My first impressions of KM in Europe 2002

Some quotes that sparked my
attention (I’ll expand on it after my return) Dr. Panagiotis Damaskopoulos of
Insead talked about the causal links between knowledge and innovation. His
proposition is that the basic unity of the economy is no longer the company, but
the network it resides in. Organisational capital then is the (quality of)
relationships within the company and the relationships with the outside world.
Another question he put forward is, what are we moving towards, a knowledge
driven economy (already happening) or a knowledge based society. If the latter
is the case, would a company then not be an unlikely place to be the focal point
of knowledge processes? Mr. Huub Rutten, who gave an online presentation on
Monday on Knowledgeboard, also spoke during the workshop of Cezanne Software
concerning the question how to motivate and retain knowledge workers. From his
background in linguistics he came up with the notion that listening is a form of
speaking to yourself. As you hear the other speak you are actually attaching
strings of what you hear to what you already know. This he uses for instance in
developing comparative document searches to provide knowledge workers with
‘intelligent’ newsfeeds. If I apply this picture to my notetaking, and I think
it’s a correct picture as I always write down not only what I hear but also my
associations, then it’s no wonder that my first impressions here, are what they
are: They all connect to my earlier statements on the organisation as a cluster
of relationships, whose quality is determined by the existence and extent of
mutual trust. Oh yeah, by the way: David Gurteen thought that I looked actually
younger in reality than in the picture on the left hand side. Even though the
picture was taken 4 years ago. Might be weightloss, might be because I feel
happier now than then, or it might be just because I had a haircut last week. ;)

Permalink
(posted by Ton Zijlstra at November 13, 2002 10:34 PM)