Scott Edelman
President and CEO, GroupSystems.com

As the world moves toward the new paradigm of the Knowledge Economy, we as business leaders are challenged to transform our ways of producing, partnering and competing.  The Internet, and its global network infrastructure, is driving organizations to fundamentally transform their business models, structures, and relationships with suppliers, partners and customers.  This transformation, called eBusiness or eGovernment, will allow organizations to focus on their core value creation processes and outsource the rest of their operations.  The results will be the emergence of virtual, extended enterprises with re-engineered and integrated systems and business processes, enabling them to innovate and respond in "Internet Time".  To create this new wealth and succeed in the new paradigm, organizations will need the following;

Infrastructure.  The Internet is the backbone for eBusiness.  It provides access to information through search engines, document repositories, unified messaging, portal technologies and integrated systems.  This information, from any multitude of sources, can be efficiently delivered to knowledge workers.  However, information access alone does not assure productivity.  Knowledge workers are finding that in the absence of efficient collaborative processes, "information overload" occurs and actually produces negative effects on essential productivity.

Collaboration.  People must take the information they acquire and work together toward common organizational goals in order to build knowledge--they must collaborate.  Internet communication technologies assist teams in communicating with one another and in sharing information and ideas.  However, communication and information sharing do not assure that a team will achieve high-quality, knowledge-based deliverables.  There are many more ways to do a task poorly than to do it well.  Therefore, collaboration without process will not produce the desired outcomes.

Process.  In order to achieve predicable and repeatable results for knowledge tasks, knowledge workers must employ predictable, repeatable processes.  This requires standardized methods of knowledge production to drive organizational success.  Recent research by the Delphi Group estimated that e-commerce transactions would top $5 trillion by the year 2003, and the two biggest barriers to participation in this huge opportunity were lack of infrastructure and lack of standardized processes.

Many believed that technology alone will drive innovation and responsiveness through system integration, information sharing and collaboration.  We believe these technologies are important enablers, but people and process make the difference in creating wealth.  According to the Gartner Group: "As more companies convert themselves into eBusinesses, the most valuable asset to those enterprises is the knowledge worker.  By 2005, 75% of global enterprises will require major overhauls of governance, people management, workplace policies and workforce planning in response to a shift in knowledge as the center of wealth production."

So you see, the issue is psychology--not technology.  People produce knowledge and wealth through collective interactions, reasoning and thinking, structured into processes designed to reach common goals.  As organizations are transformed and extended, knowledge production must occur across time, location and organizational boundaries.  There is no current technology that replaces the human mind's ability to reason and think, but technology can focus and structure the mind's efforts for fast, high-quality, reliable execution of collaborative knowledge tasks.  These tasks, sequenced together into repeatable methodologies for executing key business processes, result in the creation of Intellectual Capital.

Leveraging Intellectual Capital so that knowledge can be produced more efficiently is critical if we are to achieve the benefits of eBusiness and eGovernment.  Yet, without a way to spend the production  of knowledge we do not have enough experienced talent to make the transformation using current models of delivery.  For example, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) estimates that half of the 1.6 million IT jobs created this year will remain unfilled while the demand for IT services is increasing dramatically.  IDC estimates that the worldwide IT services market will reach $472 billion in 2003.  Producing knowledge more effectively is the only way to bridge this gap.  Using technology to automate the collaborative knowledge tasks that produce Intellectual Capital is the only way to meet the short-term demands of the eBusiness marketplace.

All types of organizations will benefit from efficient knowledge production.  The success of Professional Services Organizations, the ultimate knowledge workers, is totally dependent on how effectively and quickly they can grow and improve productivity while ensuring client satisfaction.  Corporations must innovate and respond in Internet time while working in extended environments where customers, suppliers, partners and advisors are part of the value creation process.  Government and military entities are increasingly being asked to do more with fewer resources and shorter time frames.  All of these organizations face the same challenge, to effectively collaborate and produce knowledge that generates the competitive advantage of Intellectual Capital.

Return to top

HDB, PMO, MOE among the lead innovators

Anna Teo
Business Times (September 8, 2000)

The government is, in John Kao terminology, jamming.  Putting its money where its mouth is, the public sector has quietly been sprouting little "innovation labs", investing in work systems to spur better, faster solutions, and yes, creative thinking.

In his 1996 book Jamming--The Art and Disciple of Business Creativity, American entrepreneur Dr. Kao, who was a speaker at the recent Singapore Learning Symposium, talks about free-flow improvisation and brainstorming--in business as much as in music--that sets the creative juices flowing.  He has since fleshed out his concepts in The Idea Factory, a San Francisco consultancy that helps corporations foster innovative practices, and is in talks with various Singapore parties to set up an Idea Factory here.

But some "innovation studios" of sorts--and not the product R&D kind--have emerged in Singapore lately, particularly in the public sector.  Various departments in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the defence, education and finance ministers, among others, have installed work tools used for strategic planning and to generate and implement ideas for work improvement.

In particular, the GroupSystems suite of decision support software--users include the U.S. Navy for warfare scenario planning--has been employed.  The Institute for Public Administration and Management in the PMO, for instance, has set up eight computer rooms each with 30 computer terminals with access to GroupSystems.

The jamming here is mostly "virtual", with ideas and interactive exchanges conducted via a computer.  What takes it well beyond a Net chatroom scenario are facilities like multiple processing of ideas, categorising, prioritising and voting on the items generated.

Mindef, the Ministry of Finance, the Info-communications Development Authority of Singapore, the Housing and Development Board, among others, have employed GroupSystems for major strategic planning exercises.

Asked to comment, the head of civil service, Lim Siong Guan, said he found the tool extremely useful for engaging many people at one go who produce huge numbers of suggestions in a very short time.

In remarks conveyed through his personal assistant, Mr. Lim said it was used for scenario planning when he was in the Public Service Division, and also for a review of the education system when he was permanent secretary in the education ministry.

"The MOE review was a very extensive exercise involving several hundred people.  In addition to GroupSystems for smaller groups, MOE created websites on its intranet for those involved in the review to discuss their ideas," he said.

The ministry held a GroupSystems session last year to look into the key issue of innovation--understanding its nature and how to foster it across the educational spectrum--and develop action plans.

According to Bob Teo, managing director of Whole Systems Asia, which distributes the software, HDB's information services department obtained some 800 ideas and comments from staffers in a half-day session in February this year to chart out a corporate strategy for deploying IT in national housing.

The IDA also used the software early this year to obtain inputs from a cross-ministry group of some 200 civil servants to develop an IT master plan for the public service.

Outside the public sector, GroupSystems has been used by Proctor & Gamble here in developing two new products--a cough drop and a cough drop mixture--and by Singapore Airlines to produce an IT classification and depository system.

International customers comprise a host of public and private organisations.  in the U.S.--where GroupSystems originated in the University of Arizona's Centre for the Management of Information--the U.S. government has used it for various change managementand other processes.

Return to top