So how does all of this connect together? Well the Padang is an interesting place, it was laid out for recreation by Raffles who founded Singapore as an international centre for trade. The Cricket Club at the far end, from and centre of the view from my window and slightly to the left of centre in the photograph, was a colonial institution. The Recreation club was founded by Euroasians excluded from that club. Singapore has since its foundation almost 50 years ago fallen between cultural boundaries. It provided a safe place for European and American companies to set up in the Far East, it became the centre of a complex set of relationships that gives it influence beyond its physical size and population. It has the highest rate of inter racial marriage of any country in the world; overcoming that most ancient of taboos is a tribute to enlightenment. Increasingly it is a centre for biotech, providing the type of resources to researchers that are difficult or unnecessarily encumbered in the US and UK. It has understood that ownership is not the paradigm of the modern age, instead its access to knowledge, the ability to integrate and connect, to serendipitously synthesise different bodies of knowledge. OK its not perfect, there are too many engineers trained in too many US institutions for one thing. Net result the best airline and airport in the world, but creativity and invention are more problematic.

I'll quote from a published speech of Peter Ho, Head of the Civil Service here and one of the most enlightened people I have had the privilege to work with over the years.

While Trust is why people will consider Singapore, and Knowledge the reason why they will do business with us, we also need people who will walk with us.....

...To achieve this, we have to move beyond the functional and utilitarian, into the emotive and culture. We need to take a more coherent and deliberate effort to manage our national brand. But more than branding, we must be prepared to seek real changes in strategy and policy. This means making a sustained effort to build and maintain links with people who have studied, worked of lived here. It also means changes in our education system to develop a more international and cosmopolitan outlook among our young.

...we also need to move beyond being efficient in implementation towards being more flexible, more nimble, with strong bias for action

Now this illustrates the point I am making, to situation meaning is not to own physical things, or to control flows. Its a dynamic concept that recognizes the constant fluidity of the evolutionary potential of the present. We manage that though interactions and connections; a constant series of safe-fail experiments that focus on dynamic linking of concepts and issues, of ideas and problems to allow the emergence of meaning. One of the reasons I love the Adés opera is the way it respects the text of Shakespeare, but builds on it. I have a growing collection of fusion art; paintings and sculptures by indigenous artists using modern techniques. Singapore in terms of ideas (and food, this is the cuisine capital of the world) understands fusion.

The RAHS conference which has brought me here is now in its third manifestation and was Peter's creation. It provides a focus for work on horizon scanning and I am looking forward to meeting old and new friends. My job at the conference is to attend, listen and then summarise the event in the final session. I was chair of a stream eighteen months ago so I think I have been promoted! That probably means I can't conference blog as I will need to focus, however I will post a series of reflections over the period.

Picture from the Flickr photstream of Lipjin, acknowledged with thanks

We want your micro-narratives, you mini-scenarios as part of a crowd sourcing project. Anyone who participates can have access to the data, results will be published here. Basically you click here and contribute your ideas, then you signify their meaning. The signifier (or index) set was produced in conjunction with experts in strategic foresight. We want to demonstrate the power of networks, the ability of the voice of the person on the metaphorical Clapham Omnibus, Jo Public (or whatever yiyr cultural phrase is) to stand up there with the views of experts. One is not better than the other, we need both!

Also we want them fast - as many as you can over the next couple of days. The first report will come out on Sunday, then more over next week. Please participate please pass this on in your blog, Twitter, Facebook, emails lists or good old word of mouth.

In contrast I spend today in Belfast where we have been working on a project to gather the narratives of bereavement from both professionals and the bereaved. It took about half an hour to explain to people how to use Explorer (the analysis tool within SenseMaker™) although it took about two hours to work around the deficiencies of Windows (thank God I have a Mac) an the firewall policies of public bodies! However once that was out of the way I sat back, checked email my RSS feed and twitter (finding a few examples of the cartoon) while a group of people spent several hours exploring the narratives using the signification of those who told the stories. ne comment was typical: that story is so negative, but they have indexed it as a positive experience. Now the people I was working with are the opposite of stupid, they were not challenging the indexing but recognising that the person reading the story, with the personal context saw the material in a different way. All those academics and others tagging raw narrative rather than allowing people to interpret their own stories.

