Weekly Knowledge Management Blog by Stan Garfield

KM Book, Blog, Link, and Question of the Week

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KM Book of the Week

Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning by Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris

Description

You have more information at hand about your business environment than ever before. But are you using it to "out-think" your rivals? If not, you may be missing out on a potent competitive tool. In "Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning," Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris argue that the frontier for using data to make decisions has shifted dramatically. Certain high-performing enterprises are now building their competitive strategies around data-driven insights that in turn generate impressive business results.

Their secret weapon? Analytics: sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis and predictive modeling. Exemplars of analytics are using new tools to identify their most profitable customers and offer them the right price; accelerate product innovation; optimize supply chains; and identify the true drivers of financial performance. A wealth of examples -- from organizations as diverse as Amazon, Barclay's, Capital One, Harrah's, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia, and the Boston Red Sox -- illuminate how to leverage the power of analytics.

Table of Contents

Part One: The Nature of Analytical Competition

1. The Nature of Analytical Competition: Using Analytics to Build a Distinctive Capability
2. What Makes an Analytical Competitor?: Defining the Common Key Attributes of Such Companies
3. Analytics and Business Performance: Transforming the Ability to Compete on Analytics into a Lasting Competitive Advantage
4. Competing on Analytics with Internal Processes: Financial, Manufacturing, R&D, and Human Resource Applications
5. Competing on Analytics with External Processes: Customer and Supplier Applications

Part Two: Building an Analytical Capability

6. A Road Map to Enhanced Analytical Capabilities: Progressing Through the Five Stages of Development
7. Managing Analytical People: Cultivating the Scarce Ingredient That Makes Analytics Work
8. The Architecture of Business Intelligence: Aligning a Robust Technical Environment with Business Strategies
9. The Future of Analytical Competition: Approaches Driven by Technology, Human Factors, and Business Strategy

KM Blog of the Week

How to Save the World by Dave Pollard

Knowledge Management: Finding Quick Wins and Long Term Value

Six 'Quick Win, Low Hanging Fruit' KM Projects

1. Make it easy for your people to identify and connect with subject matter experts
2. Help people manage the content and organization of their desktop
3. Help people identify and use the most appropriate communication tool
4. Make it easy for people to publish their knowledge and subscribe to the information they want
5. Create a facility for just-in-time canvassing for information
6. Teach people how to do research, not just search

Six Longer-Term Big Payoff KM Programs

1. Make your information professionals anthropologists
2. Embed intelligence in systems, processes and tools
3. Teach your information professionals to be sense-making specialists
4. Use knowledge to drive innovation
5. Canvass the wisdom of crowds
6. Collect, and attract people to use, stories and anecdotes

Reducing Knowledge Management Failures

Dave Davis, a long-time family doctor himself, accomplished the extraordinary: He integrated leading-edge thinking about complex systems into a pragmatic, modest program to persuade, and make it easy for, doctors to manage knowledge better and hence make more informed, supportable decisions.

It was the best presentation on knowledge management I have seen in over a decade.

Davis summarizes all this with his Seven Steps to Better Care:

1. Collect information and gain deep understanding of where the gaps are, what the possible causes are, and why they are occurring despite the best intentions of those in the system, i.e., know what is happening today and why
2. Identify and collect the best available evidence relevant to each identified gap
3. Conduct an analysis of the barriers that preclude this evidence from being effectively used
4. Identify interventions, tools, methods and strategies to get around these barriers
5. Use a combination of methods and media to communicate and implement these interventions, tools, methods and strategies
6. Create better linkages between the stakeholders in each process, to enable reinforcement, feedback and evolution of the interventions and capture additional evidence
7. Create continuous measures of effectiveness of these interventions

KM Link of the Week

Japan's Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises from The KNOW Network

The Knowledge Management Society of Japan has announced the winners of the 7th annual Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) in Japan study.

2006 MAKE Japan Winners listed in alphabetical order:

1. Canon - Computers and office equipment
2. Fuji Xerox - Computers and office equipment
3. Honda Motor - Motor vehicles
4. Kao - Household and personal products
5. Matsushita Electric Industrial Company - Electronics & electrical equipment
6. Ricoh - Computers and office equipment
7. Sony - Electronics & electrical equipment
8. Toyota - Motor vehicles

KM Question of the Week

Q: In your blog entry last week there was a link to a KM Maturity Model. Is there one model that has risen above the rest and gained more momentum and credibility among KM practitioners?

A: There's no one dominant model. Here are links to a dozen papers, presentations, and web sites which address this topic:

1. APQC
2. Arizona State University
3. Infosys Technologies Ltd. and V P Kochikar (presentation) and V P Kochikar (paper)
4. KM Domain
5. KnowledgeBoard
6. National University of Singapore
7. Siemens AG and Siemens AG (presentation) and KMMM site
8. Straits Knowledge
9. Tata Consultancy Services
10. University of Karlsruhe and ONTOKNOM (paper)
11. University of Pretoria
12. WisdomSource

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[The contents of this KM blog are my personal comments and do not reflect the official views of Hewlett-Packard Company.]