Collaborative innovation in China

 IBM’s Innovation Factory is going to be working with China Telecom to set up a research centre in Shanghai. What I find interesting is that the centre will be based around collaborative media and social technology, pulling in knowledge from not just the two partners but also their customers, suppliers and the rest of their extended human networks.

It will be fascinating to see how this works. Much of my experience in China suggests that Chinese employees still tend to be knowledge-hoarders by instinct; the market right now is still lending itself to job-hopping and the search for a better salary above all else, and that encourages talent to try to maintain its value by not sharing. I looked at this for my HRM course at Tsinghua two years ago, and the tendency hasn’t changed.

Getting back in the saddle

Last Thursday night I attended a seminar organized by the Information and Knowledge Management Society. It’s over a year since I went to one of their events, and I have to say it was a breath of fresh air! The seminar’s topic was Social Network Analysis, and was presented by Graham Durant-Law, a senior Knowledge Management practitioner who was visiting from Australia.

SNA is one of the topics that has fascinated me since I studied KM as part of my MBA; it’s a field that I’ve been involved in without realizing it for many years. The way things have developed for me over the past year mean that I haven’t really had the chance to do much work in the field, which has been a matter of some regret. Having attended this seminar, I feel really inspired to get back in the saddle and do something about that!

Graham’s presentation was followed by work in groups; I took the opportunity to discuss a personal project I’ve been thinking about that would depend heavily on SNA, and I got excellent feedback and suggestions from the other participants. Graham also made some suggestions that really sorted out some problems I’d envisaged with the implementation.

After this, I’m really looking forward to the next seminar, which will deal with taxonomy in Knowledge Management!

Tired Wired – more on the SG ‘TIA’

Possibly the least meaningful title ever used on this blog…

Anyway, further to my recent post on John Poindexter, the TIA, and Singapore, Dave Snowden has posted a response to, and clarification of the Wired article that led to my post. It explains what has really been happening.

Famous people visit, good and bad

Wow, it’s been busy – Jaron Lanier wasn’t the only big IT name passing through Singapore lately.

O’Reilly Radar blogger Nat Torkington has been here to talk to the IDA about how to foster tech startups. Don’t know whether he gave any public talks, but anyway it’s good that Singapore is talking to people like this.

On the other hand… also visiting has been Iran-Contra conspirator John Poindexter, who has been unveiling a local version of the Orwellian Total Information Awareness program. Naturally, as someone who believes in privacy and data protection, this deeply worried me when I first saw his name.

However, the Wired piece does cover how Singapore has good and valid reasons for doing this (extreme vulnerability to epidemics and terrorism) and – importantly – that they have taken care to safeguard privacy. That’s good to know. Also reassuring is the involvement of Dave Snowden, fellow Welshman and luminary in the Knowledge Management world. I’ve admired his work for several years, and saw him once in the staff club of NTU, where he’s based. I really must make an effort to get over there and meet him some time.

[x] is connecting [y]

My new job will be in the education sector. I think I’m going to be pondering the issues in this clip, Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, a lot.

(Found at Cyberpunk Review).

Daily del.icio.us

Kevin Lim writes on how to automate a daily post of your del.icio.us links. I’ll try it out; let’s see how it goes…

Getting a Whole New Mind

I’ve been meaning to read Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind for some time, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. Maybe I’ll pop to the library this weekend to get a copy – although I already have about eight other books on the go!

I’m thinking about it now because Shawn at Anecdote recently posted another article about it.

So, I’m fresh out of my MBA, with a new job that involves personal development and a lot of KM-related work. I have a personal project to develop, which will involve a lot of martial arts and marketing-related activity.

What would be MY entries under the “Six Skills”:

* design
* story
* symphony
* empathy
* play
* meaning

Thinking about the answers will be an interesting and useful exercise for me – but I’m not likely to post the answers here. Sorry!

The thing is, though, these are areas that I’ve always been reasonably strong in. Let’s not forget that it’s still important to know the other, left-brain, areas – even if they can be outsourced to someone who can do them cheaper. That’s OK with me. My MBA helped me get out of an undeserved (IMHO, anyway) pigeonhole as a ‘techie’. I’ll never be a professional accountant, but as a businessman I’ll understand someone who is far better now, after my MBA, than I would have before.

All of which is to say, let’s not rush too quickly to dismiss left-brain skills just yet…

Network and reputation management

I’ve posted a number of times on the growing importance of network management, and of personal brand and reputation development. Today’s RSS feeds bring a couple of interesting links on the subject: Stowe Boyd talks about a funny marketing campaign by a new careers site, Wurk.net. It’s a search engine, and directory, of careers-related sites and blogs. Interesting; I’ll have to explore it in more depth later. Fast Company have a piece on personal and career networks, and how they are becoming increasingly important for the young professional (and yes, I’m still young, darn it!). It also talks about the way that recruiting will change:

“In the future, [employers] aren’t going to advertise job openings anymore,” says Warren Bare, CEO and founder of Jobkabob, another job-matching service. “They’ll find you.”

And how (the right) employers find us if we aren’t actively managing our profile? Like most people, I google myself from time to time, which mostly turns up old usenet posts from 10 years ago, and mismatches from genealogical sites. I got concerned about online privacy fairly early on, so for a long time I only posted anonymously, or under pseudonyms. There are actually a number of very good reasons for doing this – not just to maintain privacy, but also because taking on a regular online persona allows us to pursue trains of thought and behaviours (not bad, just different to our normal ’self’) that can spur creativity. Momus has a good piece about this on his blog, and in his Wired column. Nowadays, I’m running this blog under my real name as a way to develop an online presence, and to aid network-building. I need to work a bit harder at it, maybe: the Fast Company article refers to a site, ZoomInfo, which provides filtered, relevant information on individuals’ online presence, for use by employers. I don’t show up – oops! I need to pay more attention to 12 Steps for business bloggers…