The Ferryman

Nicki Douglas

I bring unfortunate news that we lost Nicki Douglas through a sudden
death this week. We will have an open house tomorrow Friday 10 Feb from
14.00 - 20.00 at Baermeggenweg 14, Zeiningen in Switzerland so that
friends and family will have a chance to say goodbye to her.

Barry

Knowledge Management Training Week 2011, Lucerne, Switzerland

We will hold our Knowledge Management Training Week this year in Switzerland in Lucerne the week of the 12 -1 6 September 2011. Consider joining us for what has become a memorable highlight on the annual calendar which is led by several experienced practitioners and usually joined by a diverse group of international and interacting professionals.

More information at:

http://www.douglasconnect.com/km/km-training

or you can read some of my previous posts on this activity at:

http://barryhardy.blogs.com/theferryman/km_institute/

Collaborative development of predictive toxicology applications

The following initial paper on OpenTox has now been published and is available in preliminary form:

Collaborative development of predictive toxicology applications
Barry Hardy, Nicki Douglas, Christoph Helma, Micha Rautenberg, Nina Jeliazkova, Vedrin Jeliazkov, Ivelina Nikolova, Romualdo Benigni, Olga Tcheremenskaia, Stefan Kramer, Tobias Girschick, Fabian Buchwald, Joerg Wicker, Andreas Karwath, Martin Gutlein, Andreas Maunz, Haralambos Sarimveis, Georgia Melagraki, Antreas Afantitis, Pantelis Sopasakis, David Gallagher, Vladimir Poroikov, Dmitry Filimonov, Alexey Zakharov, Alexey Lagunin, Tatyana Gloriozova, Sergey Novikov, Natalia Skvortsova, Dmitry Druzhilovsky, Sunil Chawla, Indira Ghosh, Surajit Ray, Hitesh Patel and Sylvia Escher
Journal of Cheminformatics 2010, 2:7 (31 August 2010)
http://www.jcheminf.com/content/2/1/7

Please feel free to circulate in the community and to your contacts who might be interested. Thanks!

And a special thanks to all who have contributed to advancing this work, including our advisors, and growing community of friends, interactions and partners!

Barry 

Certified Knowledge Management Training in Luzern

We will run our Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) Training week again this Autumn the week of 1 - 5 November 2010 at the Hotel Astoria in Luzern, Switzerland. 

In addition to pre-class eLearning and faculty instruction from senior practitioners the class will work in small groups on case studies with the groups completing an end of week presentation and evaluation. 

The week usually attracts an international group of managers and practitioners with knowledge management responsibilities from a range of organisations supporting a rich exchange of knowledge and experiences between the class.

Class members may subsequently submit a practice report for competency evaluation; currently many of the Basel 2009 class have reached this stage.

This year's training week is again supported by a group of six leading instructors and facilitators with an excellent combination of experience and skills needed to cover and support the full breadth of topics and discussions:

Pavel Kraus, President, Swiss Knowledge Management Forum and Partner, aht'intermediation
Beat Knechtli, Director, Chief Knowledge Officer, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Zurich
Michael Wyrsch, Vice President and Leader Knowledge Management Competence Center, Credit Suisse
Stephan Bohr, Global Knowledge Management Leader Advisory (EMEA), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
Barry Hardy, PhD, Director, Community of Practice & Research Activities, Douglas Connect
Douglas Weidner, President, International Knowledge Management Institute

Topics covered include:
Knowledge Management (KM) Concepts, KM Practices, Business Case, Strategy, Program Planning, KM Frameworks,
KM & Organisational Culture & Development, Change Management for KM Programs, Leadership and Competencies for KM,
Knowledge Assessment, Metrics, Enterprise Knowledge Management, Process-oriented Knowledge Management, Knowledge Mapping,
Benchmarking, Expertise Location, Search, Personal Knowledge Management, Web 2.0, Communities, Collaboration

You can download a pdf brochure from here:

Download KMTrainingBrochure-Luzern-2010

I hope you can make it!

