Hallmark Invitation to Success

The knowledge community of Hallmark Cards is initiated by the company and membership is by invitation. Would this "top-down" approach to the community development cause any problem in achieving its effectiveness? Discuss.

I actually feel that the top down approach that Hallmark took to invite people did them justice and did not harm them at all. All of the individuals that were invited by Hallmark had the opportunity to decline the invitation. I feel as though Hallmark thought if they invited individuals and they excepted the invitation then they must have some interest in the well being of Hallmark. Plus there was no reward for participating in the community, but there were incentives on contributions. The only troubles I see is that Hallmark may have been a tad bit bias in facilitating the community. It may have been a better idea for them to get some one else to either sponsor the community or facilitate, but I don't feel that Hallmark should have done both. I think that Hallmark, even after these factors, will not become any less effective and the community to me seem to be an ultimate success.

Online CoP vs. Offline (traditional) CoP

An example of community of practice is our class. We all have to communicate with each other through the team wiki in order for us to complete the powerpoint and get our presentation together. We have to have participaition adn input from each member in order to give a successful presentation. Although we have the incentive of getting a good grade this is still a great way for us to communicate. Also through blog and sharing thoughts about Knowledge Management.

Until the advent of telecommunications technology, definitions of community focused on close-knit groups in a single location. Factors such as birth and physical location determined belonging to a community. Interaction took place primarily face-to-face; therefore, social relationships took place with a stable and limited set of individuals.

Pro of Online Community:

• You have flexibility. 24/7 accessibility. Where ever you are, as long as you have internet connection, you can access the community.
• Global. You can share ideas from TN to China without even have been there.
• Some people may be shy so an online community will level the field for these people. People who may not normally speak in public now can have there voices heard loud and clear. They maybe afraid of getting there ideas shot down,but through an online community instead of getting their ideas shot down, they can share them and others can expand upon them.
• Online communities are documented and can be recalled unlike verbal conversations.
• There is no forced communications. Participants don't have to contribute until they've had time to think about something effective to say.
• No one will interrupt your chain of thought. You can get all of your thoughts out before you forget.
• Online communities you have a choice wether you want to give a quick responds, or a well thought out answer.
• LIMITLESS. This is the most important. There are no limits to online communities and the unexpected may often result in and increase incidental learning.

Cons of Online Community:

• The text-based format could cause a problem for those who aren't computer savvy. Some people may not have great typing ability. But with the resurgence of video conference this is becoming less of an issue.
• No physical contact. This may make it hard to gain trust, and a lot of communication is non-verbal through facial expression and hand gestures so there is a risk of being misunderstood.
• Information overload.
• Lack of direction can cause the discussion to spill out of control from subject to subject.
• Some people prefer to learn on their own, and don't do well with sharing their thoughts to the masses.
• Lag-time. You may want a reply right then, but you will have to wait to some one logs on to get back with you.

Pros of Offline Community

• Gaining trust through face-to-face communication.
• Use body language to interrupt thoughts and feelings
• Instant responses
• Brainstorming, and the ability to bounce ideas back and forth.
• Damage control, being able to resolve conflict immediately.
• You trend to be more comfortable with interacting in a smaller network with people you know.

Cons of Offline Community

• It can become time consuming
• Often interruptions
• People try to talk at the same time and you loose your thoughts.
• It maybe expensive if you have to travel to meet someone
• There is no record of what has been discussed
• Cliques may form, and politics may come into play.

How Does CoPs Work

I wanted to see a Community of Practice at work so I went to find some videos and here they are, comment and enjoy:

KM Shifts to more Information Based

Information age is a new period of change. It is a shift from command and control organizations, the organization of departments and divisions, to an information-based organization. Command-and-control organizations are centralized, military structured organizations. It works from the top down; meaning upper level management disseminates information as they feel necessary; where as, in information-based organizations, the knowledge to perform specific tasks lies within the employees. Information-based organizations also require team work as well as employee motivation.

