Transcript Communication through knowledge networks

Communication & Knowledge
st
Networks in 21 century
Organizations
Professor Noshir Contractor
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
[email protected]
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/nosh
2000 Educational AICVB Conference
Unconventional Wisdom:
Thinking Beyond the Boundaries
August 10, 2000
Thinking Beyond Boundaries

It starts with what we call unconventional
wisdom. That means looking at established
problems in new ways. And anticipating the
opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.
After all, our profession is evolving very
rapidly. Shouldn’t your thinking EVOLVE
with it?
Evolution of Technology Use
Substitution
Substitution
Adoption based on relative advantage,
observability, adaptability, compatibility,
trialability
 Examples: Automobiles, Telephone,
Videoconferencing, Arpanet/Internet,
WWW

Substitution Effects

U.S. Conference Board estimates National
secretarial pool has shrunk by more than
half a million in the past decade
Substitution Effects ?
Computer-mediated versus computer
augmented communication?
 Intranet as a publishing versus
communication environment?

 Blurring
the genre of the memo and the genre
of the dialog
Digital Cities:
Substitution Effects ?
Evolution of Technology Use
Enlargement
Substitution
Enlargement

If the automobile were invented in 1970 and
dropped in price accordingly, while
increasing features, a car would cost less
than $5 and drive 25,000 miles/gallon
(Economist, 1998)

To which the president of GM replied: "Yes,
but would you want your car to crash every
time you tried to open a window?"
Time to reach a quarter of the US population
(Newsweek, 4/13/98)
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1873, Electricity: 46
yrs.
1876/Telephone: 35
yrs.
1886/Automobile: 55
yrs.
1906/Radio: 22 yrs.
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1926/TV: 26 years
1953/Microwave: 30
years
1975/PC: 16 years
1983/Mobile phone: 13
years
1991/Web: 7 years
Enlargement
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1996: Total volume of email greater than snail
mail; total sales of PC greater than TV sets
1999: Total volume of data traffic greater than
voice; 10 fold increase in U.S. e-commerce in 10
months
Moore’s Law: Computational power doubles
every 18 months
Metcalfe’s Law: The value of a network is
proportional to the number of users squared
Enlargement
Current 32 bit IP addresses can
accommodate 4295 million devices
(2exp32)
 The new proposed 132 bit IP address
scheme can accommodate (3.4e38 or 340
undecillion) devices
 Finland provides an early preview with
WAP IT and Bluetooth

Enlargement
Telecommuting grew from 4 million in
1990 to 11 million in 1997 (Telecommute
America)
 E-commerce in Europe will account for $19
billion in 1999 and is expected to rise to
$223 billion in 2002 (IDC, June, 1999)

Enlargement effects?

At current growth rates WWW would
surpass the 29 Terra bytes of the Library of
Congress by 1998 (Wired, May 1996). But
...
WWW is a library with all the books on the
floor, and
WWW is a World Wide Wait
Enlargement: Email delays
12% of email takes over 5 minutes to be
delivered and 10% is delivered over an hour
later (Source: Inverse Network Technology,
a Santa Clara company that tests Internet
performance) - Wall Street Journal 5/29/97.
 Internet drop out rate 11 percent (Jim Katz,
ATT labs, 1996)

Enlargement effects?

“Shadow costs” of media transformation
between “Information spigots”
 Electronic:
phone, mobile, PDA, PC, printer,
copier, fax ...
 “Dead tree” editions: Memos, reports, books,
newspapers, periodicals ...
Enlargement: Network Failures
Gigalapse: A billion lost user hours during a
network failure predicted by Bob Metcalfe
for 1996 - did not materialize
 Closest was AOL's 6.2 million people for 19
hours = 118 megalapse.
 Telephones experience 30,000 people
without 5 hrs. service per day = 150
kilolapse

Enlargement: Information Gap
Emerging technologies improve the amount
of information among the “haves” and the
“have-nots”
 But the “haves” are much better informed
than the “have-nots” resulting in an increase
in the Information Gap

Information Gap
Enlargement & Digital Divide

User end: Digital Bristol experience
 87%
of users at public kiosk were those who had PCs at
home

Server end: 80% of users go to about 0.5% of the
web sites (about 15,000 cites)…. And 70% of
these are commercial web sites (Source:
Alexa.com)

How do we move from the Digital Divide to a
Digital Dividend?
Productivity Paradox
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Productivity Paradox: In 1996 US companies spent 43% of
their capital budgets on computer hardware - a colossal
$213 billion, and more than they invested in factories,
vehicles, or any kind of durable equipment. In 1981
expenditure on computer hardware had been just 6 %.
Adding in all the associated costs, the total cost of
computing for 1996 was about $500 billion in the US and
more than $1 trillion worldwide.
Yet since the mid-sixties, productivity gains
have stayed below 2%.
Productivity Paradox: Why?
Giving pony express riders
cell phones to call ahead to ask
for water (Neuman, 1997)
Evolution of Technology Use
Reconfiguration
Enlargement
Substitution
WORK BY BID?

