Foreword

This is a timely book in that it situates a range of pragmatic projects within a wider conceptual and historical setting. The competitive value of knowledge at a country level opens the book, contrasting Korea with Ghana, both of which started with similar GDPs but then diverged signicantly. Singapore can claim a similar success; charting the knowledge management practice of its various ministries and agencies is thus of signicant value to anyone concerned about the development of government in times of increasing resource scarcity. Of course, we need to understand the context in which this takes place. Singapore is arguably a modern Polis the re-incarnation of the Greek city state in a modern age. Its two major universities are constantly in the worlds top 100 rankings and its economic success comes from a unique blending of state and private enterprises. Its various government organisations were among the early adopters of knowledge management practices the best part of two decades ago, but it has also sustained these practices over time. In particular, the Singapore Armed Forces have, to quote the citation for the Platinum award from the Information & Knowledge Management Society, seen sustained and pervasive impact of its KM initiatives. This is in part due to both continuity and change; some personnel have directed and guided the initiative throughout that period while encouraging and enabling wider participation. They have focused on both operational needs and back ofce functions. As a result, they are still perceived as strategic while in other countries, knowledge management has been progressively shifted away from the centre to a peripheral aspect of IT. This is also true of the 11 other governmental organisations detailed in this book each brings a distinct perspective reecting their organisational context. This is a unique book, in that it does not seek to generalise partially understood practice into naive simplied recipes, something all too common in the literature. The introduction provides an overview of the
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Knowledge Management Initiatives in Singapore

history of knowledge management which recognises that the discipline existed before it was known by that name. Its claim that knowledge management is at the core of management movements today is controversial, although the suggested application to innovation is surely not, neither is the value of knowledge or the cost of ignoring it. Knowledge management is that rare beast in management science, a movement with many origins which may explain its resilience. Its origins are frequently attributed to Nonakas 1991 HBR article The Knowledge Creating Company , but in the same period we see the Intellectual Capital movement with Leif Edvinsson and Tom Stewart from Buckman Labs pioneering work on distributed computing, as well as developments of information theory by Prusak, Davenport and many others. In the modern era, Peter Drucker coined the phrase The Knowledge Worker in 1959, but the major growth of knowledge management as a distinct function within companies coincided with the advent of scalable technology, the shift from mainframe to micro-computer and the rapid development of collaboration software and email (especially Lotus Notes), but more recently various products from Microsoft such as the ubiquitous SharePoint, a plethora of search engines, community software and the like. The focus on technology was the making of knowledge management, but may also be its nemesis. Focusing on knowledge as information contrasts with older models of knowledge development such as the apprentice model in which knowledge is transferred by experiments, tolerated failure and teaching. Taught by Journeymen, apprentices observe the master, and share stories with each other. As they gain knowledge, they are called to walk the tables of the craft hall to assume the status of Journeyman, after which their masterworks are accepted by their peers. The body of knowledge develops; it is not simply codied and transferred. Narrative is a critical aspect of that process, as it is in any professional community. Engineers tell stories around the water cooler and the knowledge transfer thus engendered is as important as any drawing or document. To date technology has not been able to replicate that model, and the focus on codication and machine-based search is limited compared to the power and capability of a human network. This may now be changing with the rapid growth and use of social computing. This is of its nature messy, just as all human exchange is messy, yet coherent. A tweet or a blog linked to a book is a better reference than a search as it includes the validation of a human youve chosen to follow. Humans in

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social computing are augmented by information ow, not replaced by it. I remember tweeting a request for information in the early hours of morning and my own Twitter network responded quickly not only to solve the issue, but to do some of the critical work to get a new project up and running within hours. That network extended across three continents and was not designed it evolved. Access to the network was not achieved by formal position, but by publishing and linking interesting material. Its not who you are, but what you say that gives you access to sense-making networks. If knowledge management is to survive, it has to embrace mess and create a symbiosis of human intelligence with the scalability of open computing platforms. IT departments seeking to control networks and information (besides truly condential data) will simply be left behind in this new, dynamic ecology. The challenge for knowledge management is using technology to augment, but not replace, human intelligence. It is to focus on supporting decision-making at both a strategic and operational level and to enable an environment which encourages innovation by accident as well as by design. During World War II, a Raytheon engineer noticed that a candy bar in his pocket melted when he was standing in front of an active radar set. That accidental act of noticing resulted in the microwave oven. Over-structured, over-codied approaches to knowledge management would not have permitted that intervention, just as over control through excessive measurement can destroy innovation. Knowledge management needs to use technology to augment and scale the natural processes of the apprentice model rather than the needs of taxonomists and database managers. If it does that, and the technology now permits it, then, and only then, it has a future. So take the examples in this book, see them in context, learn from them, but do not slavishly copy them. Each case has created something appropriate to its context, some mundane, some strategic, but all valuable. Any knowledge management project has to constantly adapt and shift to accommodate changing contexts. To date, Singapore has achieved something that has escaped other countries and this is recorded in this book; but it is the start of a journey that others can share, not the end point. Dave Snowden Founder and Chief Scientic Ofcer Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd