Some of this knowledge can be codified, made explicit, and migrated into content repositories and marketplaces.. Peter Drucker, 1999 Interactions Between Ta c i t and Explicit Knowledge
Trang 1• Implicit or tacit knowledge is subjective ,
experience-based knowledge Ty p i c a l l y,
it is not easily expressed in words,
sen-tences, and formulae It is highly
context specific It includes, but is not
limited, to beliefs, values, tradecraft,
mental models, and technical skills
Tacit knowledge resides in formal and
informal networks of experts and
com-munities of re f l e c t i ve practice Some of
this knowledge can be codified, made
explicit, and migrated into content
repositories and marketplaces Most is
accessed through person-to-person
k n owledge sharing or social
interac-tions New opportunities for sharing are
made possible through perva s i ve, secure ,
online interactivity through
communi-ties of practice Practitioners are deve
l-oping heightened appreciation for the
i m p o rtance of such vibrant sources of
tacit know l e d g e
Tacit knowledge includes the
infor-mal k n ow l e d g e that exists thro u g h
common practice and is shared via
e-mails, communities of practice, expert
n e t w o rks, and other permutations of
online interaction As organizations
d e velop their e-knowledge competen-cies, they enhance their capacity to
n u rt u re, harvest, and use informal, tacit know l e d g e
The policies, practices, competencies,
n e t w o rks, communities, and mark e t-places for exchanging explicit and tacit
e - k n owledge are developing today T h e i r refinement to handle continuously revised knowledge will catalyze and drive the re volution in learning and know l e d g e management tomorrow
The nature of knowledge is that it makes itself obsolete.
Peter Drucker, 1999 Interactions Between Ta c i t and Explicit Knowledge
By definition, knowledge is dynamic, not static Knowledge continuously changes meaning and form Whether know l e d g e
is held by individuals, organizations,
c o m m u n i t i e s of practice or networks of organizations, the content, context, and community in which it is used are always changing
It is especially critical to understand how elements of explicit and tacit know l e d g e can transcend their current states thro u g h
p ro g re s s i ve cycles of conversion Ik u j i ro Nonaka (1999) has captured the essence
of the relationships and interactions of tacit and explicit knowledge in four modes: socialization, externalization, com-bination, and internalization T h e s e
k n owledge conversions are port r a yed in the figure to the right
Depicting the Interactions Between Tacit and Explicit Knowledge
In their work on the integration of e-learning and knowledge management, Woelk and Agarwal (2002) have schemat-ically re p resented the transitions of know l-edge between No n a k a’s four phases T h e y
h a ve added a fifth phase, cognition, in which the knowledge seeker makes sense
of tacit knowledge in context thro u g h applying it to a business pro b l e m
Understanding e-Knowledge
as a “Thing” and a “Flow”
In recent years, practitioners have begun to understand the complexities
of modeling knowledge in all its forms
In consequence, the assumption of a clean delineation between tacit and explicit
k n owledge and the migration of know l-edge between different states is question-able The emerging ecology of know l e d g e
re p resentation suggests that know l e d g e exists as both a t h i n g and a f l ow at the
same time The “t h i n g” is knowledge that
is “know n” (the “know - w h a t”) and can be formally shared and used The “f l ow” is the changing contexts or passage of
k n owledge through the informal stru
c-t u res of organizac-tions where communic-ties
of practice and others make sense of it and
c o n ve rt it from “know a b l e” to “know n ”
To accept this paradox, practitioners must accept that in the uncertain conditions that characterize most real-life settings,
k n owledge is continuously changing,
Tr a n s f o rming e-Knowled ge
6
Knowledge Management Phases
Trang 2f l owing between different states of chaos,
c o m p l e x i t y, and know a b i l i t y What is
“ k n ow n” at any time depends on the
man-agement of content, context, and
narra-t i ve Under such condinarra-tions, organizanarra-tions
need to manage the different kinds of
k n owledge using different tools and
tech-niques (Sn owden, 2002)
Only when tacit and explicit
knowledge interact can
innovation occur.
Ikujiro Nonaka, 1999
This conception of knowledge re c o g n i ze s that organizations consist of differe n t
k n owledge habitats, each of which has
di f f e rent contexts and rules These include the f o rmal organization, formal commu -nities of practice, shadow or inform a l organizations, and temporary teams
dealing with environments re c o g n i zed to
be chaotic and turbulent (many organiza-tions operate in such environments but
f ew seem to accept this) The practice
of k n owledge management is dealing with these complexities with greater sophisti-cation and understanding The concept
of k n owledge management has been superseded in some circles by the more metaphorical k n owledge ecology.
