Corporations have over the years purchased or developed a variety of systems for sharing formal knowledge in the form of training programs, knowledge bases and elearning. These programs have become very sophisticated and the best of them can be highly effective. What we are starting to realize though is that formal learning only incorporates about 20% of what most people need to learn to do their job. The fact is that most learning that people do is still informal. Informal learning includes information that is gathered through email, conversations in the hall, talking at lunch, or making a phone call. It is in the area of informal learning that corporations have a huge opportunity to leverage new software and best practices to create dramatic improvements in the way their employees learn and become effective on the job.
Though the systems and practices corporations will deploy will need to be different from those used by today’s early adopters and grass roots users, I strongly believe that the consumer driven innovations around RSS, weblogs and wikis will end up having a profound impact on how corporate America shares and captures the value of informal knowledge.
For example, weblogs are driven by the concepts of:
Immediacy - New content is shared quickly and older content stays active and gets brought up to date.
Interactivity - When something gets published, readers get a chance to respond through comments, links, and various collaboration functions.
Informality - Content written in a natural, casual voice is quicker and easier to produce and because it isn't "corporate speak" it is often more trusted.
The defining characteristics of a weblog are also critical differentiating factors in CustomerVision’s approach to sharing informal knowledge, though we support much more stringent management and controls than the products used by today’s early adopters.
And these factors are much more powerful than they initially appear. When companies start to take seriously the idea that something written in an informal tone can be just as valuable as something that has been copyedited and when they start to get comfortable with the self-correcting effect that comes when knowledge workers share information they will be amazed how much more powerful their information resources will be. And the organizations with these enhanced information resources will be much more effective than their rivals who are slower to grasp these ideas.
