Knowledge Management and the Importance of Human Resources

David Gurteen (www.gurteen.com) has used a metaphor of making a cake to explain the difference between data, information and knowledge and also the different types of knowledge. An analysis of a cake's constituents provides data. For most purposes this is not very useful, you might not even be able to tell it’s a cake. A list of ingredients (information) is more useful as it gives the data context, an experienced cook could probably make the cake. However, the recipe is knowledge, written down, explicit knowledge, it tells you how to make the cake. An inexperienced cook however, even with the recipe, might not make a very good cake. A person though with relevant experience and skills, knowledge in their heads, tacit knowledge, would almost certainly make a good cake from the recipe. Know-who, who to ask for help, and know-why, what, for example, to do if a certain ingredient is unavailable, are also relevant.

Knowledge management (KM) matters because it is regarded as a source of increased value. Peter Drucker is credited with having said that in contemporary society, the most important source of wealth is knowledge and information.

KM refers to a multi-disciplined approach to achieving organizational objectives by making the best use of knowledge. KM focuses on processes such as acquiring, creating and sharing knowledge and the cultural and technical foundations that support them. In our daily life, we deal with huge amount of data and information. Data and information is not knowledge until we know how to dig the value out of of it. This is the reason we need knowledge management.

Knowledge Management may be viewed in terms of:

•    People – how do you increase the ability of an individual in the organisation to influence others with their knowledge
•    Processes – Its approach varies from organization to organization. There is no limit on the number of processes
•    Technology – It needs to be chosen only after all the requirements of a knowledge management initiative have been established.

Or,

•    Culture –The biggest enabler of successful knowledge-driven organizations is the establishment of a knowledge-focused culture
•    Structure – the business processes and organisational structures that facilitate knowledge sharing
•    Technology – a crucial enabler rather than the solution.

The enterprises start realizing the importance of "knowing what it is that they know" and of making the best use of this knowledge. Knowledge is already recognized as the most important company asset, as the "only meaningful economic resource", and this is why so many efforts are made and so many resources are invested in how to acquire it, represent it, capitalize it and manage it.

Successful companies creating knowledge sharing global culture, in which collective knowledge (the company's intellectual asset) is effectively and methodologically shared to produce a continuous and successful innovation.

Inside this company knowledge we find that what the company knows about its products, its processes, its employees, its market, its clients, etc, and about how to combine these elements to render the company competitive. Under this aspect, knowledge management seems to have the same goal of technology management but, being the former of greater importance, contains the latter one.

3M, one of the pioneers of innovation, the inventor of masking tape and post-it, had so far produce over 55,000 products, including: adhesives, abrasives, laminates, passive fire protection, dental products, electrical materials, electronic circuits and optical films. Under the stewardship of Mr. William McKnight, 3M had grown from strength to strength. McKnight's greatest contribution was as a business philosopher, since he created a corporate culture that encourages employee initiative and innovation. To quote from him:

“As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way. Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs. Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.”

McKnight’s philosophy had a profound effect  on the way 3M does business. 15% of all employee’s time is allowed to be  on their pet projects (the “3M Way”). Yet there is a clear a tension between  innovation and efficiency. Why? because innovation usually challenges existing procedures and norms.

Persuading staff to open up to knowledge management requires a change in attitude and corporate culture. But that can be a long and arduous task.

Implementing KM is a culture-change process – but culture change is hard and takes time. However, every management system requires a supporting culture and implementation always requires a concomitant culture change. Once upon a time, there were no financial-management systems; no budgets, no forecasts, no double-entry book-keeping. Now, every company has a financial-management system and a supporting culture that sees financial management as ‘part of the job’.

People now work from the premise that managing the company’s money is something they need to do, something they are expected to do and something that will help both them and the company. They know that competent financial management is a crucial part of good business practice and behave accordingly. Can KM deliver a similar supporting culture? Can competent knowledge management become seen as a crucial part of good business practice? Can people come to realise that managing the company’s knowledge is something they need to do, something they are expected to do and something that will help both them and the company?

