My Favourite Tipples from a KM software company CEO
Jinfo Blog

By Ron Aspe

Abstract

My Favourite Tipples are shared by Ron Aspe, the CEO of software company Lucidea. He shares the resources that help him meet companies' future information needs, including go-to blogs by leading knowledge-management experts.

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The biggest challenge we face as a software company is to ensure we're providing the products and services our clients need, both now and in the future. We work very closely with our clients, monitor what others in our industry are doing, and try to visualise what's next. The resources I've chosen are particularly helpful because they are forward-looking.

• McKinsey & Company Featured Insights: I find McKinsey's articles on managing change and leadership to be thought-provoking. The software industry is always in a state of flux, and this resource is helpful to anyone interested in knowledge management. I believe McKinsey is one of the foremost practitioners in the art of sharing best practices and reusing - rather than reinventing - "knowledge work product".

• Harvard Business Review (HBR): After 40 years in the software industry serving librarians, curators, archivists and records managers, I find it helpful to keep an eye on the people who need knowledge management to make their organisations successful. HBR allows me to scan the most popular advice on leadership, organisational change and recruitment. All of these opinions, good and bad (bad ideas challenge me to defend my own), are delivered to my inbox.

• Cognitive Edge: Dave Snowden "...is well known for his pragmatic cynicism..." according to his official bio on Cognitive Edge, and the former director of knowledge management at IBM never holds back. For example, upon learning that 70% of all KM strategies fail, he blogged about his suspicion that it is probably closer to the 90th percentile. Snowden's posts on knowledge management are worth reading twice.

• Knoco Stories: Some knowledge management consultants can write a title that always makes you read the whole post, and frankly it's hard to beat Nick Milton, director of Knoco. The posts are substantial and it's the type of blog that's best read sitting down. Now, try to resist clicking on "The Four Most Dangerous Words in KM".

For fun:

• Freakonomics Radio: A colleague recently introduced me to this podcast. Produced by award-winning journalist Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the Freakonomics book series, it "tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn't) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do)", from how to be great at failure and how to foster creativity to why we wear belts instead of suspenders.

An article in Jinfo I found particularly interesting:

• Jinfo's content addresses pain points our clients are experiencing and I like to dive into the product reviews to see what works and what doesn't in the KM category. Poking into the "Technology" and "Value" categories never fails to generate interesting ideas for future products and services. As an information technology provider, I find reports such as the "Jinfo survey on technology readiness in information centres" an insightful and cost-effective business intelligence resource.

Contribute your "My Favourite Tipples"

Would you like to share your "My Favourite Tipples" with the Jinfo audience? For contributor guidelines email catherine.dhanjal@jinfo.com or visit the Publish with Jinfo page.

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