Innovation. Incubation. Growth

 BITS, Pilani recently announced that students and faculty would be allowed to take a year of to go and build their own startups (read the article here).  This seems like a brilliant idea to create greater institute-industry collaboration.  At the same time this is likely to foster innovation too. This also reminded me of my days at 3i Infotech.  PREMIA, the insurance software, had established itself as a market leader in the Middle East and Africa, and plans were afoot to expand its footprint to Europe and the USA.  This vision meant that we would have to scale up significantly, both in terms of people and technology.   Here’s how we went about it:

1.      Aavishkar: An innovation forum with a contest was launched to get people to work on technological aspects that would enhance functional and technical capabilities, create integrations to third-party applications, and mobility applications.  Enthusiastic participants offered several innovative ideas, some of which were incremental, while there were some  game-changing entries too.

2.      PREMIA University: We also figured out that we would need to create a huge resource pool to support the development and implementation efforts.  PREMIA University was set up with the intention of creating a resource pool that would ensure a continuous stream of students who were familiar with the domain, and were familiar with PREMIA.   A PREMIA lab was set up at VIT, and we spent time teaching students the nuts and bolts of software implementation, including domain knowledge.   

Both these initiatives helped us scale quickly.  The PREMIA Lab we set up at some of the colleges went on to create job opportunities for students, who later went on to join some of our clients in the Middle East and Africa.  The Great Resignation has created this need to increase interaction with universities and colleges, to support and nourish innovation so that companies are able to scale up their productivity, and benefit from the huge opportunities that technological advancements are bringing up.  The BITS experiment seems to be a step in the right direction, and it would be good to see industry also step up and meet this initiative half-way.

 The Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA), keeping pace with advances in technology announced add-on covers to the Motor – Own Damage Policy; The Pay-as-you-Drive and Pay-How-You-Drive are two add-on covers intended to harness technology giving insurers the ability to customize their motor insurance.  Version 1.0 of these add-ons are based merely on declarations made by customers and providing information on odometer readings.  However, given the advances in automobile telematics, Pay-as-you-drive and Pay-how-you-drive will soon become more than just catch-words.

On-board Diagnostic and Reporting devices, GPS, and wireless communication capabilities come together to provide the ability to compute premiums based on vehicle usage, driver behavior, location, and vehicle condition. This opens the possibility for dynamic pricing of premiums based on how often owners use their vehicles. Where owners have more than one vehicle, it also gives the opportunity to apportion premiums across these vehicles based on how often each of these vehicles are used.

On-board technology can also provide information on routes through which the vehicle passes, speed at which the vehicle is driven, distance covered, and other parameters such as wear-and-tear on brakes and clutch. This makes it possible for  insurers to get even more accurate pricing algorithms that reflect the true risk to the insurance company.  Customers also benefit from customized premiums instead of the one-size-fits-all premiums that are prevalent today.

With ADAS technology getting more sophisticated in automobiles, we will have many more parameters that can be tracked for ensuring safer driving habits and adjusting premiums according to driver behavior.  For example, Heads-up-display ensures that drivers can keep his eyes on the road and not be distracted by digital information being pushed to them. It may soon be possible to correlate this data with information being passed on from wearable devices to track driver alertness, stress levels, and the like. Research has shown that installation of safety and monitoring devices improved driver behavior.  The day will not be far off, when machines will be reporting on our performance, rather than drivers reporting on car performance!

“Thank you, Mark!  It was a pleasure having you at the wheel.  You did not get distracted – the phone was on silent during the drive, you changed radio stations only once, and overall your attention to what was happening on the road was good.  You did brake hard once at the Metro Square Junction.  That could have been avoided had you slowed down as you approached the junction.  Nevertheless, overall the car handling was also good. Air pressure and other vehicle parameters are also good.  Car maintenance has also been good. Overall, you deserve a 4.5.  Good Night.”

This might very well be a report that will go out to the owner at the end of each day!  Some of that data may also go to the insurance company.  And if he has been speeding, the Motor Vehicle Department may also get notified.  Interesting times ahead!