What is e-Knowledge?
Tr a n s f o r min g e- Kno wledge 7
The most profound technologies are those that disappear They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.
Marc Weiser
Tacit and explicit knowledge are not
totally separate Rather they are
mutually complementary They
interact and exchange with each other
in the creative activities of human
beings Our model of dynamic
knowledge creation is anchored in the
assumption that human knowledge is created and expanded through social interactions between tacit and explicit knowledge We call this interaction knowledge conversion.
Ikujiro Nonaka, 1999 Interactions Between Explicit and Tacit Knowledge
Trang 3In the third generation, we grow beyond managing knowledge as a thing to also managing knowledge as
a flow To do this, we will need to focus more on context and narrative than on content.
Dave Snowden, 2002
Knowledge Management
T h rough Five Lenses
T h e re can be many lenses through which
to discern knowledge and its management
These different lenses incorporate a range
of perspectives and differentiate betwe e n the purposes and motivations shaping
k n owledge management at various leve l s
A broad classification scheme would dis-tinguish betwe e n :
• Personal knowledge management ( i n d
i-vidual dispositions and behaviors);
• Organizational knowledge management
(multi-national corporations, small-to-medium enterprises, governments,
non-g overnment ornon-ganizations, educational
i n s t i t u t i o n s ) ;
• Sectoral knowledge management
(economic sectors such as information
t e c h n o l o g y, pharmaceuticals,
agricul-t u re, indigenous culagricul-ture, eagricul-tc.);
• National knowledge management
(national policies for stimulating
inno-va t i ve cultures within industry); and
• Cultural knowledge management
(transcends and spans organizational, sectoral, and national boundaries)
In terms of outcomes, knowledge man-agement could further be classified into outcomes that improve e f f i c i e n c i e s a n d
outcomes that stimulate i n n ova t i o n.
An International Standard s Movement Has Developed
Perhaps the most visible activity in the
e-k n owledge world invo l ves a compre h e
n-s i ve procen-sn-s of international collaboration
in the development of standards and spec-ifications for systems to manage and
e xchange learning content, process orga-nizational knowledge, and support e-busi-ness transactions St a n d a rds deve l o p m e n t s
in applications interoperability have also
a d vanced the growth of so-called “We b
s e rv i c e s” which will facilitate the deve l o p-ment of seamlessly and easily integrated applications infrastru c t u re s
The standards movement has been facili-tating the birth of durable and trans-actable e-knowledge The complex work
of these standards groups has been far too
a rcane to engage the detailed attention of most professionals who are responsible in their organizations for knowledge man-agement and learning But the strategic implications of standards for implement -ing processes, networks, and mark e t p l a c e s for e-knowledge are clear: such standard s assist in building and maturing eknow l -edge marketplaces while also stimulating
i n n ovation in the use of transactable
e-k n ow l e d g e These issues should feature
p rominently in the planning of eve ry enterprise for which knowledge is essential
to competitive adva n t a g e
Tr a n s f o rmi ng e-Knowledge
8
Successful knowledge
management requires
concentrating on the 8 Cs:
connectivity, content,
community, culture, capacity,
commerce, cooperation and
capital
Madanmohan Rao
Trang 4The major standards eff o rt s
have involved participation by
g o v e rnment, educational, and
c o m m e rcial enterprises Early
focal points have included
s t a n d a rds for describing content
and ensuring that it will work
with other content and with all
d e l i v e ry systems
( “ i n t e ro p e r a b i l i t y ” s t a n d a rd s )
Relevant groups include the IMS
Global Learning Consortium, ADL,
IEEE LTSC, Dublin Core, and
MPEG More re c e n t l y, pro c e s s
s t a n d a rds have gained attention
(WfMC and GKEC) In addition,
the publishing, media, and
technology industries have
focused on standards for digital
asset management—PRISM,
XMCL, ebXML, XrML, ODRL.