Changing the culture of an organisation can be done, but it has to happen in stages – and it needs time. You cannot change the whole culture of a company at one single event or intervention, you need to change the culture piece by piece, person by person, starting where it’s easiest and building momentum as you go over a period of at least a year, possibly two or more.

At first, take-up will be limited to a few pioneers or early adopters, as the implementation team starts testing KM tools and technologies and piloting the knowledge-management system. Then the majority will begin to adopt the new approach as the proven system is rolled out across the organisation, and finally only a few laggards will be left still clinging on to old approaches.

Born as a tabulating company originally founded in 1888, IBM became incorporated in 1924 as a result of the merger of several companies of the same business sector – International Time Recording Company, Computing Scale Company, and the Tabulating Machine Company (C-T-R Company) – and renamed International Business Machines under the direction and leadership of Thomas J. Watson, Sr. At the completion of the merger, IBM had less than 3500 employees on record and enjoyed the privilege of listing company stock for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange.

Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, IBM’s research team continued making breakthroughs in computer processing unimaginable during the era. IBM appeared unstoppable in the market of raw computing power, storage and support for the systems to include development of software code and system architectures. IBM’s reputation for being on the cutting-edge of computer hardware and technology made it a very appealing company to the very best in electrical and the evolving field of computer engineering. IBM continued to grow.

The four business goals of the 1980’s were growth, product leadership, efficiency and profitability. As IBM was structured, success in the goals of growth and product leadership would naturally support profitability. But with no change in or scalable strategy to address the efficiency goal in light of the remarkable global growth, efficiency was easier to excuse as a lower priority. Without the alignment of goals and strategy that supported this growth and globalization, inefficiencies began to accumulate which over time affected the bottom line, and the company’s profitability began to evaporate. The company, its leadership and employees, gradually lost touch with external realities of the market place.

IBM began to lose market share and lose it fast. IBM also began to collapse under the weight of a management structure characterized by independent business units with redundant process and disconnected information systems. Stock prices hit 20 year lows and the company posted an $8.1 billion loss. Something had to change.

IBM is no stranger to change and experienced a remarkable transformation whereby the company returned to a position of preeminence among IT companies after nearly facing extinction because of its initial unwillingness to change. The change came in the form of knowledge management and recognizing that the company’s survival depended upon harnessing the knowledge its employees and getting relevant, innovative ideas to market.

IBM, though certainly a front runner in industry, does not hold the answers to knowledge management but for a company with over 350,000 employees spread globally and stationed in most countries throughout the world, they must be considered one to watch when it comes to harnessing the innovation of those employees and delivering products and services well ahead of the competition.

In my earlier story, I have shown the example of how 3M created a corporate culture that encourages employee initiative and innovation. This is at the very heart of what knowledge management is all about. People willing to learn (acquire explicit knowledge)......people willing to share their knowledge (contribute tacit knowledge).....and people (from the very top all the way down) willing to put everything into action to attain a certain goal.

In my other story, I have chosen IBM, its rise from a humble beginning to be one of the world's powerhouse in electronic computing, but almost drowned by its own success. This story highlights the importance of any company to embrace change within their organisation, no matter how big they are. In this very competitive environment, we cannot take for granted new developments that are happening around us. Not even IBM, a behemoth in computing business, already considered an institution, and have survived two world wars, is immune from such change.

I believe that the implementation of a robust knowledge management strategy, and programme, coupled with harnessing the knowledge of its employees, can help an organisation to become more adaptable to the ever-changing competitive environment in which all businesses operate today. There's no other way around.