Solsten has been at the leading edge of building intelligent solutions for businesses by collating data from various sources and providing visual insights that allow businesses to make better decisions.  For more information, get in touch with us

To "Like" or Not to "Like"

"To be, or not to be..." is the opening phrase from Shakespeare's play, Hamlet that has become one of the most widely quoted phrases in the English language.  Ever since the advent of Facebook and other Social Media tools, the one thing that pops up in everybody's mind is "To Like, or Not to Like…”.  It seems to be the simplest way of acknowledging one’s presence on social media; apart from ensuring that a similar thumbs up is reciprocated on your Facebook page when you post something!  But do all these Likes and Comments add up to anything?
Enterprise Social Media, as it is known when such tools are used in organizations to crowd-source ideas, generate opinions, and solicit solutions to problems also have these ubiquitous “Like” buttons to record user participation.  However, what do these translate to, and how one can make meaningful measurements about the impact it has on creating and disseminating knowledge within the organization is a subject of intense study in all organizations.  Here are a few measurements commonly used to analyse traffic on your social media page:
Page Likes: This includes the number of people who “Like”, “Comment”, “Tag”, “Share” or in some manner indicate that they have viewed the content you have posted on your social page.   When any of these actions are performed, this invariably serves up as a notification on the user’s page, thus allowing people who follow this to be notified of content that may be of interest to them.  This is especially useful, when someone is following a topic of interest.  For example, as a curator of several topics on Social Learning Theory, I compile lists of content from various sources that are of interest on the subject.  When I create several lists of such topics (categorized based on complexity, or topic), it becomes easy for someone who is following me to gain access to such content.  The count of such Page likes, their frequency, and half-life are of interest – they provide insight into the longevity and importance of a topic, often giving clues about the shelf-life of some topics.   Of special interest is the “Viral reach” – an indicator of how far and wide the content has spread.  A topic of organizational importance spreads across the entire organization, whereas a topic that is of interest to a limited circle spreads only within that circle.  When such a topic moves across circles, it is an indicator that a new idea has possibly been generated.
I have used the term “Page Likes” in a generic manner.  This could be a comment or reply to a post, or a tag, a share or any such action that can be performed when you post content.  Similarly, each of these actions could individually spawn several measures, many of which when seen in perspective, can provide valuable insight into the nature of collaboration that occurs within an enterprise.  For example, in an enterprise some of the measures that are of value could be:
·         The number of employee-to-employee relationships spawned through various knowledge sharing activities
·         The re-use rate of frequently accessed content
·         The capture of key expertise – key concepts that make the transformation from tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge.
·         The dissemination of knowledge to appropriate individuals – here the definition of “appropriate” could be nebulous and depend on specific scenarios.  However, the general intent is that when a content is used in specific context, then it is considered to have reached the appropriate individual.
·         The number of new ideas generated – captured in specific forms, or deduced from new projects that are created with the key concept
·         The number of new lessons learned and best practices created – identified by changes in Package of Practice, or discussions in Communities of Practice, or content which find their way into structured lessons
·         New case studies that are presented based on experience shared
·         The number of apprentices one mentors – the earlier concept of a lesson portfolio or lists that are maintained and accessed by employees with a lower skill or competence level
Several of these measures can eventually be tracked to operational measures – those that define business performance.  This in turn provide some indication of the impact knowledge management processes have on organizational performance.  However, there is a need to understand that business performance measures are usually far more complex in terms of the factors that affect them, and any correlation can at best be tenuous.  However, over longer periods of time, it is possible to empirically ascribe significant weightage to knowledge and learning initiatives on the overall impact in the business.  In the short term, specific instances have clearly been identified which have provided quantum breakthroughs in performance – either in the form of cost reduction, improved productivity, or entirely new products and services.   

Meaningful measures in Knowledge Management #Knowledge-Management #Knowledge-metrics #enterprise-social-media 

And now The Mentalist shares his wisdom...

“Long before we stuffed knowledge into graphs and charts, we used older, and in some cases more entertaining ways to remember things.  Grids, Lists and Classification is a nice way of organizing things.  But it is not the way the world works; and it is certainly not the way the brain works.” ~ Patrick Jane in “The Mentalist”

Predictive Analytics and Big Data are the buzz words making the rounds today, as organizations – especially online organizations try to get better at predicting customer tastes and preferences.  The entire supply-chain then bends backwards trying to fulfil the prophecy, and works overtime making and stocking the shelves with what has been forecast.  In an earlier post, I had mentioned about the over-dependence on data – grids, lists, charts and graphs – the elusive hunt for that pattern which reveals how a whole host of people are thinking or what is influencing their purchase decisions.  No doubt, all of this is very useful. Today, the ability to collect, collate and analyse data from so many different sources has gotten better.  However, I suspect the ability to interpret this in a meaningful manner – has somewhat diminished – decision makers are trying to replace the critical element of personal knowledge, emanating from skills and experience with mechanically interpreted data.

