Characterizing the Next Generation Knowledge

This paper investigates the major characteristics needed by the next generation knowledge organization. The paper then proposes five organizational characteristics that support sustainable competitive advantage within an environment of rapid change, high complexity and large uncertainty. Next, eight major system characteristics are proposed that will allow the organization of the future to survive and compete. These characteristics are emergent phenomena arising out of the structure and relationships of the proposed organization, an example of an Intelligent Complex Adaptive System (ICAS). They are: Organizational Intelligence; Unity and Shared Purpose; Optimum Complexity; Selectivity; Knowledge Centric; Flow; Permeable Boundaries; and MultiDimensionality. After describing these characteristics, the four processes through which the organization transforms its capabilities into actions are addressed. These processes are: Creativity; Problem Solving; Decision-making; and Implementation. A model is proposed that shows the top-level interactions among the characteristics. This paper is intended to be more suggestive than definitive. A number of these areas are uncharted territory with many streams and rivulets that have not been explored. Research is currently underway to further develop each of these characteristics in more detail and to investigate their mutual interactions and support of the major processes. The next step planned is to identify actions, processes and tools for implementation by ICAS agents and subsystem groups. The Future Environment While it is impossible to predict the future, there are major trends driven by fundamental underlying forces that give some confidence in extrapolating into it. For example, while progress in science and technology is not linear, overall advances in science and technology have consistently led to an increase in knowledge, and advances in their application have created the present world economy and standard of living. The technology to access data, information and knowledge is growing rapidly with time and may well overwhelm our limited human ability to find, identify and retrieve data, information, and knowledge objects in time to interpret and apply them to fast changing crises and opportunities. KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION: JOURNAL OF THE KMCI VOLUME ONE, NO. ONE, OCTOBER 15, 2000 © 2000 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CONSORTIUM INTERNATIONAL, INC. 9 Recognizing that a great many factors and forces impact organizations, and accepting that their number will likely increase in the future, we have attempted to identify the drivers that are behind the phenomena of change, complexity and uncertainty that currently cast a shadow over our institutions. Five drivers of the current and future environment are identified that represent fundamental forces that will challenge future organizational survival. They are: connectivity; data, information and knowledge; speed; access and digitization (see Figure One). In addition to impacting how firms must structure themselves and what strategies and form they take on, these drivers will also impact employees, customers, legislative policies and international relationships, all of which carry over to influence every organization’s ability to meet its objectives. Figure One -Characteristics of the ICAS The first major force of the future environment is connectivity: the number and ease of connecting different parts of the world. Technology has provided totally new ways of moving and transferring data, information, and knowledge among individuals, organizations and governments. Anyone in the world can talk at any time to almost anyone else in the world in real-time through the Internet, satellite KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION: JOURNAL OF THE KMCI VOLUME ONE, NO. ONE, OCTOBER 15, 2000 © 2000 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CONSORTIUM INTERNATIONAL, INC. 10 or fiber optic cables. Virtual conferences and video cameras will be commonplace. The result will be much more communication potentially reducing costs and speeding up the flow of ideas, the making of decisions and, hopefully, the sharing of understanding. Collaboration will involve experts from all over the world, brought together rapidly and efficiently to solve problems or brainstorm ideas. The ability to enter into a formal dialogue with strangers will become a factor in success, as the need for synergistic thinking and rapid action becomes a survival competency. The resulting pressures on organizations will mandate their ability to scan, select and quickly respond to the consequences of this environmental network and web of exchanges and actions. As the number of nodes in a network increases, the number of links increases exponentially. As the links and their consequent relationships increase, so does the complexity. The second driver impacting organization is data, information and knowledge. In addition to possible overload from saturation, organizations will have technology and human systems that search and seek the data, information and knowledge needed to meet their objectives. These systems must validate the information, categorize it, identify the context and develop the best interpretation, thereby laying the groundwork for knowledge application. Each of these activities is difficult enough by itself, but when existing in an environment where information is a bombardment, changing quickly, noisy and possibly random, or with little meaning, the organization will be forced to develop new capabilities that can respond to such terrain. Speed is the next force behind the accelerating world: Speed in the movement of goods and services, in the creation of new ideas through virtual collaboration, in the spread of information through increased bandwidth, in smart search engines and learning software and in the sharing and diffusing of knowledge. Speed shortens time and creates a demand for faster decision-making. It also increases uncertainty by limiting the time available to comprehend what is going on. As discussed below, it exacerbates the problems of validation and assurance of information and knowledge. In general, the pace of everything will continue to accelerate-while simultaneously demanding that the human brain keep up. One challenge for the new organization is the resolution of conflict between the limitations of human processing and the increasing speed of change and exponential growth of data, information and knowledge. Access is a recent problem emerging from the confluence of the three previous phenomena. It has several aspects. The first is how to identify the context of the information so that understanding can be extracted and relevant knowledge created by the user. The combination of large amounts of information coming from multiple networks using high-speed transfer systems that need rapid, quality decisions makes this “context” extraction a difficult problem. When one KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION: JOURNAL OF THE KMCI VOLUME ONE, NO. ONE, OCTOBER 15, 2000 © 2000 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CONSORTIUM INTERNATIONAL, INC. 11 considers the global sources of information and the language and cultural differences that come with international participants in communication networks the challenges become staggering. A second element of access is competition. In the organization of the future competitors will have the ability to quickly and reliably find information on each other, thereby improving their own competitive status and driving other competitors to match or exceed their own. The world of competitive intelligence is already turning in this direction for those with the human capital necessary to understand the whats and hows of Internet superiority. In addition, every organization’s customers will have access to more information and their standards and expectations of products and services will be high. A third effect of increasing access to information is the changed perspective and expectations of employees relative to their place of employment. For example, employees with a broader understanding of their world may constantly assess their own situation relative to employment. To respond to such assessments may necessitate a carefully structured approach to management and leadership, one that ensures long-term employment of the best employees. A final impact of increased access to information is the opportunity of the organization to make use of information as a major internal process and competency. Any of the above characteristics of the environment may have one or all of these impacts on the organization. As the amount and availability of data, information and knowledge continues to increase, of necessity so will the complexity of the organization. Connectivity, speed and large amounts of information from everywhere on earth will seed the culture of the future. How the above characteristics can be turned into shared understanding and knowledge application for the good of the organization is unanswered at this time. A vital question is: “Can organizations adapt and learn fast enough to keep up with the environmental changes driven by these forces? ” The digital economy, as it is popularly known, describes the overall movement to make maximum use of digital technology to create new products and increase efficiency. The scope of impact is almost unbelievable, ranging from computers to telephones to publishing to banking to education to medicine to cyberspace. Donald Tapscott considers the digital economy’s driver to be an alliance of converging technologies. In his latest book, Blueprint to the Digital Economy, Tapscott [1, P. 1] offers the following forecast: “Clearly the first 40 years of the computing revolution have been a preamble. Much greater changes lie just ahead. The marriage of computers and communication networks is transforming most aspects of business and consumer activities. Organizations face enormous changes, many occurring simultaneously. ” KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION: JOURNAL OF THE K