By Oscar Berg, Future Office Evangelist
September 13, 2010 - 4:20 AM
71% agree that it is easier to locate "knowledge" on the web than to find it within their internal systems.
This is a really interesting question: Why is it that many of us find it easier to find stuff that is relevant for our work on the web than in our internal systems?
Here's my answer.
1. Because the things you’re looking for are there (on the web) in the first place
“Technology is shifting the power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are in control.”
Rupert Murdoch, Global Media Entrepreneur
If the thing you’re looking for does not exist in the first place, how could you possibly find it?
On the web, anyone can create and share anything they like with anyone. There is no central “authority” that decides what should be created and shared and what shouldn’t. The planned (command) economy of the Soviet Union wasn’t able to anticipate and satisfy all the different needs of the citizens, nor can a central team within an enterprise anticipate and satisfy all the different needs of its employees. A knowledge intensive business needs to operate much more like a market economy where the decisions about what content is to be created, shared and used are made by the knowledge workers based on their individual interests, tasks and situation rather than by a centrally created plan. The knowledge workers need to own their own factors of production, just like consumers do on the social web. If they do, they will be able to create and share content that might be relevant and useful to their peers.
Information abundance is something we can learn to deal with. Information scarcity will simply kill us.
2. Because it’s not siloed
"Most organizations believe they have much more freedom of action and much more ability to shape their future than they actually do, and evidence that the ecosystem is changing in ways they cannot control usually creates considerable anxiety, even if the change is good for society as a whole."
Clay Shirky
If you ask me, the whole point of the web is to make information and experiences flow to anyone who might find them useful and valuable. Unlike many enterprise applications, most content published on the web was not created to be stored (recorded) and managed, but rather to be shared and used. Publishing content on the web is about making accessible to any user who might need it. Instead of using native formats we use standard formats which allows the content to be syndicated and reused in new contexts. Every piece of content has a URL and can be linked to from anywhere. Silos can still be created, but the technology itself does not create them.
3. Because we’re all working together to make things easier to find and discover
"The solution to information overload is more information – as long as it is metadata."
David Weinberger
As we also share information about the things we do (tagging, linking, rating, commenting, connecting, viewing, bookmarking…) with other people and applications, this information is used to organize content and make it findable. We can also use it to make sense of the information and experiences that the content carries. On the web, all contributions count and help make the content intelligent enough find us. Web applications are mining this information, extending it and helping us find things we are looking for and discover things we didn’t know we were looking for.
To sum up
In an age where our work environments are becoming more and more complex, disconnected and virtual, I personally believe that our awareness of (and connection to) the relevant stuff that's happening in our work environments and the findability of content and people are absolutely essential to knowledge worker productivity, innovation and employee engagement. Exploring and taking advantage of any new and better ways of doing that is what will keep businesses abreast of their competition. The Social Web (or rather The Social Internet) is leading the way in this respect, and businesses need to learn to keep up with it.
Rate Post
You need to log in to rate blog posts.
Click here to login.
This post and comment(s) reflect the personal perspectives of community members, and not necessarily those of their employers or of AIIM International
