Hans Henrik Heming,

Is this shift for real? Even fundamental?

3 March 2008



Hans Henrik H. Heming

Posted in Business Strategy, Innovating with Diversity, Innovation, complexity, social science

Last week I went to a course on Complexity, Knowledge Management and future Innovation - gosh it was interesting. Maybe you already know Dave Snowden - a real thought-leader in that specific field. And he knows…

Nevertheless Dave and Cognitive Edge is on the track of something “new” and VERY interesting. The Cynefin-framework is outstanding when it comes to some sort of explanation of what is happening in the intersection between traditionel Knowledge Management, Technology and future growth and Innovation. As a true believer in proper use of Social Technologies - aka Web2.0 - internally in companies, I strongly believe that the flow of information between people is THE way to enhance innovation capacity, not by putting everything into a rigid data structure on a server.

Dave describes the development by setting up opposites:

MOVING FROM

  1. traditional management science (social sciences)
  2. information processing
  3. knowledge things
  4. DIKW
  5. recipe model-copy and roll out-one size fits all (replicate outcome)/fail-safe
  6. codification (tacit to explicit)
  7. context dependent
  8. best practices
  9. formal communities (CoP)
    hierarchy
 MOVING TO

  1. natural sciences (cognitive)
  2. pattern matching (sense-making)
  3. knowledge flow
  4. internalise, sense-making, pathfinding, execution
  5. safe-fail/complexity (impact based)
  6. narrative (anecdotes)/fragments/blogs (just in time)
  7. shared context
  8. tolerated failures
  9. informal networks/social computing (blogs, wiki, tagging, social networks)

Interesting - in Wemind we see that every day and try to advice our clients to move away from the old paradigm of thinking. It’s a tough call, a mental journey for most people.

Last week I was educated as a Accredited Practitioner in The Cynefin framework and I would love to have a conversation with you on how to cope with complexity in an internal organizational setting an still manage to make positive bottom lines.

If you are interested in further reading - and in Dave Snowden’ thoughts - you may be interested in these podcasts:

KM Australia 2007 Keynote
Jon Husband interview with Dave Snowden on Web 2.0
KM World 2007
KM Asia 2007 Keynote
Oil & Gas Exchange Houston September 2007

or the blogsposts:

Reporting on sin…
sense-making & path-finding
Safe-fail probes
Whence goeth KM?
Natural numbers, networks & communities
Volunteer not conscript
If the world is flat, seek out the bumpy bits
Good judgement comes from experiences. Experience comes from bad judgement
Confusing story telling with narrative

How to you see the challenges in management of today - is the cure to find in the books written around the time of the industrial revolution or is there by any chance new insights hidden in areas where we haven’t looked, yet? What do you think, and which implications does that have on our view on how to conceive business and companies?

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