos, redundancy and requisite variety, all defined in this chapter (not in this summary)].
· We present an integrated, five-phase model of the organization knowledge-creation process, using the basic constructs developed within the theoretical framework and incorporating the time dimension into our theory. The model, which should be interpreted as an ideal example of the process, consists of five phases: (1) sharing tacit knowledge; (2) creating concepts; (3) building an archetype; and (5) cross-leveling knowledge. (…) an archetypes, which can take the form of a prototype in the case of “hard” product development or an operating mechanism in the case of “soft” innovation, such as a new corporate value, a novel managerial system, or an innovative organizational structure. The last phase extends the knowledge created in, for example, a division and to others in the division, or across to other divisions, or even to outside constituents in what we term cross-leveling of knowledge.

IDEAS THAT OCURRED DURING READING
· I disagree with the opinion of some that the knowledge spiral proposed by Nonaka & Takeuchi goes toward centralization. According to Nonaka, knowledge can only be created through a social process of interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge, i.e. each
individual is seen as having knowledge to be shared with others within the organization. He then proposes the spiral, showing how these knowledge types are converted from one to the other with each other (4 conversion modes), and how they are shared in different levels within the organization (individual,group,organization,inter-organization). I
don't see why this is central at all.
· In many points, Nonaka sets the basis for my work on Agent-mediated Knowledge Management (done in collaboration with Gerd Wagner, Virginia Dignum and Anna Perini). For instance, when he mentions that intention and autonomy are essencial for knowledge creation. However, he does say that intention, in this case, is an activity to be performed by
management and we consider both the organzation's intention and the intentions of each of the other actors involved.

FUTURE READERS RECOMENDATION
It is a good chapter for those who are starting to work on KM because it is rich on definitions and on references to other interesting work. It motivates discussion on: knowledge types, how knowledge sharing occurs in practice, and knowledge creation process.

Sharing personal summaries

I came up with an idea for start to fill up this blog and motivate some good debates: I will start sharing here some of my personal summaries. I've made so far over 100 summaries of interesting publications related to my PhD work. The first thing I'd like to share, then, is the model I use for these summaries, which end up being very, very useful everytime I write papers/chapters. Special thanks to prof. Orivaldo Tavares that shared this model with me still during my undergraduate studies in Computer Science.

So here it goes a commented model for you (my comments are after //):

Paper Summary Model

TITLE:

AUTHORS:

INSTITUTIONS:

DATE OF PUBLICATION:

KEYWORDS: //if the paper does not bring any, I make some myself for my own reference

LOCATION (WHERE IT CAN BE FOUND): //here I add not only the complete reference but also some info of where I can find it, e.g. in my computer folder PhD/Papers/KM, reference C34.8 of the UT library...

1 – MAIN IDEAS //here I write in topics the text parts that I highlight while reading the paper

2 – POSITIVE ASPECTS

3 – NEGATIVE ASPECTS

4 – I DID NOT UNDERSTAND

5 – IDEAS THAT OCURRED DURING READING //this is one of the most important sessions because here we can add our own thoughts about the publication. What does this publication trigger in my mind? How is this paper/book/speech related to other summaries I have? How can it help my own work or my own understanding of how things work?

6 – PAPER EVALUATION --> marks from 0 to 10 //this one I almost never use...
6.1 – PERTINENCY
6.2 – ORIGINALITY
6.3 – TECHNICAL WRITING (PRESENTATION)
6.4 – RELEVANCY
6.5 – GENERAL EVALUATION

7 – FUTURE READERS RECOMENDATION //this section is important because you can indicate if the publication is best for novices or experts, when it should be read (also for your own reference in the future) and so on...

Some thoughts about expectation management

Today I was thinking about how much our likes and dislikes depend on our own expectations of things, places, or people. I guess everybody has experienced something similar with this: that big Hollywood production you were waiting for is finally in the movies and you can't wait to see it! So, you call your friends and make sure you have tickets for the big premiere. Then, what a disappointment: the movie was terrible!!! Has this happened to you? Or else, perhaps the opposite, something like: your parents insist that you attend a party in the weekend and you end up going just to please them. But when you get there, what a surprise: nice people, good food, great music... what a nice night!

The kinds of situations mentioned above lead us to the conclusion that all depends on expectation. Then, wouldn't it be smart from us not to expect anything? I guess the answer to this one has to be 'yes'... , this could save a lot of relationships, and besides, people would probably live much happier without expectations !!! but then, we come to a rather difficult question: how can we manage our own expectations?

As nowadays I cannot separate anymore my thoughts about anything at all from my work thoughts, I imediately began to wonder how much expectations can influence our behavior when collaborating and sharing knowledge. I think it has a greater impact than we can estimate! At least intuitively, you will more gladly collaborate/share knowledge if you expect to get something in return. But I guess what we sometimes fail to see is that our main gains comes as a direct result of this collaborative attitude. It is impossible to grasp how much we learn only by sharing what we know with others. Many people recognize that teaching is the best way of learning. Through interaction with others, we are able to learn much more than simply the content of the collaboration, such as: how to speak clearly, how to listen carefully, what kinds of behaviors to take or avoid... the list is endless.

Well, guys, it's quite late and although I am still excited about my new blog, I should definetely get some sleep... Hope you weren't expeting more from me today. Have a great Sunday!

First Timer...

This is my first blog post ever. And as in every first time, I feel this kind of butterfly feeling in the stomach... Now, there is this blank form waiting for me to type... but there is a bigger blank in my mind... So, I guess the only thing that really occurs to me now is explain what led me to create this blog in the first place.

I got acquainted to blogs in the Summer of 2003, when a co-worker of mine was working on one. But it wasn't before this Summer, after meeting and talking to Lilia Efimova that I decided to have a blog myself.The fact is that I am always interested in web mediated collaboration and knowledge sharing!!! It is not a coincidence that these have been the topics of my studies/work for the past 7 years. So, my main objectives here are:

• finding nice collaborators (many will ask: more? yes, of course... the more, the better);
• trigger interesting debates about knowledge management, unintentional learning, and collaboration.

Not too bad for a first timer, right? : ))) Hopefully, I will be more inspired in the next one.