The Perils of Human Interaction or the Start of a New Era in Modern Day Social Networking

Human Interaction – The Good Old Days

The community spirit. Everybody knows almost anybody in the community. You walk 100 metres to buy something in the corner shop and you bump into somebody you know along the way. You strike a conversation with that person. Few metres away, Mr. Postman is delivering a letter to the neighbourhood. Ask him if he has letters for you and you will end up talking about football. Inside the shop, Steven the shopkeeper is glad to see you. Asked you why he hasn't seen you for a while. You ended up telling him about your last holiday vacation.

Going back home, you decided to get a haircut. The gentleman with the scissor happily obliged. While doing the rituals, the barber starts talking about politics, his frustrations, his preferences, his views in every issue, big and small. He then proceeded to ask you about your own opinion, while holding the sharp shaving blades in your throat.

Upon reaching home, you reckon you have talked to at least 6 people, some you knew very well, and some barely. This is not counting the people who said 'Hi', 'Hello' and asked 'How are things?'.

To these days, this is still happening in small towns around the country, in every corners of the world. The lure of the hustle and bustle of city living made us decide to abandon this very great custom.
  
The Advent of Web 2.0 Technology

As we pursue our dreams, we look for the place where opportunities abound. So we willingly join the rat race and look for the fast lane that will bring us to where we intended to go. Most often than not, these opportunities are found in big cities and some of the most industrialized places in the world. The result, leaving behind families, friends and fond memories.

But thankfully, there's the so-called Web 2.0 technology.

Web 2.0 is the term given to describe a second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online. Web 2.0 basically refers to the transition from static HTML Web pages to a more dynamic Web that is more organized and is based on serving Web applications to users.

It is a concept that takes the network as a platform for information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.
  
Online Social Networking

Back in the days, I cannot wait for the weekend to come so I can play war games with my friends. Armed with wooden toy guns, which we personally made ourselves, we will split into two groups, occupy different areas in the neighbourhood, and will try to eliminate the opposite group one by one by penetrating the enemy line.

Past forward, I can see that my son is also enjoying playing war games, but this time, he's playing “Call of Duty” with his friends online. While on the other hand, my daughter is updating her profile in Facebook so that her friends (at least 300 of them, and still counting) can see her latest pictures and postings on her wall.

This is a far cry from what I have experienced during my childhood. We have to be physically present in one place to play our favourite games and discuss about interesting stuff.

Times have changed.

Thanks to social networking sites, meeting someone in person has become a thing of the past. "Poking" has become the new handshake. But making friends and renewing old ones is easy. Thus, meeting people and staying connected with classmates and friends, and relatives living abroad is a major benefit of social networking sites.

Of course there are dangers, the same dangers that I have to deal with growing up in a different era and in different settings. Brendesha M. Tynes of University of Illinois, in her article entitled “Internet Safety Gone Wild? - Sacrificing the Educational and Psychosocial Benefits of Online Social Environments”, has this to say:

“Many Internet safety and parenting experts suggest that parents prohibit their teens from social networking sites and other online spaces where predators may lurk. But we may do adolescents a disservice when we curtail their participation in these spaces, because the educational and psychosocial benefits of this type of communication can far outweigh the potential dangers. These benefits include developing cognitive skills that are consistent with those required in educational settings and perspective-taking skills that are necessary for citizenship in an increasingly multiracial society. Alternative strategies for keeping adolescents safe online should build on the increasing technological awareness and sophistication of teens themselves.” - Brendesha M. Tynes

I fully agree.

I was reminded of a quote from naturalist Charles Darwin. He wrote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

I rest my case.

It's More Fun in the Philippines . . . . . in more ways than one

If you love the beaches, then the Philippines is the place to go. With more than 7,000 islands surrounding the achipelago, you will be spoilt for choice.

The Philippine Map

South East Asia Map

Philippine Toursim Slogan - “It's More Fun in the Philippines"

 

. . . . . and some more photographs to whet your appetite.

