Sharing knowledge despite bandwidth and technology issues

 NYTimes article: “Dailing for Answers Where Web Can’t Reach”

A question that often pops up in Knowledge Sharing circles is “how can we share knowledge effectively in low bandwidth regions?”

The above New York Times article highlights an example of how this can be possible.  Exploiting the growing mobile phone use in Africa, (and the article quotes that “nearly 300 million Africans now have cellphones“) an initiative called “Question Box” was formed.  

Questions from rural areas are asked by phone, to operators in a central office who then conduct the online and database searches.  There is a video clip showing the service in action on the Question Box blog.  Whilst this example is a light hearted one, the the New York Times article also talks of plans to tailor the service to farmers for agricultural information.

Collaboration for innnovation

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3cdb6a48-5f46-11de-93d1-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Great article on the FT management blog looking at innovation from a management perspective.   How can organisations utilise “social network analysis” for the purpose of ensuring effective collaborative networks?  Effective networkers, the article says, are “efficient value creators”.  

I particularly like the technology system described whereby:

“[meeting attendees have] electronic badges containing data about what each attendee did – so that when colleagues with overlapping knowledge and expertise stood close to each other, lights on their badges would flash.”

Genius!  This could have undoubtedly have useful applications even within an organisation’s HQ…

This subject is related to intellectual property management for a number of reasons.  It’s not only the traditional connections between innovation and IP, but also that these networks and sharing platforms require IP attention in terms of agreements, rights and authorship.  Finally, in the ongoing challenge for intellectual property professionals to raise awareness of IP issues within an organisation, you need to be an effective collaborator yourself!

TED now talks many languages…

http://www.ted.com/index.php/OpenTranslationProject

Great move by TED to initiate a translation project on its site.  TED’s wealth of video resources are now slowly becoming available in a variety of languages.  Their site says:

“the TED Open Translation Project brings TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world by offering subtitles, interactive transcripts and the ability for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide”

The project in itself is an interesting one, translators are working to bring these resources to a wider audience for the sole reward of attribution.  Oh, the power of attribution for effective knowledge sharing is not to be underestimated!

CREATIVE ECOLOGIES: Where Thinking is a Proper Job

<http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book_display.php?id=9780702236990&type=s>

John Howkins’ book  “The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas” (2002) made an impact by taking a holistic approach to what we often refer to as the information or knowledge economy.

His new book goes a step further in addressing the nature of creativity and its relationship to innovation within a larger context.

Howkins talks about how:

The way economics and business has approached (economic choices) for the past fifty years has been to focus on one-off innovation implemented in mass production with ever lower costs and prices. Business has seen creativity and innovation as specialist functions. I call this the repetitive economy. We are now seeing a shift to the creative economy where, although basic goods and services have not diminished in absolute terms, the bulk of growth comes from their added symbolic value.

Howkins is no ivory tower academic and brings a wealth of deep and broad real world experience to bear on his explorations.  In 2006 he was listed as one of the Fifty Most Important People in Intellectual Property by ‘Managing Intellectual Property’ magazine and in 2007 he was nominated #1 Creative Star in China by ‘Beijing Business News’.

You can download the first chapter of Creative Ecologies for free at:
<http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book_display.php?id=9780702236990&type=s>

I’m going to buy the book, and I think that it is a probably a “must read” for anyone who is interested in a fresh and stimulating exploration of the subject.

Post written by Peter Bloch, consultant to CAS-IP