Stories fascinate, finding them, sensing anomalies then burrowing down to see what patterns you can see, initiating discourse, taking a new approach to evidence. All of these were possible, with minimal training. People understand narrative, they value the learning.

Critically we talked about the need to recognize that people themselves will have found ways of coping before the outside agencies arrive. Further that forms of communication can be very sophisticated even in so called primitive societies. There was a general recognition that the old style information centric knowledge management approach would not work (although many government agencies are going down that path). There was a strong focus on resilience (ironically I had been working on the book the day before with Mary Boone and we had more or less settled on Resilience, or The Resilient Organisation as its title. Resilience is contrasted with robustness. In the latter case you try and prevent failure, in the former you recognise that failure of some type is inevitable and aim to detect it fast, and recover quickly. More on that research as it develops, it was too rich a conversation to capture.

I've found another interesting hotel in New York as well, the Washington Square Hotel. Its Art Deco which is the most interesting period in modern architecture, especially in New York. Downsides are no way to make a drink in the room and too thin walls (vigorous couples on both sides last night at 0200 in the morning). However its well situated, free internet, comfortable etc. Also Dylan Thomas once stayed here, one of the greatest of the modern poets.

• People who want to take a sophisticated idea in the early stages of its formation and represent it in terms that they can comprehend. I say they advisedly, they often argue they are doing everyone else a favour. They of course understand the idea, but they will simplify it so that other lesser mortals can understand it. This is often a power trip, or the response of someone who will never have an original idea themselves but feel that they should. They attempt in consequence to gain originality by proxy, but also to control access to those who are original.
• Cultists, who pick up on the language of a new idea (which they may or may not understand) but then the language and the ability to speak that language is used to distinguish the inner circle, the cognoscenti from those who are other, the uninitiated, the impure. You see a lot of this with continental philosophy, sociology and psychology. In management you get the groupies who preserve the thoughts of the master (and end up drinking the purple liquid in the South American jungle if they don't watch it). In order to engage, you first have to acquire the language and by the time you do that, you too are a cultist, you've lost your capacity to think.
• Now while both the above mentioned groups are attempting to be faithful to the original ideas, there is a third group who don;t even listen or understand. They hear or see something which matches a deeply held or cherished belief. Generally one that no one else has ever taken seriously and seize on the new idea or model as a way of validating they own unrecognized ideas. As I have said previously this is a form of intellectual hijacking that I despise, but I also feel some pity of those who practice it. They often have good ideas, they are mavericks but they lack the ability to be taken seriously, so they latch onto anything that might given them respectability. The big problem with these guys is that they don't understand they are doing something wrong, they live in their own little universe and only. In a variation of the cartoon above, G A Moore once said: Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism. If you want a metaphor then people are looking at reality through a distorting mirror, but are vehement in maintaining that the reflection is reality.

Part of the price of creating new things is that the above types will necessarily emerge. My general approach over the years has been to respond initially to elaborate of explain the differences, and then to get increasingly assertive if there is no attempt to meaningful engage. But overall a better approach might be to educate the first, exterminate the second and ignore the third. In practice its more difficult

The point really is one of identity, if something is allowed to mean anything then it becomes meaningless. On the other hand if the purity rituals prevent change then ossification and irrelevance are the inevitable outcome. I don't have a clear answer to this, but I think there are some principles and they rest around integrity both of the thing itself and the people involved. Plagiarism is a pejorative word that often goes undetected. Its normal meaning to to pass off someone else's ideas as your own and the rectification is to acknowledge your sources. However its origins in the Latin plagiarus meaning kidnapping gives us another context. Here while acknowledgment may be given the integrity of the original idea is not respected. The language and some of the concepts are taken and used for something totally other, in the hope that they will somehow or other gain respect by association. To be inspired by something, and then create something unique of different, thats fine even laudable. I did that with Cynefin when I was inspired by Boisot's I-Space. I have always acknowledged that source but I never claimed the I-space space (if you see what I mean. No easy answer, and sometimes the most effective way to deal with lack of integrity in others is to ignore them, but that is difficult when its your creation they are polluting.

