The slides for the background on China and Chinese growth are linked at the meeting notice and, with permission Wei hopes to secure from the companies, we may be able to share the entire slide set later in the year. In the meantime, I’ll wet your appetite with some highlights from his presentation:

In one company, a hierarchically structured manufacturing operation, learning and sharing was expected, baked-into employment expectations and routines with formal classes, and promoted as the highest form of commitment to employment status. Managers are trainers and reinforce their own knowledge and expertise by teaching classes. Learning to be a good citizen, contributing member of society and to the work team are established priorities expected to be adopted as routine behaviors. A principal operational standard is to create a learning organization, adopt systematic thinking and integrating knowledge from any source into a holistic view of how to function within the company.This organization manages the learning activities and expectations are established by top management.

The second organization is a firm in a high tech sector and encourages a team community of practice to work on solving problems collaboratively through self-organizing “clubs.” The tone is very social in nature and “meetings” are conducted by members with support but no intervention from management. A spirit of collegiality and high spirited debate for finding solutions to problems contributes to a stimulating atmosphere.

Both companies are very successful (financially and in attracting top workers) and demonstrate how two very different models for knowledge and learning (top-down and bottom-up) can achieve positive outcomes for the organization.

It looks like a great topic to re-visit at the Boston KM Forum soon.

Collaborative Decision Making Enables the Disciplines of Pattern-Based Strategy, By Carol Rozwell and Rita L. Sallam, 17 Jun 2010 | ID: G00200677
This research explores how collaborative decision making supports the principles of a Pattern-Based Strategy. It will be of interest to organizations that want to improve their decision making capability and incorporate business intelligence more effectively into the process.

Tutorial for Collaborative Decision Making, By Rita L. Sallam and Carol Rozwell, 21 May 2010 | ID: G00200278
Collaborative decision making is a platform for improving the quality and transparency of tactical and strategic decisions. This approach will extend investments in business intelligence to support better decision making.

WHY KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT HAS SO MANY RIVALRIES WITHIN? http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/why-knowledge-management-has
• Posted by Md Santo on May 23, 2010 at 9:33am

In recent years, regarding the phenomenon of convergence between web as platform with others platform mainly derived from IT/ICT, we observe many types of Management (tool) type being exposed as “KM’s rivalries” or “KM competitors” Why it could happened? Let’s take a look for examples : Internal Communication vs KM, Social Media vs KM, Business Intelligence vs KM, Balanced Score Card vs KM, Information Management vs KM, Business Process Reengineering vs KM, Content Management vs KM, Document Management vs KM etc (Note 1 : including also your issues such as Performance Improvement, Training & Development, Organizational Learning as well as Learning and Development or LD)

The answer is because people treat KM as an ordinary management technique with similar level as other management tool types. But, considering the following comprehensive special understanding on KM, the situation will be entirely different. The following are the answers :

First, by contextually-driven KM definition, Knowledge Management (KM) essentially is not management technique but behaving more as an access mechanisms that can be used across any management tool type such as Total Quality Management, Learning Organization, Benchmarking, Process Classification Framework, Business Process Reengineering, Balanced Scorecard, Business Intelligence including Social Media platforms etc. (Note 2 : Including your issues just mentioned) wherein each with their specific functions to be orchestrated under KM’s consciousness. So, here we put KM in incredibly broad meaning as subject with higher level than any other management tool type which is treated only as object (http://www.scribd.com/doc/28696847/How-to-re-postulating-the-paradi… ) From eastern concept, Knowledge with broad meaning also known as Noor or “Light” (Note 3 : The basic paradigm supported contextually-driven KM definition here is our DI – KW model - http://delicious.com/mobeeknowledge/di-kwmodel )

Second, through content-driven KM definition, we described KM as “Human Enlightenment Process-based KM Definition” through the linkhttp://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/human-enlightment-staging andhttp://www.knowledge-management-online.com/human-enlightment-proces… in which KM defined as follow :
1. KM is the staging of Human Enlightenment Process
2. The process is to managing the transformation of Information content as object into Knowledge and beyond as subject (KW concept noted as narrow meaning)
3. The goals are towards Learning, Growth and Innovation
4. The management should leveraged by KM Standards, KM Tools and KM Process Frameworks

I hope through comprehensive understanding on KM above mentioned, it is no longer need again to put KM in rivalry position against many kinds of management tool types (Note 4 : To get more comprehensive insight should you visit Mobee Knowledge Base explaining our Human System Biology-based KM - http://delicious.com/mobeeknowledge/humansystembiology )