 

Best month of the year to go: September to February, where the months of December and January as the coldest (around 25deg celsius (day time), I suppose)

June to August is typhoon months (not suitable for beach hopping)

March to May is very hot (temperature can be as high as 37deg celsius)

. . . . . and, just some more reasons why “It's More Fun in the Philippines”

Popular destinations are Boracay, Puerto Galera and Dakak, just to name a few. Remember, it's more fun in the Philippines, . . . . if you have money to burn. Mabuhay!

From My Own (Amateur) Lens

Pictures in Contrast

 Grand Canal Dock in Spring

Grand Canal Dock in Winter

 Grand Canal Dock in Summer

Tranquil Places, Calm Water

 Killaloe

 Cliffs of Moher

Waterfalls – A Gift of Nature

 Mt. Ophir Downstream

Mt. Ophir Upstream

View From the Top

 Kuala Lumpur

 Petronas Towers

View From the Ground

 Singapore Central Business District

 Singapore CHIJMES

Life's a Beach

 Bintan Lagoon Beach

 Bintan Lagoon Resort

 Siloso Beach

 Patong Beach

Immigration and Emigration

According to the International Organization for Migration's World Migration Report 2010, the number of international migrants was estimated at 214 million in 2010. If this number continues to grow at the same pace as during the last 20 years, it could reach 405 million by 2050.

Immigration is defined as the flow of people into a land, country or dominion; the imported people are not native to that country. While emigration is the flow of people from a land, country or dominion; the exported people are native to that country.

While the pace of migration had accelerated since the 18th century already, it would increase further in the 19th century. There are three major types of migration: labor migration, refugee migrations, and urbanization. Millions of agricultural workers left the countryside and moved to the cities causing unprecedented levels of urbanization. This phenomenon began in Britain in the late 18th century and spread around the world and continues to this day in many areas.

Industrialization encouraged migration wherever it appeared. The increasingly global economy globalized the labour market.

Migration for work in the 21st century has become a popular way for individuals from impoverished developing countries to obtain sufficient income for survival. This income is sent home to family members in the form of remittances and has become an economic staple in a number of developing countries, namely the Philippines and those in Latin America.

Around 9.5 million to 12.5 million overseas Filipinos are the estimated count worldwide or about 11% of the total population of the Philippines as of 2010.

The World Bank expects remittances to the Philippines to hit $23 billion in 2011 on the account of rising demand for Filipino workers despite the unfavorable global economic climate. With the bank’s projection, it said the Philippines would likely remain as the fourth-largest remittance recipient country following India (seen to get $58 billion), China ($57 billion), and Mexico ($24 billion). For all developing countries, remittances are expected to hit a total amount of $351 billion, which represents an 8-percent increase from last year’s $323 billion.

Remittances are a closely watched economic indicator. In the case of the Philippines, remittances from the more than 10 million overseas Filipino workers are deemed vital because these significantly help fuel consumption of Filipino households that in turn is a key growth driver for the domestic economy.

While every country's economy reaps the benefits brought about by the remittances of their own citizens, the very fibre of every migrant worker's family is getting loose. And the most affected are the children. It may be beneficial financially in the short term, but it also has social implications in the long term.

The difference between immigrant workers from the developing nation and the Irish that chooses to work outside of Ireland is, the Irish always has the option to bring their families wherever they chooses to work, while the former has limited options, vis-a-vis their own families.

Below is an article by Dan O'Brien of the Irish Times on March 22, 2012 entitled “Irish emigration a fact of life but not as bad as it could be". (The full article is available at www.irishtimes.ie)

“OVER THE past two centuries, the population dynamics of this island have been utterly unique. After 1800 the world experienced a demographic explosion the like of which had never been seen before in human history.

In every country on every continent for which figures or estimates exist, the numbers of people soared. Even the slowest-growing countries experienced more than a doubling of their populations over the 19th and 20th centuries.

But not Ireland. It is the only country – without exception – to have experienced depopulation. This unparalleled decline continued for 120 years, from the Great Famine to the 1960s. Many factors contributed. None did so more than emigration – and now that phenomenon is back.

