ABSTRACT:
To say it in very simple words, this report examines how nowadays information is being used to make decisions and how organisations can benefit from this new usage. Recent “virtual” places called cyber-communities are producing information and strongly enabling interactions and mutual experiences and know-how sharing. This is “live” information, a collective memory, always growing, always being stored but, most importantly, always being re-used and updated.
Today, there is strong evidence that communities are activities becoming part of daily tasks of knowledge workers, as organizations increasingly grow in geographical scope, size and complexity. Nevertheless, community culture is in collision with the old values of traditional working models. We have tracked this clash of cultures and tried to understand why spreading community practice is falling short by finding the tricky issues conspiring against communities.
The idea is to explore communities as microcosms of new ideas where difference -of thinking, being and acting- is actually happening. The aim of this report is to be an opportunity to explain why sustaining communities should be part of the organisation’s plan for catching all that the new networked knowledge-based economy has to offer and to the decision-makers, the curious or the ones taken by surprise ... to listen to alternative ways of organising work inside companies.
Made of several short inter-connected pieces, The New Cyber-Geography or How Communities Can Benefit Your Company finds your missing links between cyber-communities, learning organisations, and the new knowledge-driven economy. Intangible assets, innovation and still to come technological wireless developments called Ambient Intelligence, all combined with an appropriate dose of creativity, start here for the take-off on a journey towards a community-rich future.
