Intranets, Portals and Organizing Knowledge

1
Intranets, Portals and Organizing Knowledge

• Presentation by
• -Krishnan N Ayyer

2
Intranets

• What are Intranets?
• Intranet is Intra Net so an Intranet is an
  internal or private Internet used strictly within
  the confines of a company, university, or
  organization. "Inter" means "between or among,"
  hence the difference between the Internet and an
  Intranet.

3
Intranets

• Some formal definitions of Intranets
• Brown Duguid Intranets help present and
• circulate boundary objects
• Choo, Detlor, Turnbull Intranets support the
  creation, sharing, and use of knowledge
• Stenmark Intranets are organizationally
• restricted

4
Intranets

• A technical definition
• An Intranet is a network based on the internet
  TCP/IP open standard. An intranet belongs to an
  organization, and is designed to be accessible
  only by the organization's members, employees, or
  others with authorization. An intranet's Web site
  looks and act just like other Web sites, but has
  a firewall surrounding it to fend off
  unauthorized users.  

5
Design Of Intranets

• Steps
• Analyze the organizations information ecology
• Identify the typical problems experienced by
  users
• Analyze the information behaviors of these set of
  users
• Create value added processes to resolve the
  problems of users and to improve the Information
  Ecology.

6
Information Ecology

• Organizational mission
• Intranet goals
• Information management plans
• Information Culture
• Information Politics
• Physical settings
• Information Staff
• Information handling

7
Information Behaviors

• Identify Information users and their information
  seeking characteristics.
• Dimensionalize the structure of work related
  problems they typically face.
• Chronicle and examine the information behaviors
  and practices they employ to resolve problems.

8
Value Added Processes

• Intranets may be designed to improve the
  organizational information ecology.
• Intranets provide a unified information space in
  which users can communicate and collaborate with
  others.
• intranet applications and services may add value
  by supporting the organizations knowledge
  creating and decision making process

9
                                                                                                                                                                                    
10
Annotate

• Annotate is a specific Knowledge management
  support system (KMSS) designed to support the KM
  of document collections. It is a collaborative
  tool which enhances Information retrieval.
• Annotate in an Intranet increases the throughput
  by increasing the flow of relevant information
  across business units.

11
Components of KMSS

• Data or Knowledge Warehouse.
• Knowledge Search and discovery mechanisms.
• Knowledge representation via an ontology.
• Knowledge Quality Control.
• Knowledge Visualization techniques.

12
Search Navigation Chain

• Layers
• Query Layer
• Retrival Layer
• Document Layer

13
Annotate
14
Annotate
15
Annotate
16
Policies to manage discussions

• Incentives and rewards for adding annotations,
  Conversely sanctions for non participation.
• The level of anonymity of the annotator can be
  specified as anonymous, semi-anonymous or
  non-anonymous.
• Annotation controls must be imposed.

17
Organizing Knowledge

• To take a knowledge based view of the firm as
  opposed to the traditional transaction costs
  view.
• Knowledge is generated by communities of practice
  , which are social often informal organizations.
• Communities of practice are organized around
  knowledge sharing.

18
Organizing Knowledge

• Collective practice leads to form of Collective
  Knowledge, shared sensemaking and distributed
  understanding that does not reduce the content of
  individual heads .
• Improved search and retrieval facilitates better
  Knowledge transfer.
• Knowledge is not easily commodified, as in the
  market model.

19
Social Strategies for spreading Knowledge

• Translators
• framing one communities interest into
  another's perspective.
• Knowledge brokers
• bridging internal communities by
  participating.
• Boundary Objects
• objects or techniques that are used
  differently but forge links between the
  communities.
• eg-Contracts

20
Creative Intranet

• Intranets are suitable for supporting and
  facilitating corporate creativity and the
  knowledge creation process.
• Organizational knowledge is created through a
  continuous and dynamic interpersonal interaction
  between tacit and explicit knowledge (Nonaka
  Takeuchi). They call it the Knowledge Spiral.
• The Knowledge Spiral includes activities like
  sharing of experiences, exchanging explicit
  knowledge and embodying by learning by doing.

21
Key factors for creativity

• Non Preconception principle
• It is impossible to know who will be
  involved in a creative act, when it will take
  place or how it will occur.
• To encourage shrunk work
• Creativity is aided by low formalization and
  larger degrees of freedom.

22
Key factors for creativity

• Serendipity
• An accident can result in a useful innovation
  only if the potential is realized.
• organizations should encourage tinkering and
  experiments.
• Diverse Stimuli
• expose employees to cross disciplinary input
  (kaleiodoscope thinking)

23
Key factors for creativity

• Within company communication.
• Use horizontal and vertical communication to
  facilitate the flow of information.
• Create a helping and sharing culture
• Trust and Reciprocity

24
Key factors for creativity

• Intrinsic motivation
• When people are primarily motivated by their
  own interest and enjoyment in the job it breeds
  creativity.
• Rich Information provision
• Browsing and Information Retrieval
  techniques.

25
Next generation KM applications

• Data Mining Applications
• Biography generator
• summarizes information about the author
  based on the documents in the system.
• Rate of Absorption
• It demonstrates how quickly a group within
  an organization
• incorporates a new subject area.

26
Next Generation KM applications

• Old Boys Network
• is a network on who knows who internally
  based on discussions
• Communities Of Practice
• grouping people based on their recent
  involvement in a particular subject area and the
  level of expertise.

27
Corporate Portals

• Corporate portals are single point web browser
  interfaces used within organizations to promote
  the gathering, sharing and dissemination of
  information throughout the organization.
• Corporate portals differ from intranets in that a
  portals primary function is to provide a
  transparent directory of information available
  elsewhere not act as a separate source of
  information itself.

28
Components of a portals workspace

• Content space
• To facilitate information access and
  retrieval
• Communication space
• To negotiate collective interpretations and
  shared meanings
• Coordinate space
• To support co-operative work action.

29
Conclusion

• Merely establishling various technological tools
  like Intranets does not imply that Knowledge will
  flow within an organization, people have to be
  committed to the KM efforts for it to succeed.

30

• Any Questions?