ikms newsletter

Editor's Note ...

JUNE ISSUE: KM in SMEs

This issue we look at the challenges faced by SMEs in Singapore and how KM can address some of their needs.

SMEs form a significant part of Singapore's economic landscape. There are 92,000 SMEs in Singapore. Collectively, they make up 92% of all establishments, and employ 53% of the workforce. Many MNCs today were SMEs of yesteryear e.g. Yahoo, eBay, Google ... SMEs are the incubators of future economic giants.

The truth is, SMEs face a number of challenges in doing business. For example, it is difficult for them to reach out to new customers and new markets because of the high cost of advertising and business promotion. They are also constrained by their physical size. Being small and unknown, they may not be able to secure the trust and confidence from potential customers.

The good news is that the rapid explosion of the Internet is driving dramatic changes in the way businesses operate and compete. It is causing a fundamental shift in the way businesses are conducted, and the rules of competition are being redefined in the knowledge economy.

Singapore has a list of Enterprise 50 companies which are ranked based on the following set of key performance indicators: operating profit before tax; turnover; growth in operating profits; growth in turnover; return on total fixed assets; operating profit per employee; percentage of turnover from overseas operations; percentage of payroll spent on training and percentage of revenue invested in research and development (R&D). It is insteresting to note that knowledge management is one of the qualitative factors taken into consideration besides management philosophy, innovation and market presence.

So what can KM offer to SMEs? Read on …

FT Liu
Editor
iKMS Newsletter

Feature Focus

KM and SMEs

by F T Liu

On Sep 28, 2003, Ngiam Tong Dow, one of Singapore’s most accomplished civil servants (for 40 years) gave an unprecendented frank interview with The Sunday Times that shook up many Singaporeans. On the subject of knowledge, this is what he has to say:

Take our industrial policy. At the beginning, it was the right thing for us to attract multinationals to Singapore. For some years now, I've been trying to tell everybody: 'Look, for God's sake, grow our own timber.' If we really want knowledge to be rooted in Singaporeans and based in Singapore, we have to support our SMEs. I'm not a supporter of SMEs just for the sake of more SMEs but we must grow our own roots. Creative Technology's Sim Wong Hoo is one and Hyflux's Olivia Lum is another but that's too few. We have been flying on auto-pilot for too long. The MNCs have contributed a lot to Singapore but they are totally unsentimental people. The moment you're uncompetitive, they just relocate.

Knowledge Management, the leveraging of knowledge within an organisation to add value to the business, is going to be key for SMEs in order for them to break free from the limitations of physical size and limited resources. SMEs share many knolwedge management requirements of larger enterprises but are constrained by their tigher budgets.

Survey on KM in SMEs - Part I

by F T Liu

Knowledge Management (KM), the leveraging of knowledge within an organisation to add value to the business, is going to be key for SMEs in order for them to break free from the limitations of physical size and limited resources.

Angie Ang, Assistant Manager, Knowledge Management at Jurong Consultants Pte Ltd has kindly agreed to share some of the KM initiatives at her company.

Survey on KM in SMEs - Part II

by Bruno Trezzini
Currently an assistant professor with the Nanyang Business School at the NTU, Dr. Bruno Trezzini still finds time to pull together this year's International Conference on KM as the Conference Liaison for iKMS.

iKMS approached Siemens, one of its corporate members to find out more about the positive and negative experiences they might have come across in the process of implementing KM in small and medium enterprises. Here are the insights William Teo from Siemens was so kind to share.

Feature: Knowledge Sharing for SMEs using Weblogs

by Maish Nichani
Maish puts his diverse set of knowledge in instructional design, online learning and media production to set the tone and direction for elearningpost

Weblogs. They are everywhere. This humble publishing technology is proving to be the silent killer application of this decade. In this article I’ll define what weblogs are and explore the malleable attributes that make them so remarkably flexible under various contexts.

Evening with iKMS on 18 May 04

Report by Vijaya
While not busy with iKMS affairs as Honorary Secretary, Vijaya works as an Acquisitions Librarian at NTU.

Case study 1: Knowledge Management at EDS
Presenter : Mr. Thomas Hoglund, CKO of global technology giant EDS
Organisation: EDS

Evening with iKMS on 18 May 04

Report by Vijaya
While not busy with iKMS affairs as Honorary Secretary, Vijaya works as an Acquisitions Librarian at NTU.

Case study 2: The National Library Board’s KM Journey
Presenter : Ms. Paolina Martin, Specialist, KM, Process Development
Organization: NLB

iKMS Affairs

International Conference on Knowledge Management 2004

Registrations are now open for early birds on our exciting new iKMS conference organised for the end of this year. We have five world class keynotes:
- David Snowden on the future of KM
- David Weinberger (of Cluetrain Manifesto fame) on technology and KM
- Max Boisot (strategic management expert) on culture and KM
- Josef-Hofer Alfeis (Siemens KM leader) on innovation and KM
- Robert Cross (social networks guru) on social and value networks in KM

Here we feature Robert Cross and the latest book he co-authored on the subject of social and value networks ...

Introduction to Organizational Network Analysis

Over the past decade or so significant restructuring efforts have resulted in organizations with fewer hierarchical levels and more permeable functional and organizational boundaries. While hopefully promoting efficiency and flexibility, a byproduct of these restructuring efforts is that coordination and work increasingly occur through informal networks of relationships rather than through formal reporting structures or prescribed work processes. These seemingly invisible webs have become central to performance and strategy execution. Research shows that appropriate connectivity in networks within organizations can have a substantial impact on performance, learning, and innovation, and benefits also accrue from well-connected networks between organizations.

Book Review: Overcoming Organisational Defenses – Facilitating Organisational Learning

Written by Chris Argyris

Reviewed by Christian Chao
Christian Chao is a PhD candidate in the field of Technology and Enterprise Managment at Nanyang Technological University. He currently serves as an Executive Committee Member of the 'Innovators and Entrepreneurs Association' (aka IdEA), as well as Tung Ling Community Services. He is also a member of Singapore's Economic Development Board (EDB) Society.

This book deals with the interesting question of ‘why do organisations with competent managers and employees, and with the best of intentions somehow end up becoming ineffective and uncompetitive?’

To address this, the first part of the book (Chapters 1-4) suggests that there exist certain organisational defenses which discourage learning, leading to mediocre organisational performance. The second part of the book (Chapters 5-9) then proposes how to overcome these defenses.

Coming up in next issue ...

KM in Technology

KM and Technology are intricately linked. In fact, technology has pushed KM to the forefront. How can you extract knowledge from a database of 2 million customer information? Why is Google’s IPO going to be worth $4 billion? Send your thoughts to us at Editorial Team