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Home > Vol.
1, No. 4 > Open Articles |
Apr 2001 | |
From the Desk of the Editor-in-ChiefXenia Stanford, Editor-in-Chief, KnowMap and President, Stanford Solutions Inc.* Who's Capitalizing on Knowledge
Which one are you? Before creating KnowMap Stanford Solutions conducted a Knowledge Management & Mapping Survey completed in 2000, which showed there were many who felt a need to learn about knowledge mapping and other tools for making knowledge management practical. This survey also asked respondents if they wished to learn about these techniques and if so, what method did they prefer for learning them. The overall need was rated high and the majority chose reading, particularly on an updated basis, thus KnowMap was born. Now it has been a year since the survey was conducted and work began to establish this magazine. Also this is number 4 of 6 bimonthly issues per year for this web-based publication. Thus we are more than half way there and it is time to look at whether or not we are meeting our customers' needs. Mapping Where We've beenThe first comparison that may be of interest is to view a
map of the location of the survey respondents to that of the current
subscribers. We did include the map of the respondents in an article
called Thus we include two maps in this editorial as follows:
The first thing we notice is that although Ontario remains in the red and thus highest percentage category, a newcomer in this 10% + area is the United Kingdom. Looking strictly at the country levels first, besides the United Kingdom we have gained subscribers in Australia, Brazil, Columbia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Spain and Switzerland. We lost representation percentage wise in Korea, South Africa and Venezuela. However, the overall impact was a gain in global interest in the actual magazine over the survey. Comparing Canada from survey to subscribers, besides the continued strength in Ontario, we have gained though insignificantly in Alberta and British Columbia (by 1 percent each). We also picked up readers from Saskatchewan, a province not represented in the survey. On the other hand, we lost representation in the Maritime Provinces. As for the United States, we gained representation in the following states not covered in our survey: Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin. The trade-off was losses of the following from which we have no subscribers but did have survey respondents: Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. Besides the above we gained ground though not significantly (1-2%) in California, Washington DC, Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington state. We lost ground again not significantly in Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. We did have significant losses in representation in New York and Texas. This feels almost like an election! The bottom line though is we cannot help you if you do not help yourself by subscribing. If there is a topic that you need to see covered, all you need to do is bring it to our attention. Topics of Interest to SubscribersIn fact many of our subscribers did just that. Here is a sampling of topics requested by our readers:
I'm sure you will see looking back at some of the other issues that we have already covered some of the above topics and continue to do so in this issue. Interest in taxonomies and ontologies was expressed more than once. Therefore, this issue we bring you an article by Brian Kaney on the Taxonomy of Knowledge Management. We certainly intend to add more articles on different aspects of this subject area in the future. Roles and StrategyAs for competencies, which has also been asked for more than once, we have covered these in other issues under Roles and continue in this issue with Mark W. McElroy's second part to the article in the previous issue called Where Does Knowledge Belong? Framing the Question? His answer to this question is now found in the article Where Does Knowledge Belong? A Better Solution. Alain J. Godbout's second article is contained in this issue under Strategy, which is where his first article appeared in the previous issue. We kept it under this section to be consistent with his first and perhaps overall focus, but it serves as well under Roles as you can see by its title: Role Definition and Core Competencies in a Knowledge Management Program. This is another direct answer to the first question in the above list raised by subscribers. We, in fact, started issue 1 with an excellent coverage of the roles and titles of various levels involved in knowledge management in organizations. We will continue our focus on this area in the future as roles and competencies definitions are still evolving in the fast growing occupations of knowledge manager and practitioner. Culture and Customer CapitalDebra M Amidon, who contributed the first article to appear in KnowMap under roles, once again generously imparts her practical wisdom in a two-part article both contained in this issue. These articles under the Culture category are as follows: Customer Innovation: A Function of Knowledge: Part I - The Theory and Customer Innovation: A Function of Knowledge: Part II - The Practice In these she cautions us to learn from our customer and that indeed is what we at KnowMap are attempting to do. We started with the 1999-2000 survey but have continued this by allowing a space on the subscription form (pdf) for subscribers to tell us what topics they wish to see covered and from which the above list of needs was taken. ChallengesFurther we have been encouraging readers and the public to submit Letters to the Editor and participate in your own learning by sharing your knowledge and experience with others through challenges. We had already invited you to participate in a Special Discussion started by Denham Grey and to submit maps to us as described in the Map Challenge. Debra M. Amidon's articles further inspired us to start a third Challenge, which we have called the Customer Focused Marketing Messages: A New Challenge! These challenges are open to anyone, although the one started by Denham Grey may be best answered if you are a subscriber and can read the article to which Grey refers in his letter. To help get you started as a subscriber or to add to your subscription term, winners of this and the mapping challenge will receive a three-issue Emerald subscription to KnowMap, the same offer we give to those who submit a 1200 word article for publication in the magazine. See Contributors. The person who submits the best message for the Customer Focused Marketing Messages challenge will receive a copy of The Architecture Primer to be graciously donated by the author. Auditing and MappingAuditing is a section that has not seen as much coverage as other areas. However, in this issue due to the excellent and generous work delivered by Arian Ward, we have two articles entitled: Ethnographic Knowledge Audits and Ethnographic Time and Attention Auditing. These two articles and the one Due Diligence Research As a Form of Knowledge Audit, which I wrote with the help of Gayle Kiss, round out the coverage of auditing. A companion piece to Ward's ethnographic auditing article is his Ethnographic Knowledge Maps. These articles by Ward should help partially sate the above subscriber's desire to know more about social networks. Ward's map article and the Case Study on his organization's site map Charting the Frontiers of Knowledge, which I wrote after discovering this simple yet powerful site map, continue our coverage of the various mapping techniques any knowledge manager should have in his or her toolkit. FeaturesWe also continue to bring new Reviews of books and software with a number of new items as you can see by those listed on this issue's cover page. We constantly update our list of Events of interest to those in or wishing to enter the knowledge management field. Jobs are also featured on an updated basis with and between issues. These Reviews, Events and Jobs are available publicly whether you are a subscriber or not. It is our way of contributing to the knowledge of everyone, even if they cannot or chose not to subscribe to our economically priced journal. We do of course reserve our in-depth articles to subscribers only as by their payment they show us they are serious about continuous learning. Which One Are You?Mapping, auditing and other techniques are certainly ones that should be added to the toolkit of everyone seriously committed to knowledge management. None more so than librarians, as our continued analysis of
our 1999-2000 survey in However, we cannot help you if you do not wish to learn. Will you be among the continuous learners or those of the learned who are equipped for a world that no longer exists? To be among the first group of whom it is said will inherit the earth, subscribe now and watch for our continuing coverage of the above needs expressed by our customers and of those that you specify on your subscription (pdf) application. Works CitedAlthough variously attributed to different authors (no doubt to frequent re-quoting without credit to the original source) the following is the earliest example I can find: Hoffer, Eric. Reflections on the Human Condition. 1973. Read more about Xenia Stanford.
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As We
Map and Manage in the inaugural issue (Vol. 1, No.1). However, since
the number of respondents differs from the number of current subscribers,
the map has been changed to reflect percentage of respondents for each
country or, in the case of Canada and the United States, the province
and state.
