How many social media connections do you have? The British anthropologist dr. Robin Dunbar calculates the average social group size, based on the size of the neocortex (a part of your brain ;)). Dunbar used the correlation observed for non-human primates to predict a social group size for humans. As a result of his study, Dunbar predicted a human "mean group...
Effective knowledge sharing means interaction, preferably face to face. "We can tell an idea to someone over an email, but you can't interact over email. It can happen over the phone but it's best done in person." (Simon Sinek) Sharing knowledge means, amongst others, listening, interacting, being able to ask questions, and building upon responses. To do this, you need so much more...
Knowledge is the most discriminating production factor of the 21st century. Individuals and companies alike should therefore be focused on their knowledge-driven added value in the marketplace. And this holds true, whatever your marketplace is. In human history, first, we were hunter-gatherers. We took what we could find, until we were satisfied or died of famine or disease. To overcome this...
These days, a lot of attention goes out to start-ups. They are challenging the status quo in many different industries by providing new products and services or by providing them in new ways. Ye Dai et al. have done a large research project to figure out what could determine the success of these new ventures. Success has previously been connected to...
Imagine a dictionary that is not ordered alphabetically…. You could perhaps use it to start a fire, but apart from that it would be quite useless unless its words are ordered alphabetically. All the information will be there, but it is extremely inaccessible. Imagine the frustration knowing that the definition of ‘inchoate’ is somewhere in the book, and you desperately need...
Knowledge is the most important production and performance factor for many companies. Strategic knowledge needs to be available redundantly to stay competitive. Redundancy can be achieved internally and/or externally. For a small electro-technical company, we made a knowledge network assessment. This assessment involved their 15 core knowledge domains. We used their collective knowledge network and visualized both internal and external experts....
Whether you work, study, or participate in any sort of activity, you most probably had to work in a team at some point. Teamwork has become the way to do things. However, I think we would all agree that the cooperation of team members is not always at its best. For some reason we can become distant, we don’t communicate,...
You have probably worked in teams before. Naturally, two team members are never identical as we are all human, which in the end makes every team diverse. But is it better to have a more diverse team? Or do too many cooks spoil the broth? Especially in an organizational context, diversity has been heavily discussed lately. Many organizations promote diversity as they...
Just read the article: “Help, de vraagbaak vertrekt. Wat nu?” in NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). The article is about the ageing workforce and the effect on organisations if knowledgeable employees leave, specifically because of retirement. In this blogpost I will share three elements of the article and add a fourth one myself. The first element is that experience is a very important...
This is an example of the power of organizational network analysis. The analysis has been done at a production company with 7 locations. Their main location is HQ, they have a dedicated R&D location and 5 production locations. Production locations A2 and B2 are located abroad, but in the same country. Questions from the central management team in HQ: Can we be...