The English National Opera produced a wonderful Ring a few years back and Die Walküre was performed to acclaim at the Glastonbury Festival. The interpretation was an interesting one. In the final Act Wotan has cast down Brünnhilde, but then (in a modernistic interpretation) the drug addicts and pimps start to cluster around her. In fear of desecration he calls on Loki to create the ring of fire that will protect her until the arrival of the hero. For any father with an errant daughter (and all daughters are errant at some stage if you respect their freedom) it was almost impossible to watch for the intensity of the portrayal.   

Something which is loved has to be preserved but it must also evolve. Maybe at the end we are with John Donne : On a huge hill, Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe (from The Progresse of the Soule)

In 1998 my parents gave me a book for a Christmas present. It was the 80

Place is not just a physical construct; a sense of place evokes a personal and collective response to something which is highly experiential, concrete and yet abstract. Something that situates lives, enables meaning and instantiates identity. In the modern world, with the ability to link and connect across space, if not time, with people and places with whom we had no physical contact. The question of place, of situated identity is a complex one that makes meaning a problematic word and challenges many of the conventions of marketing.

From the introduction to a book chapter on Place Marketing which I am currently completing

Big themes

• The hidden messiness of organisations
• challenges of surfacing the knowledge that matters within the messiness (and who judges what matters(
• the implications of these challenges for strategy processes and operations
• The new ways of leading/organising/managing this mess.

• How to manage the complex system of himan interaction (me)
• How to uncover hidden patterns in this mess (Daniel)
• What is the role of leadership in this mess (Karl-Erik
• How to transfer knowledge and stories from one team to antoehr in this mess (Verna)
• How to convince senion managment of this mess of the need for a proper knowledge based stragey (Richard/Victor)
• How to use the social structures in this mess for the benefit of the company
• How to ope up conversations in this mess? (David)
• How an messy organisations learn in a crisis *Elena)
• How to appreciate and transfer the strengths of this mess (Geoff)
• How to prevent people becoming toxic (intoxicated( in the mess? (Steve)

Now Daan is summarising metaphors of knowledge

• as land (aboriginal)
• as labour (put knowledge to work)
• as intuition
• as commodity (knowledge brokers)
• as stuff (distributed cognition)
• as water (knowledge flows)
• as capital (intellectual capital)
• as seeing/knowledge as light (light bulb)

Now moving people into groups to think about what next. I think speakers should stay out of this so this is me signing out. Now to think about the bus to Reading, a train and a lift and home. Interesting event, great location, good people.

Interesting, now talking about participation as a power law from low threshold to high engagement. Umm, would like to see data on that. Asking now how social software links to collective intelligence. Shows a truly wonderful picture (reproduced below) referencing back to my use of the term messy coherence. Now moving on to what are the forms of collective intelligence.

• Groups of people working together in ways that seem intelligent
• Crowd sourcing, an open call to an undefine group of people
• Open innovation, as above but focused to innoation

Why is this relevant? Well, he gives several reasons [although i think his list is limited by the way] from physical proximity no longer being an issue, open access etc.

First things first slide [people will like this, nothing like a good recipe]

• Let people connect, bond and converse
• Given then time, freedom and space
• Let them muck around and experiment
• Let them figure out their purpose ...
• ... and the alignment with other people
• Ease people into a cultural shift
• Build emotional connectivity
• Don't ask for justification immediately, its is about building infrastructure and culture only.

After this you align to business context

• Then introduce your bsueinss contet and cause
• Solicit inputs and create conversations
• Let people question and refine what the cause truly is
• Alight people to the cause through collective ownership
• (four other points he went through too quickly to caputure

Then we move onto idea nurturing and systematic innovation. Some funneling here, uses mind mapping, TRIZ, perception mapping etc. Aim to deploy 24% of ideas (his case I think). He is running a stimulus practice, anyone throws out an idea then see what clusters around it. They decide what they do and they decide when they release. Has 85 released, 350 in progress. 125 of those in the last year, its been in place for five years. Initially 9 so its grown well. People are putting in their own time which makes it more notable.

