Changing Nature of Work

Knowledge Management

People today are less content to watch, listen and
passively consume information. A new era has
spawned a collective ambition to create and actively
engage with all forms of content. As more people
are empowered to produce and share photos, music,
video and writing for personal and business use,
the need to manage all this information has become
a hot issue. Information management is one aspect
of knowledge management.
The next wave of knowledge management systems
will emphasize “know-who” rather than “know-how”
or “know-what.” The objective is to identify valuable
and relevant connections for people and let them
take action. Connect people who should be
connected.

HP Brand Innovation Lab. Create experiences people love.™

“From the first accidental wiener roast on a prehistoric
savannah, we’ve understood things by telling stories.
It’s through stories that we understand how
the world works.”

Quote David Weinberger, Background

Small Pieces Loosely
Joined: A Unified Theory In the 1990s, companies looking for ways to
of the Web, 2002 capitalize on past experience, to “know what they
know,” began to set up vast, centralized electronic
repositories to store knowledge. This new system
presented many challenges, and most companies
failed in their attempts to capture and use
knowledge advantageously.
retrieved in the same way simple data can, and
often requires human explanation before it can
be applied in a new context.
New ways of thinking and advanced tools are now
reviving knowledge management with a sharpened
focus on how people actually learn, share and create.

In their experience with knowledge management

(KM) systems, most companies quickly learned
that knowledge—layered, experiential, complex
and often “messy,”—can’t be captured, stored or

Information as a River
TechTV’s Catalog of Tomorrow, 2002

Changing Nature of Work Knowledge Management HP Confidential 2

 Current
Monitoring knowledge flow Can transparency and
privacy coexist? In a networked environment, every-
thing we do can be monitored. Many companies
want to use this capability to compile data—what
information is being shared and by whom—in order
to improve workflow. They know the standard org
chart doesn’t necessarily indicate those who most
influence decision making and knowledge sharing.
A current big issue involves encouraging employees
to work transparently. Some examples include:
• Reality mining – A study by MIT in 2004 found
80 percent of work time is spent in spoken conver-
sation, and many pieces of critical information
are transmitted in this unstructured, serendipitous
fashion. How to expand digital data mining
(monitoring e-mail and IM) to include these casual
face-to-face conversations? MIT says the answer is
in a new form of data mining they call reality
mining: detecting tone of voice, body language
and vocabulary through wearable sensors.
• 3D data mining – In 2003 HP’s Bernardo
Huberman developed Shock, a peer-to-peer
system for harvesting community knowledge
inside organizations. They started by studying
more than 200,000 internal e-mail logs of 485
HP employees. Data, with specifics on who sent
what and when it was sent, was collected from
the company’s e-mail server. Every person became
a node in the graph. Researchers got a look at
how information flows through online communities
and identified key ringleaders who, like a network
hub, served as a busy intersection for e-mail
traffic. By using 3D visual analysis and zoom
graphs, Huberman and his colleagues revealed
sub-communities that were rapidly sharing
vast quantities of information.
Changing Nature of Work Knowledge Management
Database alternatives While centralized databases
have their place in organizations for the collection
of specific, structured information, they are poor
managers of fluid knowledge. New alternatives
are springing up.
• K-logs—“knowledge logs” or K-logs, is a term
coined by John Robb, creator of Userland (a popu-
lar blog creation site). K-logs are a relatively new
concept with huge possibilities. They potentially
allow anyone in an organization to post material,
points of view, links, documents, important e-mails
and pictures to the corporate intranet, where that
posted content can be searched, browsed and
archived. In essence they enable the easy sharing
of information and knowledge. Robb notes that K-
logs capture the elusive benefits of conversational
style, as info can be published just a bit at a time
and is emergent over time.
• K-log security will be provided at the individual
level, not managed by the enterprise. In the same
way that employees determine which hard-copy
documents can be shared with whom, they’ll set
up “subscription” access to their K-log categories
correspondingly. Each individual’s subscribable,
personally indexed K-log becomes a surrogate
for the individual when that person is not
available personally.
HP Confidential 3
“The underlying intellectual question about knowledge
management is whether people actually think of knowledge
as a big heap of laundry just out of the dryer, or as neatly
folded pajamas, shirts and so on, all placed in the proper
drawers. The ‘big heap’ theory lies behind some of the
programs: we don’t care where or how things are stored;
we just want to find certain pairs of socks—or PDF files—
exactly when we need them. The ‘folded PJs’ theory guides
a variety of programs that let you mark information as
it shows up—for instance, tagging an article you know you
want to refer to later, when shopping for a new car. Brains
work both ways, and the ideal KM software will, too.”

