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Communication Knowledge Networks in 21st
century Organizations
Professor Noshir ContractorUniversity of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign nosh_at_uiuc.edu http/
/www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/nosh 2000 Educational AICVB
Conference Unconventional Wisdom Thinking
Beyond the Boundaries August 10, 2000
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Thinking Beyond Boundaries

• It starts with what we call unconventional
  wisdom. That means looking at established
  problems in new ways. And anticipating the
  opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.
  After all, our profession is evolving very
  rapidly. Shouldnt your thinking EVOLVE with it?

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Evolution of Technology Use
Substitution
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Substitution

• Adoption based on relative advantage,
  observability, adaptability, compatibility,
  trialability
• Examples Automobiles, Telephone,
  Videoconferencing, Arpanet/Internet, WWW

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Substitution Effects

• U.S. Conference Board estimates National
  secretarial pool has shrunk by more than half a
  million in the past decade

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Substitution Effects ?

• Computer-mediated versus computer augmented
  communication?
• Intranet as a publishing versus communication
  environment?
• Blurring the genre of the memo and the genre of
  the dialog

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Digital CitiesSubstitution Effects ?
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Evolution of Technology Use
Enlargement
Substitution
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Enlargement

• If the automobile were invented in 1970 and
  dropped in price accordingly, while increasing
  features, a car would cost less than 5 and drive
  25,000 miles/gallon (Economist, 1998)

• To which the president of GM replied "Yes, but
  would you want your car to crash every time you
  tried to open a window?"

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Time to reach a quarter of the US population
(Newsweek, 4/13/98)

• 1926/TV 26 years
• 1953/Microwave 30 years
• 1975/PC 16 years
• 1983/Mobile phone 13 years
• 1991/Web 7 years

• 1873, Electricity 46 yrs.
• 1876/Telephone 35 yrs.
• 1886/Automobile 55 yrs.
• 1906/Radio 22 yrs.

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Enlargement

• 1996 Total volume of email greater than snail
  mail total sales of PC greater than TV sets
• 1999 Total volume of data traffic greater than
  voice 10 fold increase in U.S. e-commerce in 10
  months
• Moores Law Computational power doubles every 18
  months
• Metcalfes Law The value of a network is
  proportional to the number of users squared

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Enlargement

• Current 32 bit IP addresses can accommodate 4295
  million devices (2exp32)
• The new proposed 132 bit IP address scheme can
  accommodate (3.4e38 or 340 undecillion) devices
• Finland provides an early preview with WAP IT and
  Bluetooth

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Enlargement

• Telecommuting grew from 4 million in 1990 to 11
  million in 1997 (Telecommute America)
• E-commerce in Europe will account for 19 billion
  in 1999 and is expected to rise to 223 billion
  in 2002 (IDC, June, 1999)

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Enlargement effects?

• At current growth rates WWW would surpass the 29
  Terra bytes of the Library of Congress by 1998
  (Wired, May 1996). But ...

WWW is a library with all the books on the floor,
and
WWW is a World Wide Wait
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Enlargement Email delays

• 12 of email takes over 5 minutes to be delivered
  and 10 is delivered over an hour later (Source
  Inverse Network Technology, a Santa Clara company
  that tests Internet performance) - Wall Street
  Journal 5/29/97.
• Internet drop out rate 11 percent (Jim Katz, ATT
  labs, 1996)

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Enlargement effects?

• Shadow costs of media transformation between
  Information spigots
• Electronic phone, mobile, PDA, PC, printer,
  copier, fax ...
• Dead tree editions Memos, reports, books,
  newspapers, periodicals ...

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Enlargement Network Failures

• Gigalapse A billion lost user hours during a
  network failure predicted by Bob Metcalfe for
  1996 - did not materialize
• Closest was AOL's 6.2 million people for 19 hours
  118 megalapse.
• Telephones experience 30,000 people without 5
  hrs. service per day 150 kilolapse

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Enlargement Information Gap

• Emerging technologies improve the amount of
  information among the haves and the have-nots
• But the haves are much better informed than the
  have-nots resulting in an increase in the
  Information Gap

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Information Gap
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Enlargement Digital Divide

• User end Digital Bristol experience
• 87 of users at public kiosk were those who had
  PCs at home
• Server end 80 of users go to about 0.5 of the
  web sites (about 15,000 cites). And 70 of these
  are commercial web sites (Source Alexa.com)
• How do we move from the Digital Divide to a
  Digital Dividend?

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Productivity Paradox

• Productivity Paradox In 1996 US companies spent
  43 of their capital budgets on computer hardware
  - a colossal 213 billion, and more than they
  invested in factories, vehicles, or any kind of
  durable equipment. In 1981 expenditure on
  computer hardware had been just 6 .
• Adding in all the associated costs, the total
  cost of computing for 1996 was about 500 billion
  in the US and more than 1 trillion worldwide.
• Yet since the mid-sixties, productivity gains
  have stayed below 2.