At the end of the day, the standard s
d e veloped by these groups, while impor-tant for implementers, may prove less significant for organizations than the vis-ibility they have given to the re q u i re-ments and potentials of the emerging
e - K n owledge In d u s t ry Mo re ove r, they
h a ve been a powe rful force for the deve l-opment of a truly global perspective to the e-Knowledge In d u s t ry In addition, while working together to develop learn-ing object standards, professionals in
these fields quickly discove red the t a c t i
-c a l i m p o rtan-ce of mobilizing and
unify-ing the energies of professionals in e-learning and knowledge management
Pa rtnering with one another, they have
a c h i e ved greater visibility than either e-learning or knowledge management would have achieved acting alone Ove r time, the s t r a t e g i c i m p o rtance of fusing
e-learning and knowledge management will become abundantly clear to policy makers and practitioners alike
What is e-Knowledge?
Tr a n s f o r m ing e-Knowledge 9
Traditional Publishers and Direct-to-Digital Publishers—
traditional publishers like Harc o u rt Brace, Pearson, Thomson
and new direct-to-digital publishing enterprises
Course and Learning Management Systems—course materials
held by We b C T, Blackboard, Click2learn, Outstart, and other
a p p l i c a t i o n s
Universities and Colleges—university presses plus faculty
course materials
P rofessional Societies and Associations—trade publications plus
tradecraft-rich bodies of knowledge
Corporate Learning and Knowledge Management—private
channels for pro p r i e t a ry content, off-the-shelf content, intern a l
documents, white papers, and specifications
Content/Context Repositories—discipline- and institution-specific repositories, plus marketplaces that aggregate content repositories into a meta-marketplace
Content Creation Tools—tools for creating and managing content/context through Learning and Content Management Systems (LACMS)
Value-Added Content Services—additional services that enhance the value of content and codified context in learning objects
Exchange Infrastru c t u re—the marketplace exchange serv i c e that enables metering, repurposing, combining of content by demand aggregators, and direct users
Demand Aggregation/Syndication—enterprises that aggre g a t e demand for e-knowledge, such as colleges and universities,
p rofessional societies and associations, and corporate learn i n g (e.g., Emerald Now)
To d a y ’s Ve rtical Channels
for E-Content
Components of To m o rro w ’s Horizontal Channels For e-Knowledge
A g g regators are enterprises or organizations that aggregate or package learning content, such as MERLOT and Emerald Fulltext.
A g g regation is also occurring at the institutional level, providing concentrations of intellectual capital.
Adapted from: Patrick McElroy, A New Paradigm for Acquiring, Managing, and Distributing Content in Higher Education Institutions, 2002.
Trang 5Digital Marketplaces for e-Knowledge are Gestating
To d a y, pro p r i e t a ry, ve rtical channels for distributing e-knowledge have been initiated by traditional publishers, dire c t t o -digital publishers (purely -digital), learning management system prov i d e r s , and others Gl o b a l l y, hundreds of differ-ent channels have developed using their own content repositories, pro p r i e t a ry authoring tools, and learning manage-ment systems These channels have failed
to attract a gro u n d s well of users sufficient
to effect cultural change And they won’t until pro p r i e t a ry silos are replaced by open, interoperable, and scaleable mar-ketplace mechanisms for e-know l e d g e These mechanisms will create “horizo
n-t a l” channels n-than-t enable n-the combinan-tion and repurposing of content held by
dif-f e rent publishers, learning content man-agement systems, and digital content repositories in general
To d a y’s ve rtical channels are merely an
e vo l u t i o n a ry step in the migration path
t ow a rd horizontal channels based on more robust, interoperable mechanisms for
k n owledge sharing To d a y, the know l e d g e
i n d u s t ry is ve ry much like the computer
i n d u s t ry in the 1980s as described by
A n d rew Grove (1998) in his book, On l y
the Pa ranoid Su rv i ve The ve rtical, pro p r
i-e t a ry channi-els in thi-e computi-er mark i-e t
we re transformed by the shift to a hori-zontal computer marketplace that enabled cascading innovation, fast growth, keen competition, and reductions in price
In the not-so-distant future, advances in
e - k n owledge will enable the creation of
h o r i zontal marketplaces in the Know l e d g e
In d u s t ry They will facilitate the seamless
e xchange of formally re n d e red, explicit, and tacit knowledge, slashing acro s s
t o d a y’s publishing and intellectual pro
p-e rty boundarip-es, whilp-e mp-etp-ering and paying for the use of intellectual pro p e rt y
