Where is that Chief Knowledge Officer?

The downturn of the past few years has caused a lot of reexamination of the bold assumptions of the 1990s. Recently, Nicholas Carr proclaimed “IT Doesn’t Matter” in May’s Harvard Business review, providing countless responses both with him and against him. Has the Knowledge Officer gone the way of Carr’s IT? Lester Thurow, in "Fortune Favors the Bold," argues that a Chief Knowledge Officer could have saved Kmart. If true it would certainly be worthwhile for companies to examine their own efforts at knowledge management. However, Thurow is probably wrong for two reasons.

The Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) was popularized in the 1990s when all of the consulting firms touted their own CKO and how companies needed knowledge management to give their company the competitive edge. Not surprisingly the consulting company was there to help and somewhat surprisingly the customer company was willing to pay: often at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars per consultant per year. Many hired the consulting firms to create “frameworks” to capture and guide knowledge within the company. The CKO runs that framework, modifying it as necessary. This is the generally accepted definition of a CKO. Thurow uses a broader definition that incorporates, for want of a better term, Chief Strategist. He uses Bill Gates at Microsoft as his example of a successful CKO. Bill Gates is not a CKO – but he does make the concept of a CKO and knowledge management work at Microsoft. The difference is a subtle but important one. Bill Gates is the consumer of knowledge management at Microsoft and he mandates that it is a respected discipline—even if he never uses the words “knowledge management.”

The acceptability that knowledge and people are important is nearly universal. Most companies utter the mantra of “people are our biggest asset” – whether they mean it or not. No doubt these words were uttered at Kmart headquarters. One can agree with Thurow’s reasoning that Kmart failed to understand the changing market dynamics vis-à-vis a WalMart. Would a CKO – by traditional definition – have made a difference? No, because there was not a culture of accepting and leveraging a dynamic framework of knowledge management. You could have stuck Bill Gates into Kmart and made him CKO and the exact same thing would have happened.

The need for a CKO has not disappeared. Companies need them more now than ever before. Pressures on productivity continue as companies timidly test the waters of recovery. As a recovery becomes a reality, employees will start to test the waters of the job market—taking valuable knowledge with them.

The issue is not whether or not companies need a CKO, but that they still do not know what one is, or how to use one effectively. A properly defined CKO, with the organization’s full backing, can make a difference. Anything else is nearly irrelevant.

Move to Croatia for good quality broadband!

It is the unfortunate truth that often the country that invents a technology, especially an infrastructure technology, soon lags behind almost every other country that follows. It may be sacrilege to those in the U.S. whose religion is the Free Market, but the free market is actually inefficient for infrastructure.

The U.S. highway system, ostensibly built for security purposes, is an example of where the free market would have failed. Yet, it is one of the most important aspects of a large nation such as the U.S. Without the interstate highway system, we would suffer higher prices, less mobility, less cross fertilization of ideas, and lag behind the rest of the industrialized world. Infrastructure and access to that infrastructure is crucial.

In the past we have realized this with telephone service, electricity, and postal service. This infrastructure used to be the envy of the world. Used to be. Our security lies not just in military adventures, but in keeping our infrastructure top of the line. For those of you in a bubble, your broadband access sucks. That is right, all of you with DSL and cable modems, compared to the rest of the industrialized world, and even the less industrialized world, your broadband access is expensive, slow, and the service is spotty. If you want better broadband access, move to Croatia!

It is hard to feel technological pride over that. I don’t thump my chest too often and say, “We live in a very advanced nation. We have broadband Internet access almost as good as Croatia. Beat that! Oh, you live in Turkey? Well, ok, we’re more expensive than you and slower.” There is always North Korea! We can rest assured that we will stay ahead of them for some time.

I have a cabin in Eastern Washington. Nine miles out of town on a paved road. If I want Internet access there I can get it at the screaming speed of 28KB. That’s right, dial up with noise. Don’t even think about keeping your Windows installation current via the Internet. The new version of Windows would actually ship by the time your service pack downloaded.

In a time of economic uncertainty it is hard to get people too excited about this, but the time to invest is when the world is slowing down on its investments. Now is the time to move out of 15th place for penetration and 22nd place for cost. Demand more and not just from your service provider, who has no incentive to lower costs. This is a real issue. If you started losing your power all the time, you would be complaining. This is the power of the 21st century and I am tired of all the brownouts and blackouts.

Book Review: Hyperion

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

A number of reviewers focus on a perceived likeness to Canterbury Tales. This is only one aspect of the writing and a loose one at that. Chaucer wrote most of his tales in verse, this is all prose. The “frame” technique is certainly older than Chaucer and the fact that Chaucer uses pilgrims is probably the only other similarity to Hyperion.



