Agility, speed and flexibility are key requirements for organizations today.  Enterprises need a new approach to handling, analyzing, and acting on complex information—as it arrives.  Feldman, a long-time technology analyst discusses a new approach to knowledge management that addresses the complex problems enterprises face today.  She considers the impact of cognitive computing on the IT industry and how it will affect our jobs and our lives. She raises issues and possible impacts for those in the search, discovery, content management and knowledge management areas, and demonstrates why KM professionals are uniquely well suited to understanding and using these new technologies.  She’ll end by giving us a glimpse of a future fueled by cognitive computing.

When it comes to enterprise social, it’s all about the business case. Whether your initiative is just getting started or relatively mature, sustained adoption and ongoing support depend on demonstrating clear business value. This session showcases an approach and practical examples you can use to model your business case and ensure that your investment in enterprise social creates an open, agile, and networked organization. Take away ideas you can apply immediately in any social technology platform.

Thousands of search results—page after page of ugly SharePoint link farms … Enterprise workers still face the persistent problem of finding what they need in the “fire hose” of content. People are asking less for “the kitchen sink” and more for the very best, hand-picked (curated) content, but that takes work, and traditional content management approaches don’t seem to be enough. Social bookmarking has failed to take hold in the enterprise. But can we learn from newer iterations like Pinterest? Can a consumer technology designed for things like food or photography translate to the enterprise? Can we tap into the crowd to collectively curate the best content? Hsu focuses on a next generation capability, called “collections,” inspired by Pinterest and Flipboard but tailored for the enterprise, that is changing the way people capture and share great content at Accenture. The goal is to make it easy for anyone to collect and present content in a manner that’s as engaging as Pinterest. Content management has never been so exciting!

Many organizations are still struggling with how best to use social networks across the enterprise. The technology holds much promise and could be a game changer for many organizations. Is there a pattern for when social networks succeed and when they fail? Are there ways to maximize the chances for success and minimize the risk of failure? Are there situations in which it works better than others? Our first speakers draw from real-life experiences as practitioners of KM in large organizations and propose a practical model for deploying and using enterprise social networks. Reamy discusses the dramatic increase in social media content and its integration with traditional enterprise content—everything from formal enterprise documents to collaborative community forums to the Wild West of Twitter. Based on two recent social media projects, he looks at a range of issues and the potential solutions and implications for KM, including supporting KM communities with new models for social contents utilizing characterizations of business and personal skills, emotions, and expertise.

Innovation is easy to talk about but harder to actually do. KM should enable and support innovation, but how? Innovation can be enabled where practices such as these are in place: Internal and external collaboration are used to seek potential solutions; communities of practice are valued as sources of ideas on the top issues facing the organization. To counter skepticism about idea collection/suggestions not being accepted, new and meaningful changes need to be implemented to show that things are different now, that there is a willingness to try out new ways of doing things by illustrating tangible manifestations of concepts. Once ideas are implemented, successive iterations are applied for continuous improvement. Hear details of Garfield’s 10 ways to stimulate innovation that include asking communities of practice for ideas; following good examples from other organizations; and conducting experiments to test new methods.

We are in a time when our educational systems (both public and corporate) have failed to prepare our children/employees with the skills they will need ... the skills we currently need in our corporations today. In meeting rooms and cubicles throughout America, we have a deficit of individuals who are passionate about creative thinking and are not satisfied with the status quo. We are formed to be creative. Just look at any child and how they play. There are no boundaries to what they can do and no obstacles to their imagination. They aren’t worried about making mistakes because they are too focused on creating something remarkable and fun. Richardson explores the business demand for creativity, the hurdles and the benefits of using social behaviors to reimagine your organization, and suggests some possible solutions.

Sometimes it is wise to look to the past for solutions to modern problems. As innovation becomes increasingly important, the approaches of Leonardo da Vinci provide best practices to emulate. Novak believes da Vinci can be recognized as an early proponent of KM, and introduces the seven techniques da Vinci used to guide his thinking and innovation. 

Many company CEOs struggle with a difficult issue: how to adapt to and/or adopt powerful new emerging KM technologies into an existing organization? The KM decision is a strategic (adopt), not a tactical (adapt), decision and involves creation/allocation of valuable technical resources into adapting existing organizational processes versus adopting powerful, new, analytically powered KM processes. McClelland and Nadasky focus on the E3 formula they developed that can be used to drive projects from identification of need to execution and on-going operations. They discuss the key to a successful roll-out: gaining the support of all of these constituents by engaging them in ways that are meaningful to them, setting expectations for the benefits and costs and identifying enthusiastic evangelists to spread the message. Zary discusses mobile enabled intranets which enhance knowledge sharing.

This fast-paced session highlights two KM journeys and shares tips for others beginning their own KM initiatives. Hear about the success of the KM team and their experiences with practical examples showcasing the initiatives and successes. Ivaturi shares ideas and best practices on how Unisys India created a repeatable collaborative framework to engage with engineering schools across India to promote innovation in campuses related to disruptive business and IT trends by leveraging the company’s platform solution, Unisys Cloud 20/20. By using the four main KM pillars (process, content, culture, and system), NICE managed to leverage both the sharing of existing knowledge and the creation of new knowledge. Hear about the steps it took, including using proactive knowledge-sharing technics, improving the infrastructure, using a federated search method, and using gamification to encourage knowledge sharing.

A panel of chief knowledge officers from federal agencies discuss key aspects of KM in the federal space. Topics include starting a KM program; quick wins; institutionalizing and sustaining KM; skills needed in the central KM organization; effective KM, HR, and IT partnerships; and KM as a driver of employee engagement.