Information technology plays an important role in executing a successful shift from a command-and-control organization to an information based organization. When a smaller business decides to make the shift it levels the playing field for larger companies. Now the smaller company has become globalized, meaning it can now share information efficiently and quickly, but it eliminates linguistic and geographical barriers. Information technology also changes the way that information is being facilitated. Lower level employees will be more in touch with what decision upper level management is making. The barriers and obstacles that were faced in the command-and-control organization are removed due to the transition. Information technology will make it possible for a company to operate 24-7 in a global manner. Business is now open anytime anywhere and doing business is more convenient.

Information technology plays a vital role in management structure. While changing from a command-and-control to information based organization management faces many problems such as balancing of resources and time, developing organization teams, and devising a system that will give rewards to employees.

Creating a Successful CoP

Communities of practice (CoP) (Wenger, 1998) have the potential to be conducive to mastery of new knowledge When building communities on natural networks, coordinators must be generated to organize and maintain the community activities, such as building important topics, initiating simple knowledge sharing activities and arranging social activities. The coordinators also need to provide the members with the time and encouragement to reflect, share ideas with others, and think through the implications of other ideas. Because communities are organized and supported differently, community development requires a different set of tools and approaches. CoPs often require time to develop. Because they are organic, CoPs need time to find the right kind of information to share, the right level of detail, the right participants and the right forums. Individuals must support the community in making these discoveries quickly; but, since information, level of detail, participants, and right forums will be different for different communities, each community will need to discover their own appropriate forum, according to Chih-Hsiung Tu, Ph.D. and Michael Corry authors of Research in an Online Learning Community.

Communities of Practice offer a way to theories tacit knowledge which can not easily be captured, codified and stored. Communities can help make it easier for individuals to share explicit forms of knowledge. While many communities use repository-based systems to create a shared “place” where individuals can find examples of tools, past proposals, presentations and the like, they also ensure that the repository actually serves the community needs. First, communities can help serve as a vetting mechanism by sorting through and filtering content that is placed in a repository to ensure that the material is valuable to others. In order to have a successful community of practice companies must focus resources on communities that have strategic implications for the organization, provide the community with time and space to interact designate roles and responsibilities to support the community, and market the community and its success stories.

CoPs are useful tools of collaborative learning. I think that peer to peer learning is sometimes more effective than other styles. Within the CoP the greatest asset is sharing knowledge and any knowledge that will benefit the organization and the individual be stored.

Shawn Cartet b.k.a. Jay-Z Leadership and Management

Over the years, Carter has successfully used Jay-Z’s influence as a hip-hop star to build a franchise of businesses that capitalize on the rapper’s popularity. Where he is different than a typical brand is that he has an extreme amount of highly valuable influence. He could easily stand on the merits of what he is famous for, but he has shot to extreme levels of success due to his influence.”

In fact, it was recognizing that influence early on in his career that ultimately lead to the creation of the Rocawear clothing. When Carter noticed that a large portion of the audience attending his concerts were wearing ICEBERG—a clothing brand he was well-known to favor at the time—it occurred to him that his fans wanted to do more than just listen to his music. They wanted to live his lifestyle as well. Believing he had cachet as a trendsetter, Carter approached executives at the clothing company with the intention of securing an endorsement deal. But they declined his offer; ICEBERG’s loss in retrospect (”Sometimes you’ve gotta learn to live with regrets.”) That’s when he and then-partner Damon Dash decided to found Rocawear.

Jay-Z Inc. represents the business ventures built around Jay-Z the hip-hop star. What began with rapping, soon grew to include Rocafella records, Rocawear, and a host of endorsement deals and joint ventures. For the most part, all of these undertakings owe their success to Jay-Z’s influence as a hip-hop star. But after 12 years of building up the franchise, Carter has cashed in piece by piece.

Within Jay-Z music career he has 11 albums to the date that total up to over 28 million units sold worldwide which marks Jay-Z as the “best rapper alive”. Businessman Shawn Carter is always recognizing ways to advance his empire like the earlier example of the clothing brand. He recognized talent signing many artists to his record label such as Camron, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, and the most popular is Kanye West. Apart from signing these artists to his label he is also played an instrumental role in getting Rhianna to sign with Def Jam Records.