This is profoundly depressing, but is it not surprising. The shock to the economy and employment over the past four years – a shock incomparably more severe than that of the 1980s, when emigration was last prevalent – has resulted in one in seven jobs disappearing. A decline in the numbers at work of that magnitude – 300,000 jobs – would have led to emigration in any open economy. In one with a historically mobile native population and a large recently arrived immigrant community, it could have been expected to trigger a stampede to airport departure lounges.

That has not happened, however. The surprising aspect of the post-crash emigration phenomenon is how limited it has been, according to statisticians’ (pre-census) figures.

A change was slow in coming after the crash. Despite 2009 being by far the worst year of the recession, not least because it was the year in which most jobs were lost, Irish emigration increased only very slightly. It grew in each subsequent year and now appears to be on an upward trajectory.

But at an estimated 40,000 people last year, emigration still remains much below that of the late 1980s, when more than 70,000 people left in a single year (that figure is for total emigration which, given how few foreigners lived in Ireland at that time, can be assumed to have been overwhelmingly Irish).

To see why the numbers leaving now are lower than one might have thought, consider the three years before and after the crash.

The total number of Irish people emigrating in the 2006-08 period was 42,000. In 2009-11, it was 86,000.

During the former period, jobs were plentiful. It is safe to assume that all Irish people leaving during those years did so out of choice. Even if one assumes that the overwhelming majority, say 80 per cent, of the increase in emigration since the crash is involuntary, it still suggests that more Irish people who have left since 2009 have done so by choice rather than because they felt forced to leave. That, incidentally, is exactly what a recently published Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI survey found.

Why has Irish emigration been less than might have been expected?

One reason is likely to have been the suddenness of the change. Up to 2008, boom conditions had prevailed for a decade and a half. Many people had come to believe the good times would never end. But within a year the economy was in a depression. It takes time to internalise such a shift and incorporate it and its consequences into one’s life plans.

The more recent rise in Irish emigration may reflect more people gradually reaching the conclusion that after almost four years of recession and a number of false dawns, things are not about to get better any time soon. If more people reach this gloomy (and not implausible) conclusion, the numbers uprooting themselves will rise.

It is likely – all things considered – that more Irish people will leave in the short term. But that is far from certain. The most important influencing factor will be conditions in the Irish jobs market.
Happily, there are signs that employment prospects are improving. At the end of 2011, the first post-crash increase in the number of jobs in the economy was recorded. If more opportunities open up at home, then the rise of emigration could be halted.

At the beginning of the recession, foreigners suffered most job losses. Reflecting the tendency of immigrants everywhere to have less job security than locals, non-Irish were more likely than natives to become unemployed during the jobs haemorrhage in late 2008 and into 2009.

With fewer attachments to Ireland, they were also more inclined to leave than Irish people at that low point.

But since 2010, emigration among foreigners has been falling (just as the trend among Irish people is going the other way).

Predicting patterns of migration is very difficult. Whether emigration rises or falls will depend on many factors. But one thing is sure – movements on to and off this island continue to be unusually large compared to those in other European countries. That is not about to change. Ireland’s 200-year history as a demographic curiosity looks set to continue.” (Dan O’Brien is Economics Editor, Irish Times).

According to the Irish Central Statistics Office, there are 4.59 million people (of which a little over 10% are immigrants) living in present day Ireland. And it is also a fact that there are an estimated 20 million of Irish descent scattered throughout the world. There are so many 'what ifs' in my mind that I wanted to get answers from, but these following two questions comes out on top. What if the likes of the Kennedy's and the Obama's did not migrate to the US of A, will John F. Kennedy's famous speech of “Ask not what the country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your county”, could have been delivered in the Houses of the Oireachtas rather than the halls of US Congress? Or, will Barack Obama ends up saying "Is Féidir Lin" in his inauguration as the new Taoiseach instead of pushing for quantitative easing to solve America's current economic woes? 