In n ovation, competition, growth, and cost reduction are likely to thrive as we l l
The Power of e-Knowledge:
F rom Value Chain to Value Net
The fundamental value chain of the
K n owledge Economy is familiar and
p roven: the related and bi-dire c t i o n a l
p rocesses of computation, cognition, context, and communication that create the
h i e r a rchy of data, information, and know l-edge Yet as leading-edge practitioners have applied network-based tools of know l e d g e management and sharing, they have
dis-c ove red several transformative new insights
First, e-Knowledge Chunks are Malleable, Expandable, and Fungible.e - K n ow l e d g e tools enable the unbundling, re p ro c e s s-ing, and repurposing of data, informa-tion, and knowledge in ways that can render them into other forms Da t a becomes information when organized in a way to give it meaning; information is codified as knowledge when pre s e n t e d within a context We say more on this subject later when we discuss new ways of experiencing e-knowledge Conve r s e l y, codified knowledge can be
decontextual-i zed and ddecontextual-isaggregated to form data-ldecontextual-ike chunks of content that can then be re
-a g g reg-ated or rpurposed The tools of
e-k n owledge can be used to combine content and context to create know l e d g e chunks that are malleable, expandable, and fungible (see graphic page 15)
Digital publishing technologies and extensive global networking—coupled with an increasing volume of scientific research and decreasing satisfaction with a dysfunctional economic model—change the fundamental structure of scholarly publishing by allowing its various components to be de-linked, both functionally and economically When the functions are unbundled and begin to operate separately, each can operate more efficiently and competitively.
Raym Crow
Tr a n s f o rming e-Knowled ge
1 0
By three methods we may learn
wisdom: first, by reflection,
which is noblest; second, by
imitation, which is easiest;
and third by experience, which
is the bitterest.
Confucius
Trang 6Second, e-Knowledge Tools Enable the
Reinvention of Processes and Rela
-tionships e - K n owledge has a
funda-mental characteristic in common with
e-business The core principle of
e-busi-ness is to change the way that
enter-prises conduct business, whatever that
business may be This translates into
re i n venting and transforming core
p rocesses, relationships, and culture s
Si m i l a r l y, e-knowledge is about the use
of technology to transform pro c e s s e s
and relationships pertaining to the
cre-ation, nurturing, and management of
k n owledge Over time, e-knowledge will
c reate a breed of know l e d g e - s h a r i n g
p rocesses, relationships, and culture s
that are much more than just more
effi-cient versions of existing practices
If we apply knowledge to tasks we
already know how to do, we call it
productivity If we apply knowledge to
tasks that are new and different, we
call it innovation.
Peter Drucker, 1999
T h i rd, e-Knowledge Tr a n s f o rms Va l u e
Chains into e-Knowledge Value Nets.
The traditional view of the value chain
f o l l ows the linear pro g ressions of an In d u
s-trial Age product cycle But the Know l e d g e
Age has been changing all that: d i s a g g re
-gating and d i s i n t e rm e d i a t i n g t r a d i t i o n a l
value chain relationships and re i n t e rm e d i
-a t i n g n ew rel-ationships between m-ark e t
p l a yers Don Tapscott (2001) intro d u c e d
the term polymediation to herald the
emer-gence of entirely new business entities and
o p p o rtunities enabled by “digital capital.”
The richness in relationships combines ve
r-tical and horizontal supply chains to cre a t e
what Patrick Mc El roy (2002) characterize s
as a “value net” in referring to the
e-k n owledge space This metaphor of a va l u e
net aptly captures the multi-dimensional,
m u l t i - d i rectional opportunities for va l u e
c reation, knowledge enhancement, and
sharing in our e-knowledge future
What is e-Knowledge?
Tr a n s f o r ming e- Kno wledge 1 1
Owners of various supply channels set the rules and control supply.
Demand aggregators have limited
c l o u t
Digital publishing and print-on-demand are controlled by owners of
v e rtical channels who set the ru l e s and the practices.
New players cannot break into existing channels.
New supply channels empower the individual pro v i d e r — f a c u l t y,
re s e a rchers, practitioner—and communities of pro v i d e r s Demand aggregators enhance their clout, building on the power
p rovided by their relationship with
l e a rn e r s / c o n s u m e r s Traditional providers are
“ d i s i n t e rmediated” by individual faculty and learners using the marketplace to create digital
p ro d u c t s New organizational forms (form a l and informal) evolve to support the
c reation and sharing of knowledge— communities of practice.
