October 2006 Archives

Many KM gurus I meet are surprised by the rather sudden and unexpected lack of interest for knowledge management as a consulting practice, especially in this country, where some of the former leading KM consulting firms are in deep trouble or out of business. It is stange indeed, when so many publications announce that the "knowledge revolution" is under way and that "victory will go to the smartest nations and countries" (Newsweek), which is precisely what KM strives to achieve.

Does this mean that we don't need KM consultants any more because KM has become a mainstream practice? Or rather, does this mean that the market has shifted elsewhere and that we should adapt? I think the latter of course.

In CNN Money about the creation of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence:

Media in China was more a propaganda machine than a source of information or entertainment. The government reached out to us and said, "This is what we think is right. This is what everybody should do".

It's not only media in China, but corporate communication in every big vertical organization. It's fascinating to think that what precipitated the end of communism will probably do likewise for big industrial organizations built like a pyramid, and for the same reasons.

Though blogging orthodoxy says that you should never explain why you didn't blog lately because nobody cares, let me just say that I just completed the manuscript of my book (in French, alas), and that it really took me more time than anticipated to complete this. Basically most of my holidays since two years plus a certain number of late evenings were devoted to writing things that very few people actually care about in the business world.

In a nutshell, it's a book about trust. It's called "Le prix de la confiance", which can be translated either by "The Price Of Trust" or "The Prize Of Trust". What I realized since I started working on Communities of Practice is that there is a very strong link between trust, communities, collaboration, communication, web 2.0, responsiveness and innovation (whew!) and I wanted to find some common underlying management model that ties all this together. I don't know if I succeeded, but at least the first reader of the book, a former CEO turned priest, called me two days ago to tell me that he found it "VERY interesting". So it looks that it wasn't a waste of time.

Why did I write it in French? Basically for three reasons. First it's my native language, and it's more difficult for me to write in English since I left the US in 2002. Second, there are too many bright people I don't know in the US writing on these things in the US, and it is probably easier to find my place in the French ecosystem, which is less crowded. Third, I love my country in spite of its errands, and I really would like France to embrace the knowledge economy a little more faster than it does today.