This topic is not a laughing matter, at least for myself and millions more like me around the world. Being born youngest in the brood of 13, orphaned from my parent at the early age of 12, grew up under Martial Law rule of the 'conjugal dictatorship', I knew exacly what survival is all about. For some people, immigration and emigration may be a matter of choice, but for me, having worked and lived accross 6 countries . . . . . it's the only choice.

Game Theory: Game of Hawk-Dove (aka Chicken)

Evolution, through survival of the “fittest”, is commonly thought of as a very harsh process that results in zero-sum outcomes - one organism thrives at the expense of another.

In the movie, A Beautiful Mind, there was a scene wherein John Nash was fuming mad when he lost in a board game against his intellectual rival Martin Hansen. Believing that he had played a perfect game, there is no way that he is going to lose the game. As intellectual as John Nash is, he probably thought that the worst outcome of his perfect game plan is a draw, if the other player would be able to respond with a perfect strategy of his own. But this is not to be. John Nash lost the game because he had failed to anticipate the next move of his opponent which surprises him. He knew very well the “analytics” of the game but he forgot to include the human factor in his analysis.

In 1996, Gary Kasparov the Russian Chess Grandmaster and the world's undisputed chess champion was pitted against a super computer named Deep Blue developed by IBM. After 6 games of grueling encounter, Kasparov won 3 and Deep Blue won once, with 2 games ended in a draw. The IBM team went back to work, developed their program more, and improved the system to beat Kasparov in their next match which was held a year later. This experiment exposes the limits of the human brain.

Game theory has been used to study a wide variety of human and animal behaviors. It was initially developed in economics to understand a large collection of economic behaviors, including behaviors of firms, markets, and consumers. The use of game theory in the social sciences has expanded, and game theory has been applied to political, sociological, and psychological behaviors as well.

The Hawk-Dove (aka Chicken) game is an influential model of conflict for two players in game theory. With two players and two strategies to choose from, the outcome of the game is easier to predict. The hard part is: which strategy better suits which situation.

According to Wikipedia, the game of Chicken, also known as the Hawk-Dove or Snowdrift game, is an influential model of conflict for two players in game theory. The principle of the game is that while each player prefers not to yield to the other, the outcome where neither player yields is the worst possible one for both players.

The name "Chicken" has its origins in a game in which two drivers drive towards each other on a collision course: one must swerve, or both may die in the crash, but if one driver swerves and the other does not, the one who swerved will be called a "chicken," meaning a coward.

HAWK: very aggressive, always fights for some resource. While the outcome maybe favorable to them, the other consequence may proved fatal.

DOVE: never fights for a resource -- it displays in any conflict and if it is attacked it immediately withdraws before it gets injured.

In game theory, a system is said to be in an equilibrium called a Nash equilibrium if there is no strategy which any of the components can improve their state in the system. In the Game of Hawk-Dove (aka Chicken), the hawk has the best chance of getting the bigger payoff, unless it faces off with another hawk, in which case a duel becomes inevitable. The bigger the payoff, the bigger the risk. Unless you don't mind being called a chicken, playing dove is like playing it safe, with little reward and sometimes none at all.

In the run-up to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the hawkish advisers of the Bush administration were able to convinced then President George Bush to wage war against Iraq, in particular the regime of the late Saddam Hussein. They have successfully argued that Iraq was a threat to America and to the peace of the world, through its alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties to terrorist network. Everybody knew now that there were no WMD found in Iraq.

This type of behavior is typical of a hawk, very aggressive, always fights for some resource (oil in Iraq) and in retaining its world's only superpower status.

Time and time again, the game of Hawks-Doves in the political spectrum is being played repeatedly all over the world. The struggle for supremacy to shape the country's foreign policy lingers on, while the number of casualties of war continues unabated.