Barry

OpenTox Workshop in Potsdam to discuss collaborative approach to linking resources to improve human safety

On Sunday May 30 we host an OpenTox Workshop near Berlin in Potsdam that will bring many leading international research program directors and leaders together to discuss how collaboration and the increased linking of resources over the World Wide Web could progress human safety research and safety assessment.  By linking resources and data increasingly powerful computer-based models can be built for predicting and avoiding unwanted adverse toxic side effects of drugs, chemicals, ingredients in soaps and cosmetics, pesticides etc. thus enhancing human safety and protecting the environment better.  Such methods should also eventually lead to the replacement of many animal experiments.

More details on program can be located at:

http://www.opentox.org/data/blogentries/public/opentoxworkshoppotsdam2010

CKM Basel 2010

We will run our Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) Training week again this Spring the week of 19-23 April 2010 at the Merian Hotel in Basel, Switzerland.  The location is on the banks of the Rhine in Basel:

In addition to pre-class eLearning and faculty instruction from senior practitioners the class works in groups on case studies:

with the groups completing an end of week presentation and evaluation.  If the weather is good we may even work outside on the terrace on an assignment together:

The week usually attracts an international group of managers and practitioners with knowledge management responsibilities from a range of organisations supporting a rich exchange of knowledge and experiences between the class. Below is a photo of the Basel class of 2009:

Class members may subsequently submit a practice report for competency evaluation; currently many of the Basel 2009 class have reached this stage.

This year's training week is again supported by a group of six leading instructors and facilitators with an excellent combination of experience and skills needed to cover and support the full breadth of topics and discussions:

Pavel Kraus, President, Swiss Knowledge Management Forum and Partner, aht'intermediation
Beat Knechtli, Director, Chief Knowledge Officer, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Zurich
Michael Wyrsch, Vice President and Leader Knowledge Management Competence Center, Credit Suisse
Stephan Bohr, Global Knowledge Management Leader Advisory (EMEA), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
Barry Hardy, PhD, Director, Community of Practice & Research Activities, Douglas Connect
Douglas Weidner, President, International Knowledge Management Institute

Topics covered include:
Knowledge Management (KM) Concepts, KM Practices, Business Case, Strategy, Program Planning, KM Frameworks,
KM & Organisational Culture & Development, Change Management for KM Programs, Leadership and Competencies for KM,
Knowledge Assessment, Metrics, Enterprise Knowledge Management, Process-oriented Knowledge Management, Knowledge Mapping,
Benchmarking, Expertise Location, Search, Personal Knowledge Management, Web 2.0, Communities, Collaboration

You will find more information at:
http://douglasconnect.com/html/knowledge.htm
and can download a pdf brochure from here:

Download KMTrainingBrochure

I hope you can make it!

Barry

Trident Missiles, Drugs and Shoe Choices

The question I am asking here is "How can lessons from Trident Missiles improve future patient healthcare treatment?" or more prosaically "What is the business case for knowledge management in healthcare product and service development and delivery?"

A number of times in recent weeks the topic of the business case for knowledge management (KM) has arisen in my interactions, conversations and activities, and from which some initial reflections are convincing me of the need and importance for new work, approaches and applications in this area.  Personally I would like to develop the case approaches in the life science/pharmaceutical/healthcare area but new approaches may apply across sectors and cross-industry comparisons may be insightful. 

Before getting into the challenges let me mention one story I came across recently that really brings home the future benefits of KM applied to technology development over the long term.  It is the one of how the knowledge required to refurbish Trident missiles has been literally lost: http://kerrieannesfridgemagnets.posterous.com/did-we-throw-out-that-fogbank-stuff-no-probs  Ignoring the question of why the missiles are being refurbished and whether that should be done, you can simply focus on the issue of huge cost gain and loss of investment through inadequate KM. This case involves not only inadequate explicit knowledge management of data, procedures and processes, but also the loss of human and social capital knowledge associated with the technology due to worker loss and retirement unaccompanied by tacit knowledge sharing, transfer and alumni retainment measures.  So there simply has been an almost complete organizational memory loss of a key competency; lack of KM is now costing tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of squandered taxpayers’ money to reinvent the wheel.