So, I am drawn into wondering how personal knowledge that emanates from skill and experience can coexist with the interpretations and conclusions that we draw from charts and graphs.  Do they predict the same thing – or are they too many variables for either of them to be reasonably accurate.  More importantly, how can the two work together to improve the ratio of successful predictions.  Like the apocryphal story about the old worker who charges $100 to fix a boiler by tapping it with a  hammer (read that here) where personal knowledge is shown as being extremely important, to the other story about Wal-Mart placing diapers next to beer because sales patterns revealed increase in sales (read it here) where analytics is shown to be the hero – we are left wondering where the twain can meet.

Personal knowledge – that intricate mix of learning, practice, sharing and experiencing – is what goes into creating organizational knowledge.  The ability of the expert to share that knowledge in a vivid and memorable manner enables the organization to embed that knowledge – institutionalize it.  In a similar manner, when patterns emerge from the way the organization interacts with its ecosystem, the ability to identify it, and make it available to the expert to create another memorable story is what analytical tools should become good at.  A picture is worth a thousand words – they say; with data visualization getting better by the day, it should be possible to create memorable images that then become stories that get embedded as part of organization’s knowledge. 

Have you come across any graphs or charts that have helped you change the way you work?

Knowledge Sharing - Lessons from Grey's Anatomy

“Dr. Richard, today’s lecture day…and I have one open spot”.

I had been idly surfing channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon, when for no particular reason I paused to see what this all about.  It was a scene from the American medical drama television series Grey’s Anatomy stopped me in my tracks.  It seemed like it was right out of some Knowledge Management lecture, that I was tempted to sit and watch more.  Here are some interesting insights and thoughts that occurred to me as I watched this episode.

“You brought back lecture day?”  

Probably an age-old custom of this hospital which quietly disappeared as people became too busy to learn.  So, Dr. Richard seems rather incredulous when he is offered a slot to speak – which incidentally happens to be his “swan song” lecture.  Very often, good initiatives that were intended to create knowledge, promote best practices, and stimulate collaboration peter off into meaningless ritual – more because of apathy than because there is nothing to be gained from it.  The very senior management that initiated such good practice within the organization often end up sabotaging it by pulling out people from such activity, thereby sending a strong signal that it is after all “not that important”.  Of course the flip side to it is just that – it becomes a ritual – something to be gotten over and done with – the inability to inspire people to tell a good story often rings the death knell for such initiatives.

·         “We are a teaching hospital.  We learn by doing.  We can also…should also learn from others’ experiences.  Their mistakes saves you mistakes…their losses saves you losses…their victories will inspire yours. “

Every organization needs to have some form of formal learning mechanism; be it classroom led lectures, webinars, blended learning models or a pot-pourri of other learning technologies, the one sure-fire way to ensure that the lessons learned from an organization’s experience need to be shared so that everyone can learn and benefit from it.  With a rapidly ageing workforce, especially in some of the older industries, a lot of knowledge that was gained through the experience of people who have done the same kind of tasks for over 20 to 30 years seems to be going away.  In the medical field, for example, where doctors could just look at patients and make an intelligent diagnosis, today’s physicians need the aid of scans and images, blood samples and what have you, to make a tentative guess of what the probably symptom could be.  How can organizations preserve that expertise and skill gained from the experience of so many years of work?

"Eyes forward and pay attention. If you are caught dozing you get chalk on your face. Ask Dr Yang! my aim is exceptional.  If you answer right you get a chocolate! "

Although Dan Pink may disagree, at least during the initial stages, the carrot and stick approach often is quite a strong driver to ensure that there is sufficient participation in such initiatives.  While, of course, as can be seen, chocolates are seen more as a means to make it interactive and fun, rather than sit back and snooze off without getting caught.  The other interesting aspect is that Dr. Miranda Bailey makes it very interactive by inviting the audience to become real characters in her story.  As the story unfolds we see other doctors actually trying to guess how the story would end.  Goes without saying that for knowledge to get strongly embedded a good story that can hold it together is an important aspect.