Quote James Fallows,

Current (continued)
“Human vs. Computers,
Again,” New York Times
Technologies that automatically update Rapidly
Online, 4/18/04
changing knowledge requires constant updating.
• RSS – Really simple syndication (a.k.a. rich site
summary) – Instead of having to trawl the Internet
for information, RSS brings it to a computer, in a
personalized format. The process: download and
install an RSS “newsreader,” which looks like
an e-mail inbox (for macs: www.ranchero.com;
for PCs: www.newzcrawler.com), then subscribe
to favorite websites from a directory like www.
newsisfree.com. Popular subscription choices are
the BBC, New York Times and John Kerry’s and
George Bush’s websites. When you sign on, you
will see the most recent updates for each of your
subscribed channels all in one place. RSS feeds
can be delivered to any handheld device, includ-
ing your phone, or can be delivered as audio to
an MP3 player. Important privacy aspect of RSS:
it is not necessary (as it is now) to give out an
e-mail address to receive news and other updates.
Early adopters have seen this feature greatly
reduce or eliminate spam and viruses.
• Plaxo – With social networks growing, people
have more contacts to manage, and contact info
changes rapidly, as many people switch jobs
every few years. Plaxo is free (for now) software
that helps people manage all of their contacts. The
program will periodically send e-mail to contacts,
asking for updates, and then automatically modify
the information on your computer. Microsoft has
integrated Plaxo into Outlook 2003. Plaxo hopes
to become a verb as common now as “google,”
but more work is needed—many people currently
find Plaxo impersonal and intrusive.