Power in the Printed Knowledge Age
Power in the e-Knowledge Age
Trang 7The e-Knowledge Industry
Develops and Grows
The e-Knowledge In d u s t ry consists of the
individuals and enterprises that cre a t e ,
s t o re, and exchange digital content, add
value to it, and/or aggregate content, and
s e rve demand for e-knowledge The
e - K n owledge In d u s t ry includes
publish-ers, new media companies, content deve
l-oper companies, professional societies
and associations, companies, colleges and
u n i versities, and other know l e d g e - c re a
t-ing enterprises In addition, individual
p rofessionals, faculty, and practitioners
a re empowe red by the emerging influence
of e-knowledge to create their ow n
content, knowledge, and insight and
offer it for exchange
Democratization, Empowerment, and
New Choices.In a ve ry real sense, the
e-K n owledge In d u s t ry is a powe rful engine
for democratization and empowerment In
the Information Age, publishers, colleges,
and universities controlled the supply of vetted content In the e-Knowledge Age,
n ew market mechanisms will emerge, including free sources of content, context, and insight Ma rketplaces will enable individual professionals, practitioners,
f a c u l t y, and others to create and supply
e - k n owledge re s o u rces to augment the tra-ditional supply channels
New Roles, Responsibilities and Players.
The e-Knowledge In d u s t ry will prov i d e
n ew roles and responsibilities for existing
p l a yers and encourage new players to come to the table e - Kn owledge suppliers and aggregators will be able to prov i d e
their content and encoded contexts to a wider range of audiences than offere d
t h rough traditional ve rtical channels
Value-added e-knowledge partners w i l l
enrich content and context, providing a variety of useful services e - Kn ow l e d g e demand aggregators will be able to leve
rage their market power through aggre -gating demand among their clientele
e - Kn owledge users will include individuals
and organizations Their influence will be dramatically enhanced in the e-know l e d g e
m a rketplace economy
A Changing Ent erprise Lan dsc ape
Which organizations and enterprises will fill these roles over the next ten ye a r s ? Existing learning, publishing, and know l-edge management organizations? New subsidiaries of existing enterprises? To t a l l y
n ew enterprises? New kinds of communi-ties of practice that cross traditional orga-nizational boundaries? Cooperatives of
f ree agents or amorphous peer-to-peer
net-w o rks? Nenet-w strategic alliances and collab-orations? Only time will tell, and the outcomes may be surprising The enter-prise landscape of the e-Knowledge In d u
s-t ry in s-ten years s-time will likely be ve ry
d i f f e rent from the clusters of organizations and individuals that aspire to be major
p l a yers in e-knowledge today
Tr a n s f o rmi ng e-Knowledge
1 2
Players in the e-Knowledge Industry
Adapted from: Patrick McElroy, A New Paradigm for Acquiring, Managing, and Distributing Content in Higher Education Institutions, 2002.
Trang 8What is e-Knowledge?
