The SJO Global Free Trial runs until October 15th and provides free access to all Sage journals.
This will require you to register here.
You will then have access to content from 1999 to the present day, including Business Information Review, for the next few weeks. BIR’s September issue will be loaded shortly.
In September’s issue Allan Foster reports on what he terms ‘the relative buoyancy of popular business book publishing’ with an increase in UK sales of 10%. Penguin has carried out a global rollout of its business book imprint (Portfolio). Meanwhile, the longlist for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year 2010 has been announced. The shortlist will be announced on 16th September.
User generated content is the most significant trend in the media today. Phone–ins, blogs, email and text contributions to live radio and TV, and YouTube make you wonder if the whole world is sitting there just waiting for the right chance, or for any chance, to provide their opinion. This is one demonstration of the commercial potential of customer-generated content – its value as a free contribution to many programmes. Moon and de Souza in their article ‘Customer managed knowledge factories’, Business Information Review, 2010, 27 (2), use a range of examples to identify a transition from managing knowledge about customers, through engaging them in product improvement and development, to the proactive leveraging of customers to generate new and valuable materials, for example Apple’s App store.
A transformational example is the development of a student text book on Change Management for South African students undertaken as a course work project and as an initiative under the Global text project (www.globaltext.org). Do read about it and consider the customer knowledge potential of today’s students.
In the UK, levels of homeworking rose by 20% over the last decade with 12.8% of the workforce (3.7 million people) working mainly at or from home by the end of 2009. The self employed make up approximately two thirds of this number. Although increasing numbers of companies offer staff a chance to do some or all of their work from home many employers still insist on workplace visibility day in and day out.
Perhaps organisations are failing to envision just what a virtual workforce can achieve. In Going nowhere – but fast! E-Employment – the next internet revolution, Business Information Review 27(2), Ron Messer argues that knowledge workers operating in the virtual world represent ‘the primary business assets of the new millennium’. This largely unrealised value lies with their ability to network with others over time and space. Organisational cultures can survive and evolve in the virtual world as evidenced by the successful collaboration of the open source software movement. Just how much of your organisation would be more creative and effective if e-employment was the norm?
The Festival season is in full swing, certainly here in the UK. This year, the programme on offer at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea includes ‘The Knowledge Emporium’.
Local people are encouraged to share stories and knowledge and these thoughts will be integrated into a programme of workshops and performances throughout the festival. In other words, it is a collaborative, iterative, community focused knowledge creation and sharing exercise!
Creativity and innovation continue to be reckoned as a critical source of competitive success. Creativity, chaos and knowledge management, Sara Smith and Scott Paquette, Business Information Review, 27(2), explores the importance of chaotic environments in stimulating the creation of new knowledge. They suggest that encouraging chaos should therefore be one of the roles of the knowledge manager, a very different view from many advertised roles which focus on knowledge organisation.
Certainly the success of Google and Pixar (the case studies featured) can be seen to be linked to environments that encourage serendipitous connection. These connections are certainly an area that the knowledge manager can stimulate through enabling collaboration and networking activity.
Professional Associations face a number of challenges as their overheads rise, the economic future become more uncertain, event sponsorship reduces, and increasing membership fees to cover the cost of member services is a sure route to decline. These issues are eloquently described in his 2010 Conference speech by SLA Treasurer, Dan Trefethen.
SLA is strenuously cutting costs and reviewing structures whilst making its best efforts to meet the needs of its members.
Candle in the wind or a beacon for the future? Professional associations facing an uncertain future featured in June’s Business Information Review (27(2), is therefore particularly timely. Stimulated by the demise of CiG, Oriole Newgass explores what makes professional organisations work for their members, and suggests why some are successful and some not so. The issues facing CILIP are identical with those facing SLA and suggest that the larger professional organisations may face greater difficulty than those with a narrower focus.
Getting involved with a professional organisation has been a great development route for many leading information professionals. Now is the time for all of us to review what we gain from this involvement and to see how we can realistically help sustain a viable future for those organisations that we align with best.
For those who might have missed it, here’s the link to the NPR piece on libraries as ‘the next big thing’.
‘A decision made without information or knowledge is pure gambling’. So says Frank Ryan in Evaluating Information Services, Business Information Review, 27(2).
Frank’s expertise in the commercial information resources relevant for investment decisions in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union is second to none. However, in this article he distils the experience of purchasing information resources over many years to share the key aspects to probe before you buy. Share Frank’s advice on assessing value for money. And did you know that ‘feeding it to the lions’ is a hugely important precautionary step?
Intranets are now pivotal channels of communication for most organisations. Yet so often their content, design and accessibility falls short of user expectations. Real-world intranets in 2010: SWOT analysis featured in Business Information Review, 27(2) provides an excellent review of current good practice and lessons to learn. Written by Tracy Beverly, and reflecting many years of hard-won corporate experience, the article provides evidence of the five key points for Intranet success as well as the challenges of search, metrics and usage tracking.
And, if you feel that the use of your organisation’s Intranet for providing business information and for knowledge management can be improved, this article will certainly provide ideas.