1. Chapter 7 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS: Component Technologies
WELCOME!
Chapter 7
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS:
Component Technologies

2. BUZZ GROUP
What types of knowledge or information do I use in my everyday life?
What types of technology do I use to manage this knowledge? You may wish to consider the types of technologies you use to capture, organise, evaluate, store and share knowledge

3. COMPONENT TOOLS TYPOLOGY
Figure 7.1 A typology of knowledge tools and component technologies

4. DIFFERENT FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE
Figure 7.2 Different forms of knowledge

5. CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE Cognitive Mapping Tools
Used principally in mapping strategic knowledge
Use ‘oval mapping’ technique in groups
Develop concepts, links and clusters
‘Decision Explorer’ – can develop complex levels of analysis

6. CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE Indexing a Text Database
Figure 7.8 Indexing a text database

7. CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE Information Retrieval Tools
Desire for precision and recall
Differences between an author’s and user’s vocabulary
Use of inverted files for indexing text to speed up search – assumes text as sequence of words – easy to compress
Develop inverted index including vocabulary search, list of occurrences and processing of occurrences to solve phrases, proximity and Boolean operations
Suffix Trees & Indicies – allows more complex queries. Sees text as long string with each position as a suffix
Signature files – cuts text into blocks. Not as good as inverted index
Manipulation algorithms such as BNDM and BMS for Boolean queries

8. CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE Retrieval Process
Figure 7.9 Information retrieval process

9. CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE Text Processing
Lexical analysis to identify words from characters
Eliminating stopwords occurring frequently
Stemming e.g. Connect is stem for connected, connecting, and connections
Full text indexing
Thesaurus index terms synonyms and near synonyms
Text compression to cope with information overload

10. CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE Personalisation
Device provides needs and wants of consumer
Solution lies in data mining in terms of analysing user’s clickstream and making recommendations
Use of agents and machine learning

11. EVALUATING KNOWLEDGE Case-based reasoning
Capture and store past experiences as organisational knowledge
System searches for stored cases with similar profile to new problem
Adds unsuccessful cases to aid learning
Built on artificial intelligence technology

12. BUZZ GROUPS
Discuss the limitations of case-based reasoning tools

13. EVALUATING KNOWLEDGE OLAP: On-line analytical processing
Provides multidimensional analysis of data to allow user to see data in different ways using multiple dimensions
Main technique is to rotate a data cube
Also called ‘slice and dice’

14. EVALUATING KNOWLEDGE Data mining
Uses variety of neural network, decision trees and genetic modeling algorithms
Use sophisticated data search capabilities using algorithms to discover patterns and correlations in vast amounts of data

15. SHARING KNOWLEDGE Internet/Intranet
Share knowledge with knowledge providers across the world – some free
Intranet provides same but restricted access from outside
Uses HTML and XML – a metalanguage that allows definition of tags and allows distribution of knowledge to call phones, pagers and PDAs

16. BUZZ GROUPS
Intranets can be large data warehouses that nobody visits. Critically discuss the barriers that prevent knowledge sharing in organisations

17. SHARING KNOWLEDGE Groupware tools
Allows to work on same document by multiple users
Maintain and update identical data on numerous PCs
Organising discussions
Storing information
Moving and tracking documents of groups
Preventing unauthorised access of data
Mobile use to access corporate network

18. SHARING KNOWLEDGE E-mail Text-based conferencing Yellow Pages
Computer-based training/e-learning
Security

19. WEB 2.0 PLATFORM Shift to dynamic social web applications
Network effects critical to their success
Provide customer services free – Google ($200bn), YouTube ($1.6bn), Facebook ($50bn)
Indirect network effects from use of products or services that have influence on related goods and services

20. TIPPING POINT WORD OF MOUTH EPIDEMICS
‘Connectors’ – social glue
‘Mavens’ – information brokers on best deals etc.
‘Salesmen’ – good at convincing you and getting you to act
Amazon is reliant on ranking of reviewers to develop trust with customers
Six degrees of separation

21. WEB 2.0 PLATFORM
Figure Web 2.0 platform tools

22. BLOGS Blogs – adding thoughts or diary of events
Podcasts – audio blogs
Vlog – video blog
Trackbacks – allows bloggers to see who’s linking to them
Can act as alternative to face-to-face meetings to engage in problem solving
Engage with customers across boundaries
Twitter – micro-blogging site

23. SYNDICATION & RSS FEEDS
Information from articles and photos repackaged for different customers
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) format to publish frequently updated content on websites
Organisations can place feeds showing latest offerings or consumer information such as traffic news or weather forecasts
RSS viral distribution engine for bloggers – receive new material posted by favourite bloggers

24. MASHUPS
Allows content from different sources to combine with applications for different business processes
E.g. Getting insurance quote from website
E.g. Starbucks helps customers locate nearest café once they’ve entered postcode
Information from external sources can be inaccurate or may change significantly in future; even close down
Prone to threats from malware

25. WIKIS Web pages that can be viewed and modified by anyone
Allows to create or change web content
Places power and freedom in hands of users rather than external ‘expert’
Works in progress on virtual ‘white boards’
Agendas and minutes can be placed on wikis
Can be open to manipulation and vandalism
Maintenance can be time-consuming

26. ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS
Individuals interact with others in community
Social network sites (SNS): Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster
SNS tend to support pre-existing relationships rather than new ones
Benefit from social capital and self-presentation
Risk over privacy from third party securing personal information
Allows interaction with different people in network

27. 3-D VIRTUAL WORLDS
Computer-simulated worlds where users interact in real time through ‘avatars’
Avatars are 3-D electronic cartoons of users; form of alter ego
Second Life has over 15m users and internal currency of Linden dollars (L$)
Conduct meetings, workshops and recruitment
Multinationals such as IBM, Dell, Ericsson, Bain
Strathclyde and Coventry Universities bought islands

28. STORING KNOWLEDGE Data Warehouse
Database with query and reporting tools
Stores current and historical data from internal and external sources
Data mart – subset of data warehouse which contains summarised or highly focused data for certain users

29. PRESENTING KNOWLEDGE Visualisation
Modelling – way of representing objects e.g. journal covers, weather maps, flows of citations
Rendering – makes computer generated image look like photograph e.g. texture mapping
Virtual reality