Intranets, Portals and Organizing Knowledge

Presentation by -Krishnan N Ayyer

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.

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”

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.  

Design Of Intranets

Steps• Analyze the organization’s

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.

Information Ecology

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

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.

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 organization’s knowledge creating and decision making process

                                                                                                                                   

                                                 

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.

Components of KMSS

• Data or Knowledge Warehouse.• Knowledge Search and discovery

mechanisms.• Knowledge representation via an

ontology.• Knowledge Quality Control.• Knowledge Visualization techniques.

Search Navigation Chain

Layers • Query Layer• Retrival Layer• Document Layer

Annotate

Annotate

Annotate

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.

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.

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.

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

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”.

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.

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Any Questions?