Updated: 3/27/08; 6:14:30 PM.
A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Blog
Thoughts on biotech, knowledge creation and Web 2.0
        

Wednesday, November 20, 2002


Internet Time Blog: Knowledge blogs are tough. Quote: "i've had similar experiences in my more limited attempts to evangelize blogging in a work environment. it's a real eye-opener that will level-set any delusions that blogging will revolutionize knowledge sharing in organizations. it takes alot of persistence and i heartily 'second' his recommendations. while rick gives his own co-workers the benefit of the doubt, in many ways, the lessons are no different that those learned in more traditional knowledge management arenas. you can lower the barriers to entry to near-zero and find that most people simply don't want to share for all the usual mundane, institutionalized reasons." [Serious Instructional Technology]

I have not been able to find the link but the quote is telling. Whether blogs work depends very much on the manner by which the company is organized. A command-and-control hierarchical company will not have employees who generally want to share. In this company, knowledge is power. Those that make knowledge scarce are those with greater power. People at each level only know the small picture, ensuring that those at the top are the only ones who know everything, thus justifying their HUGE salaries. It really would cripple the company if they left. Why in the world would anyone blog here? You do not advance in the hierarchy if you make your work transparent.

I worked at a company with a different model, at least in research. There was a narrow hierarchy, everyone at any level was free to participate in project meetings, quarterly project reviews, etc. Instead of a vertical silo for information to flow, it was an adaptive network, built to solve problems. It was extremely powerful because knowledge creation was very rapid and was dispersed very quickly throughout the network. For two people in different departments to learn anything in a strict hierarchy, the knowledge must move up to the appropriate higher level manager then back down. This is many more steps than a well-connected network has. In many cases, such a network will be able to make decisions better and faster than a hierarchy. In a field, like biotechnology, that changes rapidly this is a huge competitive advantage.

At a company such as this, a blog would work well, particularly when combined with a news aggregator, such as in Radio. An example: One of the most difficult things for scientists to do these days is stay current with the literature. There are so many articles being published. No one has the time to browse the new journals each week. Online journals are worse because they are no longer limited by paper prices and can publish more articles, more often. But, a news feed can be created for each on-line journal. The news aggregator can go out and find the new articles when they are published. This saves time since the scientist no longer needs to go out to each site themselves. Then, the scientist, after scanning the new papers, can post to his weblog any that look interesting. This allows him to easily bookmark these and get back to them later, when they will have more time to actually read all of the article. Finally, for the important articles, the scientist can add commentary to clarify any positive or negative aspects of the paper.

Now, if other scientists subscribe to the newsfeed of the first scientist, they can find out about useful articles WITHOUT having to do all the looking themselves. In fact, if the first scientist has a reputation for being the first to find useful new articles, people will subscribe to the feed simply because what the scientist adds. In this example, you save a lot of repeated effort. Instead of every scientist reading every journal on immunology, for example, a small group can examine each journal and post the useful articles for the others. In a adaptive network, knowledge can be created and dispersed extremely fast using such a system.

This sort of filtering worked all the time at Immunex, even before Radio. There were some scientists who were excellent at getting just the right new paper in front of people who needed to see it. In fact, these scientists got a real thrill at matching the right paper with the right scientist. As Immunex got larger, it became more difficult for them to do this. Radio allowed them to do it again. And it is a virtuous cycle. Those that do a good job finding and posting knowledge would have more people subscribing to them.

But, the corporate structure already supported this and had already selected for people that wanted to collaborate. Those people who wanted to hoard information did not last long at Immunex. So, something like Radio would work really well there. In fact, I was testing it there before I left and I think it would have been a big hit. I am not so sure it would work at someplace like GE.  11:28:40 PM    



Action Alert! Ed.gov Web Information Disappearing. Quote: "The U.S. Department of Education (ED) issued an internal memo, "Criteria and Process for Removing Old Content from www.ed.gov" on May 31, 2002. The memo established "Criteria for Keeping Information on the Web" dated prior to February 2001. One concern cited as reason for removal was that some content "runs counter to current Administration priorities." Later in the memo this reason was reiterated in the section under "Current Challenges" which states "Content is either outdated or does not reflect the priorities, philosophies, or goals of the present administration."" [Serious Instructional Technology]

Are we entering a Soviet Union type of history where each administration 'erases' the knowledge created by the previous one? The ease of publishing also makes it easier to delete. The administration is also looking to remove the Government Printing Office and allow each department of the government to print its own documents. Of course this also means there is no central place to order any document, as there is today. You would have to check each department's web site to see what was available. And, I guess if it was printed under a different administration, you would not be able to get it. I could understand this if it was purely political works that were being removed but it appears that scientific and scholarly works are also being removed. Luckily, the internet makes it very difficult to remove things if others decide to mirror the site. If the government does make an overt move to remove important but ideological information, I am sure there will appear web sites that carry copies of the information. After all, most of this work was created with tax dollars so it does belong to us, right?  11:12:50 PM    



Well, the first new company (GeneCraft) featuring a ex-Immunex scientist was in the Seattle Times today. Ken Mohler is the scientist and one of the really good people from Immunex. They say they want to be the new Immunex and I think they have a pretty good chance. They raised $13 million to start. Very nice.  11:00:29 PM    


Howard Hughes Slashes Spending; Lab Budgets to Decline 20 Percent [GenomeWeb]

Wow. Howard Hughes researchers used to have more money to spend than they COULD spend. Now they are having to take 10% cutbacks for the next 2 years. Another disastorous sign for the success of scientific research.  12:08:30 AM    



The Evil That Is the DMCA (18-Nov-2002; 23.5K) [TidBITS]

A great review of the tragedy thn's most horrific legacy. In a few years, you may not be able to make a digital copy of something you yourself created. This is already starting to appear and, with the collusion of MS and the Content Cartel, it will become the norm. All to protect their business models without providing anything useful for the customer.  12:06:14 AM    



 
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Last update: 3/27/08; 6:14:30 PM.