In this time of cost-cutting responses to the finance industry triggered economic recession and mass follow-me psychological depression, it would be pertinent for long-term investment stakeholders to consider the above lesson in lack of KM.  As executives are cutting costs and jobs to survive and human and social capital in the organization is being lost or destroyed, one should ask what is the impact of knowledge loss on the long term value and growth of the organization.  What KM measures are being taken so that the organization is simply not forgetting what it can do?

Let’s return to focus on the challenges with formulating the business case for KM in the life science/pharmaceutical industry case.  If the case is for a small tactical project and we concentrate on short term benefits and localised returns, then one can probably do a reasonable job with existing best practices.  However this is of very limited value in assessing the impact on factors that are really strategically important – e.g., longer term overall financial performance, sustainable development, stakeholder value, innovation success etc.

If we accept the statement that no major organisation in the life science/pharmaceutical industry has yet implemented a successful quantified global organisation-wide KM strategy, then we are immediately and obviously in the situation of having no previous data or case study as reference.  (I welcome exceptions even if partial cases added as comments and links to this initial post.)

Moreover the situation is even worse in terms of complexity.  The current industry business models are in their old age years; the current approaches of pharma mergers and biotech acquisitions are intermediate strategies, and the models of the future e.g., service oriented approaches combining knowledge, diagnostics and interventions for population segmented personalised medicine are currently plans and pilots.  Such factors will certainly distort many of our calculations for mid and long term returns.

According to the Economist’s 2020 study Pharma industry executives considered KM as the greatest potential source of productivity gains between 2005 and 2020. (Reference:
“Foresight 2020: Economic, Industry and Corporate Trends”, The Economist, (2005).
http://www.eiu.com/site_info.asp?info_name=eiu_Cisco_Foresight_2020&rf=0)  Although looking promising at first sight, my concern is what definition of KM was understood by respondents to this survey.  If the understanding was similar to what I have often encountered, there will be a great spectrum of definitions included in the survey sample and unseparated in the results analysis.   So we need to consider the question (and our business case ones) in the light of considering all KM impacts on value including structural, human and social capital values, and hence needing consideration of intellectual capital approaches.  Of course the current impact of mergers and acquisitions and associated job cutting complicates significantly an intellectual capital analysis applied over time.

A further significant complication in pharma is the long development cycle and time gap between initial R&D and market returns.   There will in general be a lag between gains in an intellectual capital index and a stock market financial metric, but the long lag time in drug development with complexities such as mentioned above make a clear return analysis very difficult.  We know at least anecdotally that many pharmaceutical companies often face knowledge loss issues similar to that depicted above for the Trident with their drug products.  The loss of personnel associated with mergers, acquisitions or recessions exasperates the already challenging issue of knowledge integration, sharing and translation across the life cycle.

The Dow Jones Sustainability Index has now been applied to pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare companies for a few years and provides some initial insight on the KM business case problem for this sector as it includes some KM-oriented components such as human capital and talent management valuations.  However it appears that several extensions and elaborations to such indexes are necessary.  The ideal would be a KM index component that predicted future stock market index gains for organization or sector which could guide both current strategy and investment decisions. 

However as KM increasingly becomes integrated with operations and work processes, it will become more challenging to separate out components as suggested above and inter-dependency may favor smartly aggregated multidimensional metrics.

Finally, there is the issue of the prospect of the increasingly collaborative approach to work in life science R&D, translational medicine and healthcare service provision.  If infrastructures increasingly involve virtual organization approaches sharing risk, practices and value creation across organizations, the KM evaluation and measurement situation has a further series of differences in these contexts.  At this stage one might just think one should give up on a detailed approach to intangibles and a quantitative KM business case for the industry.