Tr a n s f o r ming e-Kno wledg e 1 3
Pioneering Examples of e-Knowledge
• Pervasive Computing Transforms
Approaches to Elder Care
• Professional Society as Indispensable
Knowledge Resource
• Universities Leverage Their Knowledge
Resources
• Industry-wide Knowledge Sharing
Enables German Industry to Compete
• Making e-Government Work
P e rvasive Computing Tr a n s f o rm s
A p p roaches to Elder Care
An e-knowledge approach can be
com-bined with perva s i ve computing to
i m p rove our understanding of aging, to
i m p rove elder care, and to make some
aspects of our own aging less pro b l e
m-atic Pe rva s i ve computing makes possible
the collection of detailed, momentby
-moment data on user actions and
con-texts, wire l e s s l y, anywhere and anytime
A global community of organizations is
using this approach to gather data on
the lives and needs of the elderly with
a view to increasing their autonomy and
quality of care
One of the data capturing pioneers is El i t e
C a re’s Oatfield Estates in Milwaukee, Wi
s-consin, which has built perva s i ve
comput-ing into its livcomput-ing spaces Residents carry
dual-channel radio frequency locator tags
that serve as their apartment key and emit
periodic infrared pulses to the sensors in
each room Beds have embedded we i g h t
sensors Each apartment has motion and
health vitals sensors plus a network e d
computer with touch screen interf a c e ,
enabling communication through e-mail,
w o rd processing, audio for speech re c o
g-nition, and video conferencing using
webcams These systems and sensors feed
p e r s o n a l i zed databases on each re s i d e n t
C a re g i vers use these databases to monitor
personal health, activity levels, and
inter-actions with medical attention and status
of medication Managers use this know
l-edge base to monitor staff perf o r m a n c e Residents use the personal history data, both theirs and others, to foster social interactions with other patients This envronment has changed the way that re s i-dents live They have greater control and
a u t o n o m y, knowing that if they become disoriented and wander, re q u i re emer-gency help, or fall behind in their medica-tion, assistance will be fort h c o m i n g
i m m e d i a t e l y Care g i vers and medical per-sonnel do not need to manually re c o rd and enter patient data; they have access to
a far richer knowledge base on each patient, easily accessed and arrayed
While these developments bring immedi-ate benefit to residents, their families, and
c a re g i vers, our primary interest is in the implications for e-knowledge From the
p e r s p e c t i ve of health professionals and policy makers, the data collected in such schemes can be merged with data being collected globally on patient health,
a c t i v i t y, and care Multiple analyses can be
u n d e rtaken, ranging from pattern deter-mination (e.g., as in epidemiology) to cod-ification of “what work s” in elder care, in repositories of grounded knowledge and tradecraft that can be used by care g i ve r s and medical educators
Mo re futuristically, new forms of assisted living can be envisaged in which perva s i ve computing is combined with intelligent agent technology to compensate for declining cognitive facilities An example
is the difficulty that many people have in retaining their skill base and tacit know l-edge as they age Even when we are yo u n g , our ability to perform a task fluidly and automatically typically declines if we do not practice the task fre q u e n t l y We become ru s t y This loss of competence in relation to rarely-used knowledge may become more problematic as we age Pe
r-va s i ve computing offers the prospect of regaining that knowledge on demand
The important thing is not to stop questioning
Albert Einstein
Trang 9P e rvasive computing pro v i d e s mechanisms to capture and re p l a y
e v e ry aspect of what we know and what we do This has implications for people throughout their lives.
I m p o rtant applications in elder
c a re include empowering older people and enlarging the knowledge base of “what works”
in assisted living.
In a possible scenario, our individual
re t i rement plans would go beyond finan-cial considerations to include prov i s i o n for cognitive augmentation If we learned
a skill that we wanted to have available to
us years later, we would use perva s i ve computing to assemble rich data on our peak level of performance on that skill
This could be possible through the com-bined use of webcams and data glove s Webcams can capture video re c o rds of that performance from multiple va n t a g e points (including what we see when we
p e rform a task) Data gloves can capture data on how our hands and fingers move during performance of a task T h e various data streams can be analyzed by
“re m e m b r a n c e” agents to identify key elements that could be re p l a yed ye a r s later to stimulate recall of the elements
of that skilled performance For example,
re c o rdings from data gloves might be
re p l a yed through force-feedback (“haptic” )
g l oves to convey how it felt to perf o r m the task Pro s p e c t i ve l y, this could be
s h a red with others immediately (to demonstrate what a skill entails), and used by us in later life (to re - e s t a b l i s h our original level of competence)
As an indication of the wider implications,
e l d e rc a re environments that use perva s i ve ICT are being pro g re s s i vely improved by outlinks from patients’ facilities to their families and others One result is that fam-ilies can participate in the monitoring of their loved ones’ pro g ress, activities, and condition They can also provide more fre-quent contact and interactivity thro u g h
e l e c t ronic communication and
large-s c reen vilarge-sual dilarge-splaylarge-s that enable re large-s i d e n t and family to see one another An unex-pected outcome has been the invo l ve m e n t
of elder care residents in family history
p rojects and oral history projects invo l v i n g
c h i l d ren, grandchildren, and great-
grand-c h i l d ren Sugrand-ch developments will be fagrand-cil- facil-itated if perva s i ve computing is used routinely to capture day-to-day experi-ences in a whole-life diary
P rofessional Society as an Indispensable Knowledge
R e s o u rc e
The American Association of Ph a r m a c e u-tical Scientists is a professional society
s e rving 4,000 pharmaceutical scientists as members and another 50,000 customers AAPS has evo l ved a knowledge portal that members and non-member customers use
to access the latest findings in re s e a rc h and practice in pharmaceutical science Using the portal, users can create “m y
p rofessional journal” using the port a l’s
p e r s o n a l i zed search capabilities to assem-ble re l e vant data (author, title, key terms, etc.) on all recently published articles in topic areas that they can enumerate Su c h data is typically stored as “m e t a d a t a”
fol-l owing standards Subscribers can extract not just the metadata/abstract, but the
e n t i re article—or in future, just key por-tions of it AAPS began by digitizing its own journals, but has since added links to other scientific journals, including 20
f rom El s e v i e r The personalized port a l also features a specialized news serv i c e dealing in new developments in the field
Tr a n s f o r ming e-Kn owled ge
1 4
A knowledge advantage is
a sustainable advantage.
