Intranets, Portals and Organizing Knowledge
Presentation by
-Krishnan N Ayyer
Intranets
What are Intranets?
• Intranet is Intra+ Net so an Intranet is an internal or
private Internet used strictly within the confines of a
company, university, or organization. "Inter" means
"between or among," hence the difference between the
Internet and an Intranet.
Intranets
Some formal definitions of Intranets
• Brown & Duguid: “Intranets help present and
circulate boundary objects”
• Choo, Detlor, & Turnbull: “Intranets… support the creation,
sharing, and use of knowledge”
• Stenmark: “Intranets are organizationally
restricted”
Intranets
A technical definition
• An Intranet is a network based on the internet TCP/IP open
standard. An intranet belongs to an organization, and is
designed to be accessible only by the organization's
members, employees, or others with authorization. An
intranet's Web site looks and act just like other Web sites,
but has a firewall surrounding it to fend off unauthorized
users.
Design Of Intranets
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Steps
Analyze the organization’s information ecology
Identify the typical problems experienced by users
Analyze the information behaviors of these set of users
Create value added processes to resolve the problems of
users and to improve the Information Ecology.
Information Ecology
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Organizational mission
Intranet goals
Information management plans
Information Culture
Information Politics
Physical settings
Information Staff
Information handling
Information Behaviors
• Identify Information users and their information seeking
characteristics.
• Dimensionalize the structure of work related problems they
typically face.
• Chronicle and examine the information behaviors and
practices they employ to resolve problems.
Value Added Processes
• Intranets may be designed to improve the organizational
information ecology.
• Intranets provide a unified information space in which
users can communicate and collaborate with others.
• intranet applications and services may add value by
supporting the organization’s knowledge creating and
decision making process
Annotate
• Annotate is a specific Knowledge management support
system (KMSS) designed to support the KM of document
collections. It is a collaborative tool which enhances
Information retrieval.
• Annotate in an Intranet increases the throughput by
increasing the flow of relevant information across business
units.
Components of KMSS
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Data or Knowledge Warehouse.
Knowledge Search and discovery mechanisms.
Knowledge representation via an ontology.
Knowledge Quality Control.
Knowledge Visualization techniques.
Search Navigation Chain
Layers
• Query Layer
• Retrival Layer
• Document Layer
Annotate
Annotate
Annotate
Policies to manage discussions
• Incentives and rewards for adding annotations, Conversely
sanctions for non participation.
• The level of anonymity of the annotator can be specified as
anonymous, semi-anonymous or non-anonymous.
• Annotation controls must be imposed.
Organizing Knowledge
• To take a knowledge based view of the firm as opposed to
the traditional transaction costs view.
• Knowledge is generated by communities of practice , which
are social often informal organizations.
• Communities of practice are organized around knowledge
sharing.
Organizing Knowledge
• Collective practice leads to form of Collective Knowledge,
shared sensemaking and distributed understanding that
does not reduce the content of individual heads .
• Improved search and retrieval facilitates better Knowledge
transfer.
• Knowledge is not easily commodified, as in the market
model.
Social Strategies for spreading Knowledge
• Translators
framing one communities interest into another's
perspective.
• Knowledge brokers
bridging internal communities by participating.
• Boundary Objects
objects or techniques that are used differently but forge
links between the communities.
eg-Contracts
Creative Intranet
• Intranets are suitable for supporting and facilitating
corporate creativity and the knowledge creation process.
• Organizational knowledge is created through a continuous
and dynamic interpersonal interaction between tacit and
explicit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi). They call it the
“Knowledge Spiral”.
• The Knowledge Spiral includes activities like sharing of
experiences, exchanging explicit knowledge and embodying
by “learning by doing”.
Key factors for creativity
• Non Preconception principle
It is impossible to know who will be involved in a
creative act, when it will take place or how it will
occur.
• To encourage shrunk work
Creativity is aided by low formalization and larger
degrees of freedom.
Key factors for creativity
• Serendipity
An accident can result in a useful innovation only if the
potential is realized.
organizations should encourage tinkering and
experiments.
• Diverse Stimuli
expose employees to cross disciplinary input
(kaleiodoscope thinking)
Key factors for creativity
• Within company communication.
Use horizontal and vertical communication to facilitate the
flow of information.
Create a helping and sharing culture
• Trust and Reciprocity
Key factors for creativity
• Intrinsic motivation
When people are primarily motivated by their own interest
and enjoyment in the job it breeds creativity.
• Rich Information provision
Browsing and Information Retrieval techniques.
Next generation KM applications
Data Mining Applications
• Biography generator
summarizes information about the author based on the
documents in the system.
• Rate of Absorption
It demonstrates how quickly a group within an organization
incorporates a new subject area.
Next Generation KM applications
• Old Boys Network
is a network on who knows who internally based on
discussions
• Communities Of Practice
grouping people based on their recent involvement in a
particular subject area and the level of expertise.
Corporate Portals
• Corporate portals are single point web browser interfaces
used within organizations to promote the gathering, sharing
and dissemination of information throughout the
organization.
• Corporate portals differ from intranets in that a portals
primary function is to provide a transparent directory of
information available elsewhere not act as a separate
source of information itself.
Components of a portals workspace
• Content space
To facilitate information access and retrieval
• Communication space
To negotiate collective interpretations and shared meanings
• Coordinate space
To support co-operative work action.
Conclusion
• Merely establishling various technological tools like
Intranets does not imply that Knowledge will flow within an
organization, people have to be committed to the KM efforts
for it to succeed.
Any Questions?