KM Bashing Strikes a Gusher at Pharma Conference
David Snowden, Director of the IBM Cynefin Center for Organisational Complexity was drilling down to some of the fundamental issues of Knowledge Management at a recent conference, according to conference host eyeforpharma. His bottom line: systems that try to create value by translating intangible human interactions and insights such as pattern recognition into codified systems that cannot capture those intangible factors will fail. Knowledge Management's insistence on trying to capture tacit human knowledge into highly structured repositories is a loser every time in his book. His "poster child" proof of this is rather compelling: an oil company used a knowledge management system for 8 years to discover oil deposits in the North Sea without success; within three months of removing the system they hit two oil deposits. The dynamic intersection of content, technology and people is about much more than using IT to capture and deliver information. vContent requires a deep undertanding of how individuals and institutions create and consume information and experiences in venues that they value in the most human sense possible.