Thomas H Davenport and
Laurence Prusak
Trang 10The future for the American
Association of Pharmaceutical
Scientists is to fuse education and
knowledge experiences together so its
members will be learning whenever
they access the digital body of
knowledge or use the portal to
experience new developments
in the field.
Jack Cox, CEO, American Association of
Pharmaceutical Scientists, 2002
AAPS also has deployed communities of
practice in both established and emerging
subdisciplines in pharmaceutical sciences
It has a formal stru c t u re of scientific “s e
c-t i o n s” c-thac-t provide conc-tenc-t and pro g r a m
materials for AAPS’s meetings and
publi-cations AAPS also fosters the organic
d e velopment of self-forming discussion
g roups in new, hybridized areas of intere s t ,
p roviding enterprise support as the gro u p s
a c h i e ve critical mass and demonstrate
sus-tainable interest At any one time, it has as
many as 25 such groups incubating A
recently formed group on “Nu t r i c e u t i c a l s”
combines subject matter content spanning
f i ve sections, and focuses on the field of
natural health products that desperately
re q u i res scientific, government, and public
s c ru t i n y These communities of practice
contribute to the perpetual deve l o p m e n t
of new findings and insights in the field
and to the development and learning of
p a rticipating members
AAPS has digitized and repurposed many
of its learning materials into online
re s o u rces, CDs, and other media In
addi-tion to its formal programs and exc h a n g e s
of information, AAPS creates many
oppor-tunities for meetings, seminars, and other
face-to-face venues In these settings, the
formal programs are only half the va l u e ;
the in-the-hall conversations between
sci-entists sharing their latest insights or
syn-thesis of new developments are equally
value laden In the future, AAPS sees its
publishing and education programs fusing
t o g e t h e r In this rapidly deve l o p i n g f i e l d
of pharmaceutical science, just-in-time
k n owledge on the latest developments is the vehicle for perpetual learning
Universities Leverage Their Knowledge Resources Thro u g h
A l l i a n c e s
Alliances of universities for this purpose
a re not new Achieving commercial success
is another matter The first generation of e-learning alliances, set up during the dot.com era with hopes of developing new income streams for universities, spent a
g reat deal of money with little financial return The lessons learned led to the establishment in the UK of a
public-p r i vate public-part n e r s h i public-p, e-Un i versities Wo r l d-wide Ltd (“e-U”) This is a collaborative alliance of knowledge organizations, including colleges and universities T h e
p r i m a ry purpose of e-U is to enable UK
p roviders of higher education to part i c i-pate in the global e-learning market on a better basis than would be possible if they operated individually
Initiatives such as the e-U show the way for universities to collaborate to exploit and share their knowledge to the benefit of all part i e s
The chances of success have been raised by insistence on the establishment of:
• a common technical platform, jointly
d e veloped by a leading vendor (Sun) and compliant with all re l e vant standards, to
e n s u re that no technical obstacles exist to
d e veloping courses in one institution and running them at another institution;
• a shared knowledge base on the effective use of that platform to meet needs in
p a rticular disciplines or to meet generic needs;
• p rocesses to ensure that courses meet international standards of quality and are
a p p ropriately certified and re c o g n i ze d ;
• d e velopment funds that individual
insti-What is e-Knowledge?
Tr a n s f o r ming e- Knowledge 1 5
If you can imagine it,
it probably will happen.
If you can imagine it,
it probably already exists, somewhere.
Bruce Judson