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Productivity Paradox Why?

• Giving pony express riders
• cell phones to call ahead to ask
• for water (Neuman, 1997)

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Evolution of Technology Use
Reconfiguration
Enlargement
Substitution
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WORK BY BID?

• Thinking beyond the boundaries .

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Transaction costs of coordination mechanisms

• Hierarchies (Low)
• Markets (Medium)
• Networks (High)

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Organizational Forms
Hierarchy
Matrix
Network
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Fedex and cookies
Firm A
Firm B
Corporate level
Business unit level
Group level
Individual level
Interdependencies in the virtual organization can
occur both internally and externally and at
various levels of the firm.
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Surge of Network Organizations

• More than 20,000 alliances formed worldwide in
  1996-98, accounting for 21 of the revenue of
  Americas 1000 largest firms in 1997 (Harbison
  Pekar, 1999)
• Is the firewall separating the Intranet from
  the Extranet the last vestige of organizational
  boundaries?

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Reconfiguration Examples IWorkplace demographics

• More than half of the European work force does
  not go to an office for a 9 to 5 job (Charles
  Handy)
• Manpower had 2 million employees in 1997
• 25 years ago 1 in 5 worked for a Fortune 500, now
  less than 1 in 10 does

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Reconfiguration Examples

• Amazon.com, Priceline.com Put your money where
  your mouse is. Lowest price for me.
• Mercata.com, Accompany.com Lowest price for us
• Ebay.com Auction. Highest price for me.

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Reconfiguring Digital Cities

• The Hong Kong lesson
• Digital Kyoto
• Digital Venice

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Reconfiguring relationshipsE-lancers

• The fundamental unit of such an economy is not
  the corporation but the individual.
  Electronically connected free lances or e-lancers
  join together into fluid and temporary nets to
  provide and sell goods and services (Malone,
  Harvard Business Review, 1998).

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Reconfiguring relationshipsBrokering information

• When administration becomes amnesia-stration
• Info-mediaries (John Hagel Marc Siegel)
• Importance of leveraging knowledge capital via
  social capital - The case of the Lovegety
• From groupware to communityware. Is it the next
  killer app or a ..???

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• 1. Turn on the power and set the MODE button you
  want with MODE button. You can confirm the MODE
  you chose as the red indicator blinks.
• 2. Lamp blinks when (someone with) a Lovegety for
  the opposite sex to yours set under the same MODE
  as yours comes near.
• 3. FIND lamp blinks when (someone with) a
  Lovegety for the opposite sex to yours set under
  some different mode from yours come near. In that
  case, you may try the other MODES to GET tuned
  with (him/her) if you like.

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Who knows .

• Social Structures are based on who knows who.
• Cognitive Social Structures are based on who
  knows who knows who.
• Knowledge Networks are based on Who knows what.
• Cognitive Knowledge Networks are based on who
  knows who knows what.

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The Answer to these Questions . .

• IKNOW !!!!

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Goal of IKNOW
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Data Used in IKNOW

• Based on organizational members Web pages
• Links between Web pages
• Common external links from Web pages
• Content on the Web pages

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Data Used in IKNOW (contd)

• Based on organizational members volunteering
  information about social and knowledge resources
• Content inventory of skills, expertise, etc.
• Links inventory of social networks
• Incentives for volunteering information tied to
  performance appraisal and evaluation of help
  provided.

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So why would one want to use IKNOW?

• Makes the virtual visible.
• Adds social capital to knowledge capital by
  adding contacts to content.
• While collaboration tools help improve the
  process of collaboration in knowledge networks
  IKNOW helps one effectively identify
  collaboration partners and grow the knowledge
  network.

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IKNOW Test Beds

• National Computational Science Alliance
• PrairieNet
• Center for Collaborative Manufacturing
• USAID Global Information Systems
• U.S. Army Public Works Department
• Summer Workshops and Institutes
• Virtual courses
• IKNOW-IT Illinois Tourism

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Using IKNOW in the Hypothetical Scenario

• Demo of IKNOW

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Shindogu?

• Kawakami, Kenji (1995). 101 un-useless Japanese
  inventions. New York W. W. Norton Company.
• inventions that seem like theyre going to make
  life a lot easier, but dont.
• gadgets that promise to give us something, and
  it is only later that we realize that their gift
  is undone by that which they take away

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Additional Information

• Program URL http//iknow.spcomm.uiuc.edu/
• Email for questions and suggestions
• iknow_at_uiuc.edu