Interesting idea here - when they put social computing in they let them play with it for a year without expectations, then they starting to introduce process. [Good idea that]. After that it was easier to introduce it to project delivery with a claimed 5% productivity impact. [margin of error level there, but overall agree with this process.]

Ah, now the interesting bit! Moving on to Collective Stupidity

Asks if collective engagement can reduce not increase value and examples follow - swiftboating, mass suicide, hitler (its not difficult). Group think, herd mentality, deindivuation, loud voices lead the pack, silence in the place of divergence, selection bias, stereotyping non-conformers, anonymity amplifies

Intelligent people, when assembled into an organisation, will tend towards collective stupidity Karl Albrecht

[This is good stuff, although its upsetting some people, but they need it].

Values help [This is a vital point, the role of ethics has been thrown away in the pursuit of growth and success measured in terms of wealth and power]

Ways to overcome: seeding diversity, generalists who can connect, link thinkers and doers, Leaders lead through asking questions, Thinking hats, Devils advocateFair process and platforms. [I would challenge a lot of those, but his heart is in the right place!]

So what do I think?

Executive support in India is far stronger than in the UK or the US. At KM India we have many GMs and VPs present, you never get that over here. It makes it easier for some of this stuff to work if you have that level of support. The key thing in Raj's work is that it allows practice to emerge, it doesn't impose ideal models and for that I can forgive him the Gen X/Y stuff. He also had the courage to attack the herd like approach in many KM people to crowd sourcing - well done!

Messy coherence - the picture

Back to the undercurrent again [I hope we are going to get something other than description before we end]. More metaphors, currents range from thermohaline to turbidity, each has an equal number of causes and functions. Ocean currents are caused by temperature differences, so what is the temperature in your organisation, what is the salt content, the spiciness; turbidity is the haziness of a fluid caused by individual particles, so which particles in your organisation determine the under current.

Now to the drama triangle (his second model) from transactional analysis shown, this is his second model. He elaborates a story of people moving around the triangle. Valuable point that everyone gets a lot of attention with the game, and also its another way of avoiding dealing the the individual. Soap operas are built around this pattern.

Kampen (2007) seeing commonalities between raising children and managing professions. Creates a long list of characteristics of a neglected organisation [going to fast for me to capture] over 14 and the assumptions is that the more present the more neglected you are. [I am very dubious about this, in my experience all the 14 characteristics listed are present to a degree in all organisations. The danger here is lack of context, lack of understanding of flow and expectation, per my Maslow comment]. This leads to the leadership model on the right.

• Uninvolved is neglecting
• Authoritarian reaction is a repair style with a risk of fake adjustments
• Permissive is risk of spoiling neglect
• The best is a authoritative [has to be its the top right quadrant!], a curing style but only to be used on a case by case basis

SO, why does KM not work?

• basic needs not met
• people caught in games
• people have been neglected for years
• suppressed emotions
• not enough positive and negative conditional strokes are given and the two are not in balance

So what do I think?

Metaphors are good ways to initiative perspective shifting conversations, but they can be taken too far. Also metaphor is a much richer intervention mechanism, better to do something more substantial. I am now thinking of salt mines hence the picture (that is one of the metaphor downsides). Some interesting insights from the leadership model, but this is all focused individuals and ideal behaviour. The models are hierarchical and categorizing in nature. The actions are aobut moving to an ideal future. We need to start managing the Now not some ideal future.

Her central proposition is that a knowledge economy is a relationship economy, and the basic mechanisms of sharing are social processes. This will of course depend on trust and distrust, but the returns to trust are huge. Some statements: moving one point on a ten point scale on work place scale as the same effect as a 40% increase in pay; investment in social trust has an impact on growth rates (as much as education); 62% of adults in 20 countries reported a significantly lower level of trust in organisations than the previous year.