Looking back at the classic (non-quantum) evolutionary game as applied to the financial crisis which started in 2008, we will call the Doves in the game those bank investors who acquire rather low risk products that return moderate payoffs. The Hawks are those bank investors who seek out high risk products that have the potential to return large payoffs–but, these also could result in huge losses.

Although the risk of destabilization in the investment market was obviously increasing for the last few years prior to the crisis, the behavior of some aggressive investment bankers did not change. However, instead of ending in a stable state, finally the market crashed and almost all aggressive agents disappeared from the population. This could have been prevented, if any aggressive behavior were inhibited completely.

As for the political hawks, they should be the first ones to be sent to the front line of any war they have advocated. This will give them the first hand experience of what it felt to be in a war zone. It will also give them the lesson they duly deserve about the agonies of war, if ever they would be lucky enough to survive and tell their own stories.

The evolutionary game theoretic predictions of this particular version of the Hawk-Dove game are that the ratio of aggressive vs. non-aggressive behaviors would not reach equilibrium. That is, it predicts a crash!

In choosing the best strategy, it would be wise to read the situation very carefully, weigh the benefits of winning and the cost of losing, and decide accordingly based on what you really want to achieve. If the end result is worth your own life, by all means, play the hawk. If other people's lives and livelihood are on the line, for God's sake, play the dove.

In my opening paragraph, I choose the words “survival of the fittest” to describe the kind of attitude that is most prevalent in this day and age. People becoming more materialistic to the point of being greedy. The last financial crisis and the fight for oil in Iraq are both a case in point.

Based on the many articles I have read, I have stumbled upon many ideas on how the Hawk-Dove game can assist theorist in analyzing the best possible scenario that will emerge if a standoff between two protagonists occur, or that a market crash is forthcoming, and so on and so forth. But I have yet to read an article on how to resolve a long standing conflict between feuding nations. We are all witness to the never-ending cycle of violence in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has been going on for as long as I can remember. In fact, this is being used as an excuse by some extremist terrorists organizations to justify their terror campaigns around the globe.

I have mentioned earlier the innocent and ordinary people falling victims to wars, atrocities and the financial meltdown. And I read somewhere that it only takes the good men to do nothing for evil men to triumph. Only few people had orchestrated these appalling events, while the rest of us just watched idly by.

Free market economy as espoused by the Americans is not bad. This is part and parcel of democracy. People can choose freely what they want and how to use it. The problem occurs when people become too aggressive and felt compelled by the promise of good returns to any investment that was offered to them. In a dark and narrow alley, where certain danger lurks ahead, the hawks are most willing to face the danger, while the doves will shy away and find another route to reach their destination. It will take them longer, but they will surely get there and live another day to mingle with their own species.

Why can't the human race follow the example of a dove?

In the second paragraph, I have told the story of how frustrated John Nash was because his beautiful mind failed him. And in my second story, I have shown the limits of human brain when pitted against a computer. From these two examples, I can fairly assume that the best human intelligence is possibly only comparable to a pentium-based computer, with probably, a 1 gigabyte of RAM (Random Access Memory). But even with these limitations, man will stop at nothing to find the answers to what they sought to discover.

Any studies about human behavior can only be considered complete if it can manage to grasp the complexity of the human brain. Even the Omnipotent Divinity does not assert its power over it.

Crowdsourcing

In 1915, a man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, or better known worldwide as Mahatma Gandhi, organized protests by peasants, farmers, and urban labourers concerning excessive land-tax and discrimination. Gandhi led nationwide campaigns to ease poverty, expand women's rights, build religious and ethnic amity, end untouchability, and increase economic self-reliance. Above all, he aimed to achieve the independence of India from foreign domination. He was the pioneer of resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon total non-violence---which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.

Since then, many other countries had followed the example of Gandhi, and utilized the power of the people to resist tyranny and overthrow their rulers, whether they are foreign colonizers or their own corrupt government.

