Ed Mitchell: Platform neutral

Practical methods for knowledge sharing: free book

October 9, 2007 – 4:29 pm

The second KnowledgeBoard community book is out. It is a thing of much beauty. It is a brilliantly edited free book of excellent ideas, tips and tricks about how to share and co-create knowledge between people, written for free by the KnowledgeBoard community members based on their actual experiences.

Here is what Sami the book’s editor has to say about it:

This book presents thirty different hands-on methods and techniques for knowledge co-creation and sharing within collaborative settings. It showcases a wide range of moderation, facilitation, collaboration, and interaction mechanisms through the use of different face to face and online methods and techniques. Each presented method/technique is augmented with real-life cases on its use; provides directions on what needs to be done before, during, and after the use of each method/technique to achieve tangible and measurable results; provides a set of tips and tricks on the use and adaptation of the method/technique for different contexts and settings; and provides a
list of potholes to avoid when using the method/technique.

The prime audience of this book is industry practitioners, event moderators, facilitators, consultants, researchers, and academia with an interest in the use and development of effective techniques and mechanisms to foster knowledge co-creation and sharing. This book is expected to equip them with a set of usable practical methods and techniques for knowledge co-creation and sharing.

All of the chapters are very interesting and will appeal to people doing different stuff with ‘knowledge’ in their organisations and their communities (the book is split into methods about how to share and collect, measure and analyse, plan and improve).

Naturally I encourage you to read it all, but have a special fondness for the chapter I co-wrote with Ron Dvir and Sami Kazi. It is about how to run brilliant events by seeing them as inclusive group knowledge transformation opportunities which foster interation, connections and engagement rather than ‘another conference you go to hoping to meet people and have the best conversations in the corridor in the breaks’…

I keenly encourage everyone to download and read the bits of the book that appeal to them. It hasn’t been broken up into chapters yet, but you can download the whole lot (approx 9MB) from the VTT site:

Update (14/11/07): The book is now available from the KB website (login required):

Download the KnowledgeBoard book from the KB site

Download the KnowledgeBoard book from The VTT site

List of chapters in the book:

Section One: Share and Collect:

Method/Technique 1:
Visual Power Networking
Patricia Wolf, Peter Troxler & Abdul Samad (Sami) Kazi

Method/Technique 2:
Using Cognitive Edge Methods for Knowledge Creation and Collective SenseMaking
Sonja Blignaut

Method/Technique 3:
Exploration Tours – Connecting Past, Present & Future
Ron Dvir, Hank Kune, Paolo Martinez & Arye Dvir

Method/Technique 4:
Appraisal Interviews as a Tool for Organizational Knowledge Sharing
Marinita Schumacher, Corinna Flöck & Mounib Mekhilef

Method/Technique 5:
Group Analysis of Knowledge Test Results as a Knowledge Sharing Method
Malgorzata Grabus & Katarzyna Grunwald

Method/Technique 6:
Leveraging Interaction Through Cooperation
David Kato & Devanildo Damião

Method/Technique 7:
Building a Global Online Community
Cüneyt Budak

Method/Technique 8:
Social Software Tools for Personal Knowledge Management
Swaran Sandhu

Method/Technique 9:
Finding the Fire between the Nodes: Contactivity Events
Ron Dvir, Ed Mitchell & Abdul Samad (Sami) Kazi

Section Two: Measure and Analyse:

Method/Technique 10:
An Integrated Approach to Enabling More Effective Knowledge Flows in an Organisation
Christine van Winkelen & Jane McKenzie

Method/Technique 11:
Successful Innovation from Effective Knowledge Management
David. W. Birchall & George Tovstiga

Method/Technique 12:
Cocreation Methodologies to Identify, Select and Maintain Knowledge Value Indicators
Paolo Petrucciani

Method/Technique 13:
Social Network Analysis: A Practical Method to Improve Knowledge Sharing
Tobias MüllerProthmann

Method/Technique 14:
To Know What You Know at the Right Time: Knowledge Visualisation and Sharing Via a Cartographic Process

Oriented Approach
Alexandra MüllerStingl,Waltraud Grillitsch & Robert Neumann

Method/Technique 15:
Redesigning Communities of Practice using Knowledge Network Analysis
Remko Helms

Method/Technique 16:
Getting Stakeholders Involved in Regional Strategy Development: Basis SWOT Workshops
Patricia Wolf, Christoph Hauser & Simone Schweikert

Method/Technique 17:
Multistage Analysis for Knowledge Reflection
Jens O. Meissner

Section Three: Plan and Improve:

Method/Technique 18:
Improving the Facilitation of Organisational Knowledge Creation
David. W. Birchall, Jean Anne Stewart & Mike Pedler

Method/Technique 19:
The Power of Disruption: Understanding the Unexpected
Patricia Wolf, Albert Vollmer, Peter Troxler & Abdul Samad (Sami) Kazi

Method/Technique 20:
Collect and Share Existing Knowledge on Collaborative Multidisciplinary Scientific Research Processes
Ayalew Kassahun, Huub Scholten & Adrie J.M. Beulens

Method/Technique 21:
Developing, Nurturing, and Sustaining Communities of Practice
Rony Dayan & Yossi Pasher

Method/Technique 22:
Mediation and the Mediatory Approach
Markus Hess

Method/Technique 23:
Defining, Instituting and Sustaining a Knowledge Management Program
Gurbans S. Chatwal & Srinivas P. Jagannath

Method/Technique 24:
CABD: A Complexity Science Based Method for Robust Business Development
Liza Wohlfart

Method/Technique 25:
Learning and Performance Support for Effective Innovation and Improving Engineering Processes at IAI
Rony Dayan, Ron Algor, Daniel Naor & Avi Kedem

Method/Technique 26:
Strategic Role of Physical Settings for Creating and Sharing Knowledge
Mustafa Kurt

Method/Technique 27:
Future Workshops The Unthinkable and How to Make It Happen
Peter Troxler & Beate Kuhnt

Method/Technique 28:
A People Centric Approach to Creating Taxonomies and Knowledge Artefacts
Shashi Kadapa

Method/Technique 29:
A System based Approach to the Introduction of Knowledge Management
Mark Hefke

Method/Technique 30:
Strategic Roadmapping and Implementation Actions
Abdul Samad (Sami) Kazi