"Single most important step in the treatment process…patient history…thank you. Catch…"

Dr. Miranda Bailey quizzes the audience on what they think is the most important aspect of diagnosis.  Knowledge is about knowing…and what better way to know than to understand what has happened.  In business parlance, that would translate to looking at the information available so we get a measure of the issue on hand.  Quite often, this will also involve going back in time to identify trends and patterns that could indicate what could potentially be the problem.  This, in essence, is where experience meets data – where the numbers tell the story which forms on the basis of experience and skill….more about this another 

   “…..every test I could think of – negative.  I did what I told you all to do when you are stuck.  I hit the books. I hit them hard"

A good knowledge repository is like “sitting on the shoulder of giants”.  In present day context, knowledge repositories enable two aspects of knowing – it connects people to people – helps you identify the experts; it also connects people to content – enables you discover content.  When an organization’s knowledge base is organized well around a well-defined taxonomy, then discovering content, connecting content to content, and people to content becomes easy.  It makes the prospect of “hitting the books hard” a pleasurable exercise.

 "If you looked further and talked to the patient…your patient who has been sliced nine ways to Sunday has porphyria…you know the difference between you and me…I learned."

As organizations get adaptive and responsive, they are building a knowledge ecosystem that brings in all players in the ecosystem to collaborate and come up with a solution.  The customer (in this case the patient) is often the one best equipped to provide you with inputs and insight that could lead to innovation and process / product improvement.  Keeping the communication lines open and collaborating with the customer is as much if not a more important aspect of knowledge sharing than any other I can think 

"Good Morning! Once upon a time long before I was chief of surgery, I was a resident…just like you.  You learn from everything in your residency. But you don’t realize how much you learn from each other. Look around…the biggest influences in your life are sitting next to you…in this room"

The one who shares knowledge best, is the one who can tell a story well.  And here, we have Dr. Richard telling a compelling story – and even better – exhorting the doctors to rely on each other, share ideas and collaborate.  The biggest influences in your life, are after all the people you get to see every day, and spend quite a lot of time with.  If you cannot rely on them to enhance your skill and experience, who else will be able to do that.  The most important lesson in knowledge sharing is about getting your team and your colleagues to inspire your victories…and learn from your losses.  This is clearly a message that needs to be driven home strongly in every organization that intends to 

The Hippocratic oath (The declaration of  Geneva)

This aspect of knowledge sharing I see whenever I interact with microfinance and self-help groups.  The self-help groups and joint liability groups develop a strong sense of sisterhood (more than 90% of borrowers are women)! J  And one way they do this is to wear uniforms and take a pledge at every group meeting.  Over time, this helps create a strong sense of identify and also helps in bonding.  While the Doctor’s oath, is slightly different, it sort of reinforces the inherent need to practice their profession with conscience and dignity.   

Watching this episode I got the impression that there were several important lessons one could take away and it touched upon the essence of Knowledge Management.  It also brought to fore the art of storytelling as a key tool of Knowledge sharing. Do you know of any other tele serial from which there were some nice knowledge nuggets you took away?   

Note: Grey’s Anatomy is an American medical drama television series.  You can find more information about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey%27s_Anatomy . This was Episode 15 of Season 6 titled Time Warp. 

Smoke on the water

The river, as it meanders through the plains gathers momentum, and then falls from great heights crashing down on the rocks below creating a misty spray; this process effectively transforms a small part of the gushing river to its almost elemental state of water droplets. They soon gather themselves and continue their journey downstream.

Observing this phenomenon at Hogenakkal, I was reminded of a question someone asked me recently, on how tacit knowledge becomes explicit in an organization? In other words, when does personal knowledge of an individual become organizational knowledge? In his magnum opus, Personal KnowledgePolanyi talks about the 'knowledge continuum' between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge.

Knowledge can be categorized into three broad categories based on how it impacts business:

• Process-related
• Organization and Culture-related
• Tools (Information technology)

Broadly speaking, all business performance is streamlined into tasks, procedures, processes with measures to determine how it is impacting the business. For example, revenue v/s target is an indication of how close the business is towards achieving its sales objectives. The underlying processes provide the mechanism to achieve that, which in today's world, for the most part is executed through tools (CRM / ERP, etc). So, we also measure process performance to assess the efficiency or effectiveness of the process. The productivity of the personnel who execute these processes are also measured to enable improvement in their performance.

