Show me the money....

I recently came across an interesting paper by Elias Carayannis of George Washington University on measuring the value of intangibles. As is so often the case, I agree with the principles of the methodology, but struggle to see the real-world application. Making a convincing empirical case of investment in organisational learning techniques has become a bit of a holy grail. KIN members can take a look at Carayannis' paper in the KIN Memberspace  Management Buy-in SIG Library .

In our recent member survey of potential event topics, Measuring the Value of Intangibles came out strongly as being a hot topic. I'm currently researching possible speakers for a KIN Masterclass. If you know of an expert (practitioner) in this field that can help us, please let me know.

(Photo credit: carnagenyc)

Innovation SIG Announcement: New Roundtable Event: Innovation SIG , 06 Nov 2014

Innovation and leading change is critical to organisational growth, or even survival. Markets and technologies are changing rapidly; what served us well even 5 years ago may be becoming irrelevant. Knowledge work has never been more critical in facilitating diversity of thinking. There will be two aspects to this Innovation SIG meeting: 1. I have been working with Jon Harman of Syngenta to update the KIN Innovation Maturity Model. This is useful for both benchmarking against other organisations and as a gap-analysis tool. The intention is to use this to highlight and share new insights in KIN member organisations' innovation practice and impact. 2. 'Big data' and 'data analytics' have emerged as critical tools to drive innovation in large organisations. We propose taking a look at the latest trends in deriving new insights and opportunities using these tools. The Director of Innovation and data analytics the Royal Mail will join us to share how they have taken advantage of big data to drive innovation. Full details can be found on this event page: Roundtable: Innovation SIG '

Data to Insight for Innovation

I guess you will be the familiar with the classic 'pyramid' above, or a variation of it.

Whilst in the US recently I met Thomas Davenport of Babson College and author of 'Working Knowledge'. These days, Tom is working at the data end of the spectrum; a topic that is getting a huge amount of attention through 'big data', 'data analytics' and 'Open Data'. Incredible advances in computing power and analytical engines hold the possibility of deriving insight directly from the data layer. Indeed a new breed of geeks have emerged to engineer this revolution - if you have seen 'The Wolf of Wall Street' you will know that the data 'Quants' are king in the world of finance.

Back to the more prosaic real-world, how does this impact the work we do in organisational learning? Tom has authored a report for Amadeus on how big data and data analytics have changed the travel industry. The impact has been in both effectiveness (for example targeting promotions) and efficiency (maximising airplane seat optimisation). So what's different? These improvements have always been possible, it's just that now the insights can be derived directly from the data without the interim stages of producing information (spreadsheets) and knowledge (analysts poring over spreadsheets, looking for trends and opportunities).

The conclusions in Davenport's report, which cites case studies from several innovative travel companies, can be applied to almost any industry, no doubt including yours. If you are a KIN member, take a look at the Amadeus big-data report on KIN MemberSpace . You will find the report in the KIN Innovation special interest group library.

In November, KIN will be holding a members' event on 'Data to Insight'. 

If you are a knowledge professional in a large organisation and not a KIN member, do contact us to find out if your organisation could both benefit and contribute to the network. Please note that one of KIN's membership criteria are that we only allow one member organisation from each industry sector.

Photo credit: www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/chromogram.html (via Wikipedia)

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• IT Life: Big Data For The Travel Industry

Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise Awards...

erica.hurley posted topic Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise Awards... in forum "Cafe KIN". It's that time of year again when nominations are invited for the MAKE awards! The awards are made in recognition of organisations which are outperforming their peers by above average growth in intellectual capital and wealth creation. Their survey takes about 5 minutes to compete and is your opportunity to nominate up to three organisations (commercial, not for profit or public sector) who you think are leaders in transforming individual and organisation wide knowledge into shareholder or societal value. A number of KIN members have received awards in past years and this is your opportunity to nominate any that you may have collaborated with this year or who may have inspired or helped you this year :) The topic can be found here: http://www.ki-network.org/ipb/index.php?/topic/3586-most-admired-knowledge-enterprise-awards/?view=getnewpost