Becoming Knowledge-Powered

In this article, Dave Pollard, Chief Knowledge Officer at Ernst & Young Canada since 1994, relates the award-winning process his firm has used, and which many of the corporations that have visited the Centre for Business Knowledge in Toronto are adapting for their own needs, to transform the company from a knowledge-hoarding to a knowledge-sharing enterprise. The article espouses a five-phase transformation process: • Developing the Knowledge Future State Vision, Knowledge Strategy and Value Propositions • Developing the Knowledge Architecture and Determining its Content • Developing the Knowledge Infrastructure, Service Model and Network Support Mechanisms • Developing a Knowledge Culture Transformation Program • Leveraging Knowledge into Innovation The author identifies possible strategies, leading practices, and pitfalls to avoid in each phase. He also explores the challenges involved in identifying and measuring intellectual capital, encouraging new knowledge creation, capturing human knowledge in structural form, and enabling virtual workgroup collaboration.

A Study of Web Users' Waiting Time

The explosive expansion of the World Wide Web (WWW) is the biggest event in the Internet. Since its public introduction in 1991, the WWW has become an important channel for electronic commerce, information access, and publication. However, the long waiting time for accessing web pages has become a critical issue, especially with the popularity of multimedia technology and the exponential increase in the number of Web users. Although various technologies and techniques have been implemented to alleviate the situation and to comfort the impatient users, there is still the need to carry out fundamental research to investigate what constitutes an acceptable waiting time for a typical WWW user. This research not only evaluates Nielsen’s hypothesis of 15 seconds as the maximum waiting time of WWW users, but also provides approximate distributions of waiting time of WWW users.

Investigation into Factors that Influence the Use of the Web in Knowledge-Intensive Environments

The paper develops a set of hypotheses regarding the relationship between the TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) constructs and external variables such as individual differences, organizational factors, and risk factors. It uses TAM as a basis to hypothesize the effects of each external variable on the use of the Web as knowledge-transfer tool in the university context. The sample of this study will be professors in a university. The contributions of this chapter are twofold. First of all, this study may give an insight regarding the question of when and who is an eager user of new technologies for learning. Secondly, this chapter is the first one to use technology acceptance model in the context of knowledge-management systems.

Newshound Revisited

There has been a lot of research done in the area of Intelligent Internet Agents. In this chapter, we would like to report our experience in implementing such an agent. It is called Newshound, and it can be trained to recognize a desired topic, and then scan Usenet newsgroups looking for new examples of that topic. Recently, Newshound has been in use by law enforcement personnel, and in response to their feedback, we have extended its capabilities. Also, we introduce two additional intelligent agents: Chathound and Webhound. Finally, we describe the inter-agent communication layer, the facilitator for cooperation between ANSER’s intelligent agents

Intelligent Agents in a Trust Environment

Intelligent agents and multi-agent technologies are an emerging technology in computing and communications that hold much promise for a wide variety of applications in Information Technology. Agent-based systems range from the simple, single agent system performing tasks such as email filtering, to a very complex, distributed system of multiple agents each involved in individual and system wide goal-oriented activity. With the tremendous growth in the Internet and Internet-based computing and the explosion of commercial activity on the Internet in recent years, intelligent agent-based systems are being applied in a wide variety of electronic commerce applications. In order to be able to act autonomously in a market environment, agents must be able to establish and maintain trust relationships. Without trust, commerce will not take place. This research extends previous work in intelligent agents to include a mechanism for handling the trust relationship and shows how agents can be fully used as intermediaries in commerce.

Building an Agent

Since the emergence of agent technology, there have been many papers and articles written on the advantages and use of the technology. In particular, in the last two years, the number of papers discussing the use of agent systems seems to have risen exponentially. Whether this rise in the interest of agent technology corresponds to the emergence of eCommerce, Internet banking and the explosion in Web-based systems, or the maturity of the technology and programming languages used to develop them is another matter. For people interested in the technology and wanting to build their own agents, most of the material provides little insight in how to actually build an agent. This chapter discusses the problem of actually building an agent using an example of an “email helper” agent.

Knowledge-Based Systems as Database Design Tools

Database design process is a knowledge intensive task that requires expertise, practical experience, and judgment. It is not surprising, therefore, that over the last few years many research prototype database design expert systems have been reported in the literature. This paper is a survey of such tools. These tools are compared with respect to four major aspects: database design support, tool flexibility, expert system features, and implementation characteristics. This study reveals that, in general, there is lack of 1) support for all the phases of the design, 2) support for group database design, 3) graphic support, 4) empirical verification of effectiveness of the tools, 5) long-term maintenance of the tool and database schemata, and 6) specialized knowledge representation schemes, inference, and learning techniques.

Implementing Virtual Organizing in Business Networks

Virtual organizations and knowledge management have been discussed on a very broad scale in literature. However, a holistic view and methods that support implementation of these concepts are rare. Based on the understanding derived from literature and the experience of many action research-based projects, a method is described that addresses these issues for business networks. This includes the dimensions of strategy, process and IS required for establishing and managing business networks. By providing a systematic and documented procedure model, techniques and results, this method aims to improve the efficiency of setting up business networks, thus improving a company’s networkability. In order to illustrate why this method is needed and how it can be applied, a project for implementing a business-networking solution for electronic procurement is described. It shows how a structured approach helps to identify the scenarios, aids implementation and applies previously as well as newly created knowledge. The outlook describes areas for future research and new developments.

Virtual Organizations that Cooperate and Compete

‘Co-opetition’ describes the phenomenon that firms engage in a virtual form of interaction where they cooperate and compete with their counterparts. Such hybrid relationships challenge traditional notions of firm boundaries and strategic resource management. There seems a contradiction in the fact that partners are supposed to share knowledge which is at the same time a key determinant of their competitive advantage. This balancing act suggests the need for special competencies that enable companies to reap the benefits of temporary synergy, while avoiding risks associated with making knowledge available to external partners. This chapter explores the art of controlling knowledge flows in ‘coopetitive’ relationships. We conceptualize types of knowledge flows and dependencies, resulting in four configurations. For each of these, risks in terms of deviations from the original agreement are examined. We propose control strategies that allow companies engaged in co-opetition to anticipate deviant trajectories and define adequate responses. Directions for future research on this topic are indicated.

Knowledge Management and New Organization Forms

The concept of knowledge management is not new in information systems practice and research. However, radical changes in the business environment have suggested limitations of the traditional information-processing view of knowledge management. Specifically, it is being realized that the programmed nature of heuristics underlying such systems may be inadequate for coping with the demands imposed by the new business environments. New business environments are characterized not only by rapid pace of change, but also discontinuous nature of such change. The new business environment, characterized by dynamically discontinuous change, requires a re-conceptualization of knowledge management as it has been understood in information systems practice and research. One such conceptualization is proposed in the form of a sense-making model of knowledge management for new business environments. Application of this framework will facilitate business model innovation necessary for sustainable competitive advantage in the new business environment characterized by dynamic, discontinuous and radical pace of change.