Changing Nature of Work Knowledge Management HP Confidential 4

 Current (continued)
Embedding information Another recent knowledge/
information management technique involves
“baking” data directly into tools that knowledge
workers use day to day.
• Brigham and Women’s Hospital – Doctors are
given a patient history, such as allergic reactions,
and prompted to consider new drugs they may not
have had time to research as they enter an order
for their patient. This is a fairly new concept for
doctors who often use intuition in decision making
and do much of their work away from computer
screens. Nevertheless, the program has been
successful so far.
• GM’s Vehicle Engineering Centers – The
company’s computer-aided design system is
embedded with trend research and statistics
and pushed to designers during design decision
points so they can more seamlessly employ it.
Seven Layers of a Knowledge Environment
The Future of Competition, C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy, 2004
Changing Nature of Work Knowledge Management
With “know-how” type information, this approach
has often failed. There is tacit knowledge and
explicit knowledge. Often, making tacit knowledge
explicit is a process fraught with hurdles: Xerox tried
to embed in a new line of copiers “know-how”
information for technicians responding in the field
to calls. They hoped that the technicians could be
guided by the system, but the system failed. Xerox
found that technicians learned from one another
primarily by sharing stories about how they fixed
other machines. The expert system could not
replicate the subtleties and nuances exchanged
between the techs, often in face-to-face
conversations.
HP Confidential 5
 View from abroad
Latin America People lack a culture of electronic
communication. E-mail seems to be a one-way
communication channel; unanswered e-mails
are common and tend to pile up in inboxes.
Responding to e-mail over the phone is quite
common. Communication here seems to be more
effective when it is more personal and is tied to
the tradition within Latin cultures that favors
oral communication over written.
Japan Strong cultural barriers can inhibit knowledge
sharing. The pattern of sharing information from
senior to junior, in top-down rather than in flat
structures, remains immutable. The imbedded culture
is such that knowledge comes from above and
is disseminated in a way that is rank-specific.
Comparison of western and eastern knowledge creation
The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create
the Dynamics of Innovation, Ikujiro Nonaka, Hirotaka Takeuchi, 1995
Changing Nature of Work Knowledge Management
Southeast Asia The “right” to certain knowledge
depends on age and gender. Only older men with
a high economic and social status may have the
right to “know” information or possess knowledge.
Korea An effort to develop a public KM system
failed because one of the barriers was a concern
about expressing oneself openly, regardless of issue
or expertise, in the presence of one’s superiors.
It just wasn’t “proper” for a subordinate to be
expressing himself by voluntarily offering his opinion
or expertise in the presence of his superior—
at least not in public.
HP Confidential 6
“We are seeing a massive cultural shift away from the concept
of doneness. Documents are things that are done. That is why
the Web will kill them.”
Quote David Weinberger,
Small Pieces Loosely
Joined: A Unified Theory
of the Web, 2002
Changing Nature of Work Knowledge Management
Future
Shift from a publishing model to a brokering model
Organizations will invest in new knowledge
management systems that focus on “know-who” over
“know-how” or “know-what.” Capturing “know-how”
and “know-what” will be important only in very
prescribed situations such as call-center automation.
Tacit Knowledge Systems demonstrates this newer
model. Their technology surveys flows of electronic
communications within a company to learn who is
likely to know what. When someone needs informa-
tion, those who have it can be asked privately
whether they are willing to share. They can accept
or decline, as with a dating service. “Paradoxically,
the more privacy privileges companies extend to
employees in this process, the more they will choose
to share,” says David Gilmour, CEO of Tacit.
People will share with those they trust Companies
will begin to encourage employees to widen their
trusted networks. They’ll find that knowledge sharing
follows naturally. While social and business networks
will expand well outside of company boundaries,
many experts advise that this is not a worry but a
two-way street. Employees will bring valuable
knowledge back to their own companies just as
often as they are likely to give it out.
Death of “doneness” The notion of a “document”
as a completed piece of information will be trans-
formed. Data on the web is increasingly represented
as emergent bits of knowledge, constantly updated,
modified, linked to and layered. The notion of
“doneness,” says David Weinberger, “is called into
question as a quality better suited to paper than the
dynamic online realm. The web allows for constant
process and enables open-ended groups of people
to be invited into the process. Things on the Web
are never done.” The popularity of K-logs may
demonstrate this concept.
Augmented reality This is the trend toward
heightening our awareness of the real world by
annotating it with information, often conveyed by
mobile technologies. Researchers are experimenting
with PDAs taken on city tours to allow users
access to the history of buildings, social makeup
of neighborhoods, events happening nearby, etc.
Annotations could also encourage activists to be
aware of pollution levels or help social workers
find homeless populations nearby.
Media management
• Storing and retrieving – By 2008 more than 380
million camera phones are expected to be sold
worldwide. Where will all these images be
stored and how easy will it be to retrieve them?
Technological leaps are improving video compres-
sion and increasing bandwidth for streaming
video. Though quality of moving images on
phones is still poor, it is predicted video will soon
rival still photography as a popular phone activity.
South Korea and Japan currently lead the race in
video phone usage.
• Video and image – There are many solutions in
the works for managing video and image content:
– Retrieving files by their content. Adobe programs
can now recognize and find photos taken
indoors as opposed to outdoors.
– Voice and face recognition will play a part in
making media navigation as simple as saying to
your computer, “Show me all new pictures taken
of the baby.”
– GPS technology installed on digital cameras
will aid computers in sorting photos and videos
not only by time and date but also by exact
location.
– New advances in “media management by
association” mean media files will be stored and
found quickly by how they are related to other
files. Collections of videos can be automatically
clustered by director, actors and genres without
the consumer having to label them.
HP Confidential 7
 Future (continued)
• Sharing
– Folders are beginning to be able to synchronize
instantly across different computers. With a new
feature from Groove 3.0 you can share pictures
with your brother in Michigan and your sister in
Maine. Groove lets you tag all of those folders
together, and then whenever you drop a picture
into the folder on your own computer, it’ll auto-
matically get copied to Michigan and Maine.
– P2P sharing of photographs has very recently
been made possible by www.ShareALot.com.
Users bypass centralized websites and e-mail
browsers completely. Drop digital photos into a
folder on your desktop, enter an e-mail address,
and ShareALot sends the photos directly to
the recipient’s desktop.
• Convergence versus divergence: E-mail programs
will become a repository of everything you need
to know, collecting and organizing while you’re
doing something else, but always under your
control. Digital agents within the programs will
know what kinds of information you want and will
be proactive in hunting it down on the web and
retrieving it into your program. An example is
Oddpost.com, a subscription e-mail service that
folds RSS feeds, personal e-mail, soccer scores,
stock exchange rates and anything else you’ve
subscribed to neatly together, organized by type
of information. Later in 2004, Oddpost will launch
“Newsdash,” which will hunt down data for you.
Key takeaways • The new wave of social software will
help employees find who knows what,
connect with the right people and
effectively share knowledge. Modern
knowledge management will foster
rather than replace human interaction.
Changing Nature of Work Knowledge Management
Although more and more information and usability
features converge within single devices (smart
phones, smart watches, BlackBerries), people still
carry many devices to support different informational
needs. Products aligned with this tendency are
springing up:
– APC TravelPower case is a briefcase that
charges a laptop computer, a mobile phone
and a PDA simultaneously while on the go.
– eVest is a vest with up to 42 hidden compart-
ments for various mobile devices that hides
wires and keeps them from tangling. It comes
in sportscoat or fisherman style. It is used by
the Secret Service and is now becoming
popular with the general public.
Physical meets digital Although a completely paper-
less office may never happen, several technologies
will seek to combine the best elements of both paper
and digital information.
• Sony’s new LIBRe e-book. The first successful
attempt at an eBook that has the look of tradition-
al paper. Also includes the ability to annotate
bookmarks.
• AquaMinds NoteTaker and Microsoft’s OneNote
do away with the notion of folders on the desktop
and instead organize information by imitating real
notebooks. “Spiral bound” (digitally) with tabs
down the side, the notebooks enable doodling
and audio note taking. Flexible electronic paper
with moving imagery will be a reality within
two to three years.
• Knowing what we know and finding
what we need relies less on technol-
ogy and more on understanding
human behavior.
HP Confidential 8
 Experts Jim Gemmell at David Gilmour, CEO of David Weinberger, Mark McElroy, Author
Microsoft’s Bay Area Tacit Knowledge Systems Author of Small Pieces of The New Knowledge
Research Center is who wrote Harvard Loosely Joined and “The Management
developing MyLifeBits— Business Review article Cluetrain Manifesto”
digitally storing every “How To Fix Knowledge Jim McGee,
common kind of informa- Management”; Tacit John Seely Brown, Professor of Knowledge
tion possible and then develops software that Former director of Xerox Management, Kellogg
finding ways to annotate sifts through e-mails to Parc and co-author of School of Management,
and retrieve the info as identify common infor- The Social Life of Northwestern University
quickly as possible mation threads and then Information
alerts people about
David Gurteen of the shared interests without
Gurteen Knowledge identifying them, protect-
website, British ing their privacy
researcher, consultant,
author and speaker
on KM