However, let’s finish on an optimistic note.  What we may be happy to settle for here are metrics which can successfully guide decision making rather than scientifically rigorous ones.  We should therefore remind ourselves of the bounded rationality theory of Herbert Simon, which would point to our only needing to guide the non-optimal decision making of managers, based on metrics which are good or useful enough.  There should only be so many pairs of shoes for me to choose from in the shop before I decide; for me 2 or 3 good pairs are enough!  We can also remind ourselves that although Herbert Simon was awarded his Nobel in economics, he spent much of his life working in AI.  (If you are an economist expert reading this post and encountering imponderable conjunctures, please reach out to correct, extend, enlighten and collaborate…!)

So for now I will conclude it looks like an interesting problem to work on.  Please a) add relevant comments and links to this post and/or b) contact me at Barry.Hardy -(at)- douglasconnect.com if interested in joining a (probably initially small) practice group interested in discussing and developing approaches in this area.

Barry Hardy
InnovationWell Community of Practice & Research Manager

This year's Knowledge Management Training Week in Basel

We have had rewarding Knowledge Management Training weeks in Basel the past two years and an excellent international group of managers and practitioners with us from many countries, industries and different perspectives.  In addition to the extensive eLearning and practice-based teaching, the group interactions, exercises and end-of-week presentations have been productive and enriching.

We continue to develop the faculty for the program with this year's training week supported by a group of six leading instructors and facilitators with an excellent combination of experience and skills needed to cover and support the full breadth of topics and discussions. 

The Certified Knowledge Manager (CKM) Training week will take place 4-8 May 2009 at the Merian Hotel in Basel.  You will find more information at:
http://douglasconnect.com/html/knowledge.htm
and can download a pdf brochure from here:

Download KMTrainingBrochure

I hope you can make it!

Barry

Schedule for InnovationWell and eCheminfo Autumn 2008 Community of Practice Meeting

I provide below a schedule for the upcoming InnovationWell and eCheminfo Community of Practice meetings at Bryn Mawr.

I also include a location map here which may be useful upon arrival:

Download bryn_mawr_campus_map_douglas_connect_meeting.pdf

[Please follow continuation here to view schedule.]

SYNERGY Knowledge Assessment Launch

SYNERGY, a new 3 year European-funded Seventh Framework Research Project which commenced on the 1 February 2008, will research the knowledge sharing and collaboration support needs of stakeholders working collaboratively both internally within organisations, and within partnerships and new virtual network and business models. The project offers end user organisations an opportunity to participate in this leading edge research to address their unique requirements, to undergo a knowledge assessment of their collaboration needs, and the potential to pilot and test utility-based services developed during the project.

Swiss-based Douglas Connect will lead the SYNERGY workpackage on knowledge assessment, piloting and testing activities of application cases within industry and business contexts. To provide an opportunity for organisations to learn more about the initiative and the potential benefits of participation to them, Douglas Connect will hold a launch and networking event and Knowledge Café at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Basel, March 6 starting at 15.00. If interested in attending please contact Nicki Douglas of Douglas Connect, (Email: Nicki.Douglas –(at)- douglasconnect.com; Tel: +41 61 851 0461) to request a guest pass.

Following short presentations to inform, the event will feature peer-to-peer based Knowledge Café discussions on SYNERGY which will be facilitated by:

Prof. Keith Popplewell, Jaguar Cars Professor of Engineering Manufacture and Management, Coventry University, UK

Dr. Barry Hardy, Founder, InnovationWell & Knowledge Assessment Leader, Douglas Connect

Dr. Nenad Stojanovic, FZI Competence Center for Business Software, Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universität Karlsruhe, Germany

Dr. Asha Nagesser, Managing Director, INSIDEAN GmbH

Richard Zbinden, CEO, Software for Corporate Leaders LLC

A more detailed agenda and project overview is provided in the continuation below.