Well, at least IBM is adopting these ideas. I am struggling to get my company to see that a complexity based approach will help the company. So my question remain is, How did IBM got convinced to adopt complexity based ideas?

Also have a look at Dilbert from 16th of March. It is a lovely discussion on a measurement based managment system...

Lots of people don't get it.
http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/
would indicate that Tim O'Reilly might one day get it but that Andrew McAfee probably won't.

Luca's question is a good one. How do individuals or organizations reach the point of adopting complexity based ideas?

Dave, I beg to differ strongly with your commentary on this topic.
1.)Organic Communities predate your time in IBM by 20 years plus.
Anyone from the IBM systems engineering profession in 70s and 80s knows and used the power of the internal IBM global network, based on VM 360/370 systems to literally grow tens of thousands of thriving global communities. There was also enough money around at that point in the history of the IBM world to allow those engineers time to actively explore and be creative, within boundaries. To claim organic KM, social networks, Wiki, Blogs are something fundamentally new is to fail to know IBM history 202.
2.) To claim the commentary of a few means IBM gets or endorse anything is to fail to know IBM.
I have heard multiple excellent executives make the standing joke ... IBM and Governments work well together because they are all too big to know how they work. If there is an IBM it is an emergent property. Especially to claim that commentary of one or two shows IBM understood then or understands now, in some deep internalised corporate conciousness way, the impact of organic knowledge networks is very debatable. Your metaphor of the magic roundabout and massive traffic light captures the situation perfectly. IBM works because it always found the magic bus on the magic roundabout. IBMers who attempt control from the centre have always missed the plot.

Ever the loyalist Mark!

I completely agree with you that organic natural communities were around in IBM for a long time. That is not the issue. What happened when IBM adopted KM (behind the curve I add) is that there were multiple attempts to impose an over rigid structure in a vast CoP rollout which failed to honour the history to which you refer. Despite that the informal networks in IBM kept it going.Oe of the characteristics of large bureaucratic organisations is that the informal networks develop to make the system work despite itself. This means that the bureauracy sustains the unsustainable.

If IBM survives it will be because its employees find ways around the system, not because of the system itself (this is the case in many large organisations. The latest announcements on KM I thought were an encouraging sign that the official system might finally be catching up with the informal, emergent one.

The danger is (going back to magic roundabouts) that Zeberdee may not always be around .....

So how long will it take them to go from Knowledge Sharing to Knowledge Value?

Informally they were there a long time ago Cory, formally? Well the nether regions and ice come to mind