Understanding Organizational Knowledge-web Technologies

AneLearning technology revolution is taking place that only a handful of peopleknow about. Are you one of those people? It is being led by what are known as “organizationalknowledge-web” technologies, which are specifically designed to capture,manage, preserve, and deliver organizational knowledge that would otherwise belost as Boomers retire or other employees leave companies with vitalorganizational knowledge in their brains.

Justas the Internet is a repository for the world’s data and information, deliveredvia search engines, websites, and wikis, organizational knowledge-web technologiesare designed to capture, manage, and deliver organizational knowledge—only theywork better than the Internet. Organizational knowledge webs solve the feelingsof frustration that users experience while zigzagging from one hyperlinked webpage to the next until they become hopelessly lost in the infoglut. Sometimesresearchers refer to this as “the Brownian movement effect.” Organizational knowledgewebs use hyperlinks as well, but these systems group knowledge (organizationalconcepts, ideas, and processes) into common patterns of thought that arefurther organized around “ontological commitments,” making engagement sessionsproductive and satisfying.

Todemonstrate the ontological commitmentprinciple, if I were to ask you to tell to me all the knowledge that is in yourbrain, it would be very difficult for you to even begin the process. But if Iasked you to tell me about the first time you met a significant person in yourlife, the concepts, ideas, and images about that person and any circumstancesassociated with that memory would automatically pop into your mind. Dependingon how articulate you are, you could communicate those thoughts to me. This is howontological commitments work in everyday life. When your mind commits to acentral concept, all the relevant concepts and ideas associated with thatcentral concept also surface from memory.

Knowledge-webtechnologies work the same way. When users access content within uniquelyarchitected organizational knowledge products, all the relevant content relatedto each concept is also madeavailable to the user. This means that users immediately gain a 360-degree userexperience related to the central concept they queried, at the speed of thought.As users click to other associated concepts within a knowledge base, all therelevant knowledge associated with each of those concepts is then madeavailable to them. In this regard, organizational knowledge webs simulate theway people know and reason.

Theadvantage to organizations of every kind is that when proprietary concepts,ideas, and processes are translated into digitized n-dimensional representations,users can rapidly gain insight and understanding into an organization’s broadorganizational structures and functions down to its how, why, and what-if microlearningtasks that are buried deep within every organization—without getting lost inthe process. Did you see it coming?

Youcan see an early example of an Internet knowledge web in a video that was created by Dr. James Burkeon a system he developed in the early 2000s at the University of California–SantaCruz. Dr. Burke demonstrates how people, ideas, and things are interconnected,but his example also demonstrates the Brownian movement effect. Organizational knowledgewebs are different because they focus on proprietary organizational knowledge groupedinto relevant and comprehensive 360-degree views.

Figure1 helps demonstrate the difference between conventional database systemstructures and organizational knowledge web structures.

Figure1:Comparing conventional database structures and organizational knowledge-webstructures

Whatis significant about organizational knowledge-web technologies is that theyprovide a means for knowledge engineers and others to develop comprehensive eLearningenvironments that represent all the concepts, ideas, and thought processes thatmake an organization work. This means that you can model the inherent depth andcomplexity of structural, behavioral, functional, and analytical patterns ofthought that occur within organizations and integrate them into a single unifiedknowledge store delivered through the cloud.

Organizationaldata silos that result from the use of conventional single-purpose applicationsare about to become a thing of the past. Modern organizational knowledge-webtechnologies provide a way for non-programming professionals such as subjectexperts, business analysts, knowledge engineers, and instructional designers todefine and seamlessly integrate organizational concepts, ideas, and commonpatterns of thought that knowledge workers innately understand.

InFigure 2 are a few examples of the thought structures that organizationalknowledge-web technologies are designed to model. Keep in mind that these, anda host of other patterns-of-thought models, can be interrelated, commingled,and merged to represent almost any concept or idea. It is this level offunctional diversity that makes these systems ideal for organizationalknowledge retention and eLearning.

Organizationalknowledge webs excel as learning tools because knowledge content is based onthe very patterns of thought that people learn through enculturation,education, life experience, and analytic thought. These webs allow learners totraverse across and through modeled content using the same kind of icons andhyperlinks they use to traverse the Internet. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however,that eLearners find the learning experience on organizational knowledge-web systemsto be more engaging and satisfying because they can quickly gain usableknowledge without the effort required by conventional systems. As one personsaid, “I can click away until I am happy. It’s fun.”

Figure2:Thought structures that organizational knowledge webs can model

TheeLearning advantage of organizational knowledge webs is that you can capture allthe knowledge of a unit, project, department, division, or company and make it availableto individuals who have the proper clearance. If eLearners do not have a mediumto quickly learn core knowledge, there is a good chance they will bypass learningopportunities because the effort to find and access related knowledge is notconvenient. When spur-of-the-moment learning is not available, those momentsquickly become lost learning opportunities that occur across every organization,every day, impacting operational efficiency and performance. When you make learningopportunities available through organizational knowledge webs, both theknowledge workers and their organizations win.

Let’sexplore this further. Most large organizations deploy 100 or more applicationsto run their enterprise. So, once organizational-concept models are instantiatedwithin an organizational knowledge web, you can import relevant data fromdisparate systems on a periodic, near, or real-time basis. What makes thisimportant is that the average knowledge worker is typically only experiencedon, or only has access to, two or three enterprise applications. For thisreason, when vital content can be rapidly accessed during “the heat of battle,”it can mean the difference between success and failure. Product and servicesales are good examples of this requirement, as is almost any version-orientedwork product that requires ongoing updating such as policy and proceduremanuals, employee handbooks, contracts, and so forth.

Itshould be noted that organizational knowledge webs are not designed fortransaction processing, like those used for credit card processing. They aredesigned specifically for advanced knowledge acquisition, management, anddelivery.

Becauseknowledge-web technologies interact with people in ways similar to how peoplethink, they can quickly become true co-creative partners with knowledge workersby delivering vital operational DNA across the enterprise. The “Knowledge Age”is about intelligent technologies that communicate with us, not at us.Organizational knowledge-web technologies have come a long way to actualizethis reality. Rather than functioning as conventional mechanisms that makepeople slaves of the very systems that, paradoxically, have increased theefficiency and performance of almost every aspect of our daily lives, knowledgesystems reverse the relationship and put people in control.

Organizationalknowledge webs solve this problem by presenting content in dynamicvisualization formats that embed subordinate concept models, such as how-toknowledge, within larger concept models such as compositions and taxonomies,among others. As eLearners use these systems, subordinate content seamlessly emergesfrom within the larger knowledge frameworks. This makes gaining a broad overviewperspective easy while also gaining exposure to the deep-down microlearningdetails within the web’s framework. The result is that eLearners are exposed toboth the big picture related to organizations, departments, or projects, and todetailed task training within only a few seconds—on demand.

Whatcounts are results. Because organizational knowledge webs work the way peoplenaturally think, eLearners discover that their ability to use these systems isintuitive. This means that the learning curve required to use these systems isvery low, and through their use learners are more likely to achieve higherorders of understanding, efficiency, and performance within far less time than whatis expected of conventional eLearning systems.