I will be giving a talk for the Washington Technology Industry Association based on my recent book, Managing Knowledge Security (Kogan Page, 2007). The talk will take place on December 7, 2009 at Seattle University. For details, please click here [Link]

Based on his recent book, Managing Knowledge Security: Strategies for Protecting Your Company's Intellectual Assets (Kogan Page, 2007), Desouza will describe how human intelligence operations are conducted to ascertain competitive intelligence. Warning his audience of business practitioners that most organizations fail to understand that their core resources intellectual assets are constantly under attack, and that protecting these resources is as important as any other part of the strategic agenda. Desouza, gives advice on how to recognize dangers of human and technological breaches, hazards of outsourcing and business alliances, implementation of breach prevention measures, and the necessity of working with disaster scenarios. He illustrates his advice with cases from his personal experience working in the fields of competitive intelligence, knowledge management, crisis management, and security operations.

Jongmin Moon and I have authored an article on Customer Managed Knowledge Factories. The paper will appear in Business Information Review.

Abstract
Most organizations spend millions, if not billions, on knowledge management. There is no doubting the fact that organizations must manage knowledge if they are to be successful, or even survive, in the marketplace. While this remains an accepted fact, one thing has changed over the last few years – the role of the organization in how knowledge is managed. This transformation is especially visible when it comes to managing knowledge from external sources. The most important source are the customers (users), both current and future, of an organization’s products and services. Organizations need to relinquish control over customer knowledge management. Customers will, and in many cases, already are taking on a more active role in managing knowledge for the benefit of the organization. The organization should not try to duplicate this nor try to force the customers into a top-down mode of knowledge management. Instead, the ideal organization will find ways to leverage the grassroots, and customer driven, knowledge factories that emerge around them. In this paper, we develop the concept of customer managed knowledge factories and share examples on how the concept is implemented in leading organizations.

On September 10th, I will be giving a talk at PEMCO Insurance on the Future of Innovation in the Insurance Industry. I plan to outline how insurance providers can enhance service offerings and enrich customer experiences through crafting sustainable innovation processes. This talk is part of PEMCO’s @pfslive series, which brings together over 100 business professionals from the following organizations: PEMCO Insurance, School Employees Credit Union of Washington, Evergreen Bank, PEMCO Corporation, and PEMCO Technology Services, Inc.