Thinking beyond the boundaries ….
Transaction costs of
coordination mechanisms
 Hierarchies
(Low)
 Markets (Medium)
 Networks (High)
Organizational Forms
Hierarchy
Matrix
Network
Fedex and cookies
Firm A
Firm B
Corporate level
Business unit level
Group level
Individual level
Interdependencies in the virtual organization can occur both
internally and externally and at various levels of the firm.
Surge of Network Organizations
More than 20,000 alliances formed
worldwide in 1996-98, accounting for 21%
of the revenue of America’s 1000 largest
firms in 1997 (Harbison & Pekar, 1999)
 Is the “firewall” separating the Intranet
from the Extranet the last vestige of
organizational boundaries?
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Reconfiguration: Examples I
Workplace demographics
More than half of the European work force
does not go to an office for a 9 to 5 job
(Charles Handy)
 Manpower had 2 million employees in 1997
 25 years ago 1 in 5 worked for a Fortune
500, now less than 1 in 10 does
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Reconfiguration: Examples
Amazon.com, Priceline.com: Put your
money where your mouse is. Lowest price
for me.
 Mercata.com, Accompany.com: Lowest
price for us
 Ebay.com: Auction. Highest price for me.
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Reconfiguring Digital Cities
The Hong Kong lesson
 Digital Kyoto
 Digital Venice
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Reconfiguring relationships:
E-lancers
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The fundamental unit of such an economy is
not the corporation but the individual.
Electronically connected free lances or elancers join together into fluid and
temporary nets to provide and sell goods
and services (Malone, Harvard Business
Review, 1998).
Reconfiguring relationships:
Brokering information
When administration becomes ……
amnesia-stration
 Info-mediaries (John Hagel & Marc Siegel)
 Importance of leveraging knowledge capital
via social capital - The case of the Lovegety
 From groupware to communityware. Is it
the next killer app or a …..???
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1. Turn on the power and set the MODE button you want with MODE
button. You can confirm the MODE you chose as the red indicator
blinks.
2. Lamp blinks when (someone with) a Lovegety for the opposite sex
to yours set under the same MODE as yours comes near.
3. FIND lamp blinks when (someone with) a Lovegety for the opposite
sex to yours set under some different mode from yours come near. In
that case, you may try the other MODES to “GET” tuned with
(him/her) if you like.
Who knows ….
Social Structures are based on “who knows
who.”
 Cognitive Social Structures are based on
“who knows who knows who.”
 Knowledge Networks are based on “Who
knows what.”
 Cognitive Knowledge Networks are based
on “who knows who knows what.”

The Answer to these Questions . .
IKNOW !!!!
Goal of IKNOW
Data Used in IKNOW

Based on organizational members’ Web
pages:
 Links
between Web pages
 Common external links from Web pages
 Content on the Web pages
Data Used in IKNOW (cont’d)

Based on organizational members
volunteering information about social and
knowledge resources
 Content:
inventory of skills, expertise, etc.
 Links: inventory of social networks
 Incentives for volunteering information tied to
performance appraisal and evaluation of help
provided.
So why would one want to use
IKNOW?
Makes the virtual visible.
 Adds social capital to knowledge capital
by adding contacts to content.
 While collaboration tools help improve
the process of collaboration in knowledge
networks … IKNOW helps one
effectively identify collaboration partners
and grow the knowledge network.

IKNOW Test Beds
National Computational Science Alliance
 PrairieNet
 Center for Collaborative Manufacturing
 USAID Global Information Systems
 U.S. Army Public Works Department
 Summer Workshops and Institutes
 Virtual courses
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 IKNOW-IT
Illinois Tourism
Using IKNOW in the
Hypothetical Scenario
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Demo of IKNOW
Shindogu?
Kawakami, Kenji (1995). 101 un-useless
Japanese inventions. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company.
… inventions that seem like they’re going to
make life a lot easier, but don’t.
… gadgets that promise to give us something,
and it is only later that we realize that their
gift is undone by that which they take away
Additional Information
Program URL:
http://iknow.spcomm.uiuc.edu/
Email for questions and suggestions:
[email protected]