Knowledge capture from the
“tacit” knowledge worker is a great technological challenge at this
time. It involves harvesting and mining types of approaches, which
become possible as knowledge is expressed in text form – through
emails, blogs, OCR-scanned documents, and the like.
We
can either try to capture unstructured data, or we can encourage data
to gather – and even arise in the first place – in our collection
mechanisms. Which of these two is the harder trick to pull off is an
open question.
Microsoft architect Mike Walker writes about unstructured data, calling it the Achilles heel of SOA.
He says the user interaction has been overlooked in the drive to
perfect the scheme. It’s important to know how humans relate to data.
This
is one reason user-generated content is such a noteworthy phenomenon,
because it proves a system’s data-codification readiness. Amazon.com
has pulled off perhaps one of the greatest feats of user-generated
content with its voluntary review system. This is the perfect example
of encouraging data to arise within your own collector systems.
Can we ignore unstructured data, and force all human activity into XML and tagged data forms? Walker cautions:
“Who needs unstructured data? Should we just migrate
to more structured data options? I think that is a real bad idea for
many reasons. But the biggest reason is that systems look for syntax
and humans look for patterns.” – [ibid]
Undoubtedly future growth should be planned
using structure. But development must never lose sight of the users,
from whom, within any new system, all next-generation data must come.
The reason Web achievements resonate so strongly in enterprise
strategic planning is that they show the way to generate and capture
data within the same collection system. This is why social media and
other tools from Web 2.0 – combined into the looming Enterprise 2.0 configuration – are so important.
The profit-margin value of the users is shown in a related phenomenon known as crowd-sourcing.
“Technological advances in everything from product
design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost
barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists,
part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as
smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and
television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The
labor isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than paying
traditional employees. It’s not outsourcing; it’s crowdsourcing.” – The Rise of Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is changing the market of
stock photography, which can draw from the images of thousands of
amateur contributors. The Amazon example cited earlier is another
perfect example of crowdsourcing. Even the museums have caught on.
“The New York Times reports that the country’s
greatest museums are opening up their online galleries for public
tagging, in recognition that curator metadata just isn’t doing the
job.” – Museums get hip to tagging
The value of crowds is reflected in the network effect,
whereby the value of the network increases as the number of its users
increase. For the modern enterprise, its whole value chain can be
equated with its network. Bringing unstructured data into codified
form, and encouraging new data to arise in a tag format such as XML,
increases the wealth of the enterprise value chain. In other words, all
else being equal, the company makes more money as its workers become
more interactive with the network, and as the network becomes more
capable of managing its knowledge.
The responsibility of
the architects is to supply systems that allow users to communicate
“freely”, yet within an infrastructure that distils the value out of
the communication, and into the treasure storehouse, without impeding
concurrent communication.
The last word goes to Lucas
McDonnell, who points out that data itself can be cleaned by the users,
within the right architecture.
“While it seems intuitive that more knowledge sharing
equals more innovation, since it enables us to think and act
collaboratively, knowledge sharing also allows us to sort out the good
information from the noise.” – How knowledge management relates to innovation.