The second aspect relating to organization and culture is largely defined by:

• Skills and level of mastery
• Work environment
• Training and Development
• Motivation factors

Post-industrial era has seen a large change in the work environment, and the behavioral characteristics of the workforce. A recent Gallup report described the current workforce to consist of more than 40% of knowledge workers, which is growing every year. The standard motivational factors that motivated industrial era workers do not work in this environment any longer. Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, talks of the death of Management principles that were based on Taylor's measurement techniques, largely because there is less and less work that is monotonous and requires just a pair or arms or legs.

As we have seen, culture has also been significantly influenced by Technology and tools that have helped in breaking silos and bridging chasms - creating the ability to collaborate across boundaries. Tools come with integral collaboration capability and workflows that support seamless involvement of people across tasks. 

So, how can the impact of KM be measured on the organization?

• The impact of Knowledge on the business process, as measured by metrics which determine underlying causes for the change in business measures
• The inter-relation of these underlying causes which can be attributed to change in skills, work environment, learning and motivation factors
• The impact of tools in enabling change in culture - creating a collaborative and connected community

In the absence of clear metrics that link business performance to changes in process, the impact of implementing Knowledge Management in an organization on creating greater cohesion, collaboration and ability to reach out to a larger community will have to be used as an indirect measure on the overall improvement in the business.

For example:

• How can we relate activities at the two ends of the knowledge spectrum - a user accessing a procedure document or content in the knowledge repository to tacit knowledge which is measured as conversations that occur in the collaborative work-space;
• Or the ability of the Knowledge environment to bridge the transition from personal knowledge to organizational knowledge by connecting a seeker of knowledge to an expert on the subject
• measuring the decibel levels in a community or discussion forum to associated change in processes - which result from the community making innovative changes in the way the business process is executed

These by themselves will have no direct impact on business performance. However, they are the cogs in the wheels which turn bigger wheels which result in generating huge momentum and force. Viewed in isolation, it may not be possible to determine their end impact, but recognizing the role in the overall work environment will definitely help in ensuring that organizations organize themselves towards a knowledge-driven strategy for growth and sustainability.

So back to my original question: at what point does personal knowledge become organizational knowledge? I think the SECI model proposed by Nonaka provides a framework in which to understand this transformation. Technology and the rapid adoption of social media tools in the work-place has enabled us understand this phenomenon better.

What do you think?

It’s (knowledge about) the Customer, Stupid!

 

"Salesforce CEO admits 'social enterprise' pitch didn't work. Apparently no one knew what 'social enterprise' meant – not even the guys who coined the term." (http://www.zdnet.com/salesforce-ceo-admits-social-enterprise-pitch-didnt-work-7000023336/)

This article by Rachel King for Between the Lines
caught my attention for its validation of a fundamental premise – that the much-hyped term would do little to push the case for business unless it could deliver value in tangible terms. A tool's value would be determined by whether it was fit-for-purpose. The problem with most "me"-centric terms is that they get caught up in the narcissistic web of looking at how they become the centre of attention. And in the process fail to meet their raison d'être – to serve the customer.

Marc Benioff has moved on to a new term – the Internet of Customers. And at least this time, the focus is on the customer – and hopefully, this coinage will probably have a longer and more useful lifespan than the declaration at Dreamforce 2011. It has become quite clear that collaboration and social media tools without any specific purpose do not really end up being very useful knowledge tools. While there may be traction in terms of getting people to create some chatter, the real value that one gets from providing direction to the conversation is missing.

I think it is this perspective that Marc Benioff seems to have gotten right the second time around, with the launch Salesforce One, and the "Internet of Customers" pitch. Here, clearly, the focus is away from product-centric statements that highlight messaging prowess, and instead focuses on what it can do for the customer. This was highlighted during a recent conversation with my good friend Sukumar Rajagopal, when he spoke about bringing "purpose" into the equation when implementing KM initiatives at Cognizant. From the initial thrust of generating a buzz – primarily through getting people to participate in social media, the focus shifted towards innovation as the reason for KM activities. This clearly ups the ante in terms of engaging people in conversations that have a clear purpose. What also becomes apparent is that it is not about the tool or the employee – it is about his participation in making a difference to the customer. The interesting aspect is that this also enables performance measurement. We are able to clearly identify if the KM initiative is headed in the right direction.

How well-defined is the purpose of your KM initiative? Share your feedback.