In late 2004, Jay-Z, and Dash sold their remaining interests in Roc-A-Fella Records and the Def Jam Recordings by Island Def Jam chairman L. A. Reid. Reportedly this major industry move was prompted by disagreement between Jay-Z and Dash as to what new ventures Roc-A-Fella could undertake. In 2005, Carter bought out Dash’s stake of Rocawear for $30 million. Then in 2007, sold the company to Iconix Brand Group for $204 million in cash, plus an additional $35 million in Iconix stock, contingent on whether Rocawear meets certain performance goals over the next few years. The deal is Iconix’s largest acquisition to date.

Upon doing this Shawn Carter became the CEO and President of Def Jam Records from 2006-2008. Jay-Z announced on December 24, 2007 that he will not remain at Def Jam as the company's President, and vacated the position effective of January 1, 2008. Jay-Z teamed up with Norwegian production duo Stargate to establish a record label called StarRoc.

Jay-Z has recently finalized a deal with concert promoter LiveNation for $150 million, one of the richest contracts ever awarded to a musician. This partnership, is named Roc Nation, it includes financing for Jay-Z's own entertainment ventures (which are expected to become a record label, talent/management agency, and music publishing company).

Carter’s current portfolio of business interests—which include the New Jersey Nets, 40/40 Club, beauty care line Carol’s Daughter, J hotels, Scion, LLC., and Translation Advertising. Carter looks to make the transition from hip-hop star to a business celebrity, much like Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, and Magic Johnson.

Vasa Syndrome Knowledge Management

I recently read an article called “Vasa Syndrome: Insights from A 17th-Century New-Product Disaster”. I am going to explain what the article is about and also show how knowledge management played a major part.

From reading the article I found the “Vasa Syndrome” very interesting. I will start off by taking the first of the seven points, which is the lack of external learning capability. By building the Vasa Sweden they were trying to show up the enemies. Sweden did not account for what they would do if a disaster should strike, and it was just their luck that 10 of their ships where grounded which altered the scheduling of the Vasa. It became even more imperative for them to get the Vasa up and running. When King Gustavus Adolphus received the news that Denmark planned to build a larger and better-armed ship, he immediately ordered specifications done to the Vasa without researching to see if he had the capability. The biggest mistake made was during the test run of only 30 men. If the ship could not contain 30 men with the entire army it was bound to fail. What today’s managers can get from this is to take the time to research new and more efficient ways to create their products in order to have longevity.

They should also plan ahead for disaster and take the necessary precautions. They should not panic when the threat of competition arises; this should merely be a motivator for managers to see what that company is doing and to do it better with better materials. Managers should know the need of their company and focus on fulfilling it and not over doing it. Goal failures are the next point I want to bring up. The main goal of the Vasa was to be a fighter ship equipped with the adequate amount of firepower to over throw its enemies. These goals were lost due to the king’s over compensating of the fighter ship with art, sculptures, and carved ornaments. The ship’s capacity was 36 guns and it was set to sail with 64 cannons and this was clearly ignoring the goals. The time spent on making the artworks and sculptures could have been put into securing the stability of the Vasa.

The Vasa should have had one specific goal, either to fire from long distance or to fight at close combat. Today’s managers should have clear and defined goals. They should make sure each one of them is complete before moving to the next one and avoiding the anxiousness that may be brought on by competition. Communication barriers are an important topic in this passage among the rest. The communication barriers that the Vasa faced were the fact that there were too many bosses. Three people with three different opinions were over the design so that made it difficult for them to come up with a unison decision.

The king should have allocated one head ship builder whom all decisions would go through before being final. If this had been done properly, maybe then Fleming would have been forced to do another test. In today’s companies managers should make sure that there is a clear line of communication throughout the entire company. Valuable information should be resonated in a precise way. Top-management meddling can be detrimental to an organizations success. While building the Vasa the king continuously wanted to make design changes despite being told not to do so by the master ship builder. The king was not an expert at building ships and he should have delegated one of the master ship builders to be in charge and let that person handle all of the design specs. In today’s organizations managers should learn to delegate. This will have an empowering effect on the employees which will in turn make them want to work harder. Once someone is delegated to oversee a particular item, managers should step down and trust that whomever they delegate will do a precise job.

The King faced increasing return to scale. As the Vasa was already a supreme ship, and achieved the main purpose of being a war ship the king wasn't satisfied and wanted more.