The title is probably a reference Keats' poems Hyperion and the fall of Hyperion, which referred to the Greek titan by that same name. I believe Simmons also liked the direct reference to the titan, as so little was "known" about this titan and thus it was a mystery--just as the planet and its main "god" the shrike is a mystery.



This is science fiction, not fantasy, yet as with most science fiction authors the boundaries are stretched. This novel does come close to five stars, but as it is part of a series it needs to be viewed as the first in the series and wholly on its own. The style in the rest of series is significantly different, which also makes for an unequal read.



Hyperion can be viewed as an excellent set of short stories where you are always left wanting more: more of the individual story and more of the frame story. Part of what makes this such a great book is that Simmons has obviously worked out the universe and back story and yet is willing to not give you all of it. This gives what you are reading the feeling of fullness that is not found in most short stories. It feels rich. You want to read more about something that is mentioned only once in a sentence, but you know you will never need to.



Each short story centers completely on its main character. The main characters are all quite flawed, with the possible exception of Sol Weintraub, a former professor of ethics. His story, centering on his daughter, is almost cliché in the love of a father for his daughter knowing no limits, but it still works. For those of us with a daughter, it is hard not to empathize and shed a tear in shared agony.



The intriguing “character,” if one can call it that, is the Shrike. It is an enigma of a creature that is pure destruction, but not necessarily evil. It is also timeless and exists outside of time. It is worshiped, but may be the cause of the destruction of the universe. The technique of never quite letting on what the Shrike is, is exactly what makes it work.



I recommend reading the first book all the way through and then deciding if you want to read the other two. It can be read as stand alone, but only if you enjoy good writing, good characters, and a mystery left unexplained. If you must know more, you will be reading three books, each ever so slightly inferior to this first one.




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Review: Power of Myth

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is really a compilation of Campbell's interview(s) with Bill Moyers. As such, it is conversational in style and a fairly easy read of Campbell's more complex ideas captured in his many other books. Campbell was a scholar and loved his subject, which comes through.



The only reason this gets a 4 and not a 5 is because it is an interview. Think of this as a survey class for all of Campbell's other work.



For those who do not know the impact of Campbell--beyond the rather well known fact that Lucas consulted him for Star Wars-- his concept of the Hero's Journey is taught by most creative writing teachers, almost as if it were gospel.



This is a rather simplistic way of viewing fiction and oversimplifies Campbell's teachings. I recommend his other books, if you can find them. Many are out of print and most are not light reading.






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Book Review: Lord of Light

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Roger Zelazny is one of the few science fiction authors that John Gardner, in his book On Becoming a Novelist recommends. Gardner tends to dislike most science fiction as he focuses on characters and superb writing in his recommendations.



Lord of Light has been on my top ten list for over thirty years, when I first read this at seventeen. I re-read Lord of Light every two years or so, to re-inspire my own feeble efforts at fantasy and science fiction.



Lord of Light blends the two genres—Fantasy and Science Fiction—together. This was written during Zelazny’s “beat” period, when he was exploring other religions and using his interests as stepping stones to his novels (another one is Creatures of Light and Darkness, written two years later, 1969). It was also three years before his huge success, Nine Princes in Amber, which to some extent type cast him and trapped him into a series that by the sixth book was weak at best. But, I digress.



It won the Hugo award and illustrated Zelazny’s graduation from short stories to full-fledged novelist—although he never fully abandoned the short story structure and even this was originally a shorter story/novella. It is told in flashback, my least favorite of techniques, but in the hands of Zelazny I soon forget. It is ostensibly about Sam, short for Mahasamatman, once a god, but now a Buddha doing battle against the gods. It does not take long for the reader to discover that the gods and reincarnation are due to technology brought to the planet millennia in the past. Sam is one of the original colonists, who has become disillusioned with the others who are taking on the airs of Hindu gods. He preaches the teachings of Buddha as a calculated method of bringing down the gods, but his teachings are embraced as the truth. This is a bit of phenomenology similar to that employed in John Carpenter’s Dark Star, where Doolittle talks the bomb (temporarily) out of exploding. The source of the idea may be suspect, but if it is truth it does not matter, the idea is still sound.



As with any great book, this succeeds not just because of the plot, which is good, but because of the characters and writing. The heroes are flawed, but interesting. The villains are hardly fully evil, in fact many are likable, or even empathetic. Ultimately, Zelazny is poking at religious institutions that exist for their own power. Along the way he gives a fun overview of the Hindu pantheon and all the gods are nothing, if not interesting. Well worth reading, by an author that shaped a huge number of authors for years.




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