Insights Blog

Folksonomies is a term coined by combining "folk" and "taxonomy" and the author of the term is Thomas Vander Wal.  These user-defined metadata collections were accepted as part of social software applications that enable users to collectively classify and find information via shared tags. Do not mistake folksonomies for taxonomies. Folksonomies structure content via user tags; taxonomies are classifications structured by more formal methods that do not automatically include user-generated tags and are not viewed as equivalent.   Let's take a step back and explain how folksonomies work   Tagging content is a way to create links between items as a means...

When McKinsey wrote a report in July 2012 entitled The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, they understood that raising the productivity of knowledge workers is the most powerful application of social technologies.    They noted in their report: “The average interaction worker spends an estimated 28 percent of the workweek managing e-mail and nearly 20 percent looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks. But when companies use social media internally, messages become content; a searchable record of knowledge can reduce, by as much as 35 percent, the time employees spend searching...

“Knowledge management at the moment is influenced by IT people who are building solutions users don’t need. Instead of creating a knowledge sharing culture, we’re destroying it by the systems being put in place. Sharepoint is an example of that. It’s not dynamic and adaptive enough. Everything it does in terms of communities can be better done by social media.” said Dave Snowden in his interview for our blog.    And he is not alone to think this way.   If you search Google for “why SharePoint fails” or “problems with Microsoft SharePoint” you’ll get hundreds of thousands of blog posts, articles or discussions where people share their SharePoint pain stories...

Professor Prabhu Guptara is regarded as a thought leader even though much of his work, by his own admission, is in fact very down to earth. He works with innovative, cutting-edge and otherwise outstanding people throughout the world to identify new ideas that might bring value to his colleagues and clients.    Widely reputed as a featured speaker and broadcaster, author of several books, and included in Debrett’s People of Today, he offers an unusual perspective regarding the areas on which knowledge management should focus today.      On his work, he says: “Even when I was organising think tanks for what was then the largest bank in...