From human capital to social capital

Sees people, knowledge and connections (human, intellectual & social) elements. Social capital is the resources imbedded in networks. Social capital research draws on network theory and theories of community.

• Structural dimension: how many ties, strong ties, weak ties
• Relational: quality of the relationships
• Cognitive: degree to which people share common language, stories and understanding

Social capital affects intellectual capital because it shapes the ability and motivation of people to access, exchange and combine their information, knowledge, expertise and experience. Looking at this field in the context of scenario building. Bridging and bonding are critical, with a simple network diagram in which Vera connects four networks with four connections, Alex also has four connections but they all know each other and work together. [This is 101 network theory, waiting for something novel to emerge]. [Well done David Gurteen who challenges the model and questions the quality of the linkage and the ability to assess it, but gets a non answer "the research shows ...."]. More on how the Vera may not be the most prominent [This really is 101 stuff and non-critical] Generation X/Y mentioned. [Why do intelligent people take crude classifications so seriously]

From node to network challenges for knowledge governance

Move to interdependence is key and questions of governance. In a network who is responsible? Who makes decisions? At the heart of governance is trust. [I am really surprised that she didn't mention the Wikipedia here, its the most advanced case and with some real learning. She is obviously running out of time so jumps to the next section.

Unlikely innovators: from inside out to upside down

Increasingly innovation comes from the outside [well of course it does, we've stopped giving people long term stability of employment so there is little alternative]. She suggests that over the next couple of decades this will increase and we will look to new places for ideas, not just India and China but also Africa. Our western paradigms are not working and may be getting in the way of things.

I asked three questions: Is capital the right idea, how do you measure value and what about the self-fulfiling prophesies. Now the answer was interesting. Firstly she raised Weick's concept of people lost in mountains who followed the wrong map but got out of the mountains anyway. Now I'm sorry but I don't buy that, to make it work you would have to send 100 people into mountains with the wrong map and see who gets out, even then its a very dubious argument. Secondly argues that there are other meanings of capital (Leif says the same). Well OK I can buy that but the dominant meaning is neoclassical so that is the model people will pick up.

So what do I think?

Other than [Comments] of course! The big thing for me with the whole intellectual capital movement is applying the idea of capital to knowledge flows, when capital is a thing, its an oxymoron to talk about intangibles as capital. Its not just a linguistic thing it fundamentally affects the way you think about knowledge and not for the best. The other two big issues here are the way in network models become self-fulfiling prophesies and the much more substantial question about how do you ethically measure quality in networks. I have yet to see anyone answer these questions, and today was no exception. Indeed there seems to be a reluctance even to consider it.

weick following the map

Question and answer session here, looking at what people have learnt. Concerns over military power, some cynicism (especially from Indians) about the date. Too complex a discourse to really summarise here, its a rich conversation from many people. Pleased that people are taking away the need for knowledge work to become strategic.

Key from Leif - health of people is the key indicator of the future, but how do we see the future how do we make it happen.

Göran Roos

• Outside-In - tend to be low tech, highly modular, high knowledge intensity and act as knowledge brokers and/or creators
• Inside-out - tend to be research driven, multiply technology etc. (flipping through slides too quickly for me to absorb I am afraid but i suspect he is summarising a paper so you can probably find it)

Sources of external knowledge - suppliers and customers are the highest, Universities and Research Institutes are the lowest! Suggests this is because of discontinuities between time lines. Low technology customers get highest return from understanding customers. High Tech on the other hand start to get returns by having many shallow relationships with many Universities but that takes resource (claims this from research). Generally better to go broader rather than deeper.

Open innovation means added costs and the external sources do not share the same context with cost implications. Engagement in open systems starts high, but then declines due to motivational and other issues. Trade off issues for provider do not match context of requester. No written contracts, what is foreground and background IP? Which legal system etc. etc. Some people are malicious (Victor is starting to look like an optimist in comparison!)

Why does it not pay? number of sources to be handled past three gets negative, past six you can't handle it. Therefore limited by definition. Good point here, but there are better ways to handle that, will pick up in my presentation later (fragmentation, multi-source assessment, fitness landscapes)

Moved on to what should we do. Early stages of life cycle, then use a small number of key sources intensively. As the market matures etc then more and more actors have specialized knowledge, So you need to scan a wider number of search channels. Good advice, they are no silver bullets . Open innovation can not be a substitute for internal innovation.

Most useful item of knowledge - there is a supplier of silver bullets in the USA who will warrant their effectiveness against werewolves. Do a google search on "silver bullet suppliers" to be really scared.

Moving into his main theme: Organisations recruit smart people and make them stupid.

Consent and evade as a learned way of resisting change. Yep seen that one, often done and selecting people for committees who will mess up the idea and gradually confuse it or dog it down with questions. Spending a lot of time on this one, good story but the point was made right at the start. Sees it as partly explained by an unacknowledged history of failure. Functional advocacy at the expense of corporate responsibility (nice phrase but I have no idea where he is going with this).

Ah tactical solutions, suggesting you go and review your past failures, trick people into telling the truth (umm). Select the right people, frame benefits and bonuses. In effect Victor is arguing just to do things better rather than to really change the game. its the normal systems approach. Ok revolutionary idea - cut the workforce by 50% (calls this changing the rules) then the inertia goes. True, but a lot else may go with it. Come on Victor there must be more than that.

A healthy organisation should have some high value low volume transactions (creative individuals in prototype). ALso some medium volume, medium value products delivered by experts, large volume here leading to high volume low value transactions. Organizations with high sticky cultures just end up with a big box of low value high volume transactions and these people were try and prevent you understanding what is going on. Same point as above, a very pessimistic perspective on organisational motivation. Ah,says a good consultant can find the hidden jewels ......

Again saying that the organisation destroys new people with good ideas, they will ask you to prove/justify your approach (well hang on now, that is a reasonable question). Craft mystery and power again (constant theme). Starting to make a bit more sense; saying that as a new expert you should not be arrogant when you join an organisation but build relationship capital first. That way you may get to the right meeting.

Advises that you establish positive relationships, go through a rite of passage (repudiation of old identity, legitimization of a new one). Hold back on expertise don;t push yourself forward until you get to the point where you are not seen as destabilizing the relationship capital. Behave in meetings, don't threaten existing hierarchies, non threatening knowledge, passive body language, use sanctified contextual craft language. [me: There are some ethical issues here surely? Radical innovation does happen in organisations but not by being nice to people]. More talk of lies and deceit (OK I am uncomfortable with this) to avoid challenge. Do things in slide meetings to avoid confrontation.

Sorry Victor, not only couldn't I behave like that, but I wouldn't respect myself if I did.

Sees a problem for knowledge management in that it has focused on the tool, not how the tool sits within the whole. Remembering that Richard is a great weather vane, a lead indicator of when novel ideas are becoming main stream.

• The right information to the right people at the right time
• If only our company knew what our company knows
• We review toos for empowering knowledge workers with greater finability and share ability of enterprise information including expertise, improve employee productivity increased customer satisfaction and reduced time to market for new products and services

Argues that KM has become a back office tool - people, process and technology and enterprise 20 tools for combined working, Outcomes are quicker information, more contacts etc.

He asks a question: What if we designed KM to specifically support what people do with knowledge? What would we focus on?

Now saying that thinking is either analytical (conscious) or intuition (adaptive unconscious). False dichotomy there but a common one; neither exists without the other. Uses the example of the ability of deep experts to have high tuned intuition (its not intuition, its embodied knowledge built over time through education and experience but OK I'll go with the flow for now

Another question: What if we designed KM to be more specifically tuned to each of these activities? What would we design?

Example here is risk assessment to simplify analytic tasks, enhancing intuition through collaborative discourse.

Being brought to a close now by the chairman, talking about potential for the future. My big issue here is that the solution is entirely within the systems dynamics paradigm. Nothing wrong with that as there is extensive value is systems approaches, but they start to fall down when the level of uncertainty contra-indicates a basically engineering approach.