Global Text Project: A Panel Discussion

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I will be serving on a panel with the co-project leaders of the Global Text Project, Rick Watson (University of Georgia) and Don McCubbrey (University of Denver) at the 2nd Annual SIG GlobDev Workshop. The goal of the panel is twofold – 1) to continue to raise awareness about the project and recruit professors to participate in the effort, and 2) to update the IS community on the work to-date, the opportunities on the horizon, and the challenges we face. My prepared remarks focus on 1) highlighting the work being done by graduate students in the Masters of Science of Information Management program at the Information School, University of Washington, and 2) outlining ideas on how we might build learning communities around each textbook. I am looking forward to a stimulating discussion.

Customer Managed Knowledge Factories

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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.