Language Reality mining Nanomedia Generation C (for Content) SPOT Smart personal
A form of data mining Aggregated and Not really a generation object technology: every-
that captures body summarized information but people of all ages day objects, such as
language, gestures and who embrace the trend clocks, pens, key-chains
vocal intonation as well PAN Personal area net- of content generation and billfolds, that are
as verbal content via work, a term used by the as part of everyday made smarter, more
a wearable sensor inventors of the eVest to experience (posting pho- personalized and more
refer to the networking tos to the web, video- useful through the use
Data smog of several devices worn making, blogging, etc.) of special software
The overabundance of on the body
low-quality information
Hypertasking High-
intensity multitasking

Examples of practice Homeland Security uses Lockheed Martin and DSpace: MIT and HP
Groove Networks. Ofoto use Tacit came up with a web-
Knowledge Systems. based repository for
the more than 10,000
papers and data files
and video clips, etc.,
produced by MIT
researchers each year.
Differences from other
repositories of knowl-
edge: anyone can
access MIT research
for free, and MIT has
partnered with other
schools to share
knowledge.

Changing Nature of Work Knowledge Management HP Confidential 9

 Bibliography Sally Atwood, “MIT’s Superarchive,” MIT Technology David Pollard, “The Future of Knowledge
Review, 1/03 Management,” Blog, 10/03

John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, “Balancing Act:
How to Capture Knowledge Without Killing It,”
Harvard Business Review, 6/00
Thomas Davenport, “Just in Time Delivery Comes to
Knowledge Management,” Harvard Business Review,
7/02
“Email Profiling,” www.redherring.com, 3/11/04
James Fallows, “Human vs. Computers, Again,”
New York Times Online, 4/18/04
David Gilmour, “How to Fix Knowledge
Management,” Harvard Business Review, 12/03
“Generation C,” www.trendwatching.com, 4/7/04
Louise Story, “Helping People on the Move Keep
Addresses Up to Date,” New York Times Online,
4/5/04
Jeremy Wagstaff, “The Latest Turnoff? Surprise,
It’s E-mail,” Wall Street Journal Online, 3/8/04
Jeremey Wagstaff, “No More Information Overload,”
Wall Street Journal Online, 6/25/03
David Weinberger, Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A
Unified Theory of the Web, 2002

Henry Jenkins, “Look, Listen and Walk,”

MIT Technology Review, 4/04

Lenhart, Horrigan and Fallows, “Content Creation

Online,” www.pewinternet.org, 2/29/04

Michel Marriott, “I Know It’s Here Somewhere,”

New York Times Online, 2/19/04

The Changing Nature of Work Knowledge Management

http://brandinnovation.corp.hp.com/
June 2004 HP Confidential 10