In recent times, the term “people power” is no longer confined to politics. It has generated interest in the business community as well. Companies that offer new products invite crowds of people to test the product before it finds its way through the market place. They then get the crowds’ reactions and feedback that eventually help to improve the quality of their new creation. It is a sleek new idea that makes inroads to product reviews across the business horizon, including movie reviews in the film industries There is no better way to get a proper judgment for a certain product other than from the very people that are going to buy and use them.

The technology sectors are not immune from this either. With so much money going into R&D projects, the IT people are always on the lookout for any potential money-spinner. Business model innovation is happening at a lightning speed. Some of these have already found their way in the service sector, software development, and in the web community. First there was outsourcing, then open-sourcing, and then crowdsourcing.

Companies have been outsourcing to India and China for years. Then, they took it to another level by using social networks such as MySpace, Second Life, Friendster, Facebook and Twitter, just to name a few, and a multitude of virtual communities to solve their most intricate business problems. Crowdsourcing is a new and nascent business tool for innovation. It had its genesis in the open source movement in software.

As defined by Wikipedia, crowdsourcing is neologism for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to a group (crowd of people) or community in the form of an open call. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design and distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm, or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data.

It is interesting to note how often and how much assistance people are willing to provide to an idea that really excites them.

The term has become popular with business authors and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals.

Crowdsourcing can also be looked at as an application of the wisdom of crowds concept, in which the knowledge and talents of a group of people is leveraged to create content and solve problems. Used properly, it can generate new ideas, shorten research and development time, cut development costs, and create a direct, emotional connection with customers. Used improperly, it can produce silly or wasteful results. Crowds can be wise, but they can also be stupid.

A recent article in the Irish Times mentioned two examples of how crowdsourcing works. The first example is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a web application that lets you allot work to anyone on the net that wants to do it for the money you have promised to pay. It is a service that lets you outsource work to workers around the world. It’s the faster way, cheaper alternative to staff a wide range of projects. You could ask workers to tag images in a product catalogue to improve search results on your retail site or ask workers to determine if content is consistent with your site guidelines. You can even ask workers to jump start your website content by writing a book, movie or product review. And you pay only when you’re satisfied with the results. Mechanical Turk is the new way to outsource information work by utilizing the power of crowdsourcing.

The other one is the recently launched project called TransparencyCorps. It is the brainchild of Sunlight Foundation, a group that focuses on increasing US government accountability through data transparency. It may be getting closer to an effective model – and the trick may be replacing financial incentives with good causes. Joining TransparencyCorps gives a glimpse into the inner workings of American power, along with something to do about it. Even if the glimpse is fleeting and the action small, the hope is that with a crowd, it will build a powerful accountability tool.

In his final analysis, Quinn Norton of Irish Times has this to say: “While Amazon’s Mechanical Turk also has something of a community, psychology studies would suggest an important difference: the Turk is ruined by money. Studies have consistently shown that tasks people do because they enjoy them lose their charm as soon as people doing the tasks get paid for them. Being paid once can take away the pleasure forever.”

Another interesting article about crowdsourcing appeared in Irish Independent. Jeff Howe gives his take on the subject, the highlights of which I have quoted below:

“Crowdsourcing uses technology to foster unprecedented levels of collaboration and meaningful exchanges between people from every imaginable background, in every imaginable geographical location. It is a flattering portrait of the human race. We are more intelligent, more creative and more talented than we tend to give ourselves credit for. I've seen cases in which electricians solve complex industrial chemistry problems, and forklift operators show a knack for investing in the stock market. We see something similar on You Tube, in which budding comedians and filmmakers have been able to secure first a cult audience, then industry contacts and finally paying gigs and mainstream recognition.”

“The amount of knowledge and talent dispersed among the numerous members of our species has always vastly outstripped our capacity to harness those invaluable quantities. Crowdsourcing is the mechanism by which such talent and knowledge is matched to those in need of it. It poses a tantalising question: what if the solutions to our greatest problems weren't waiting to be conceived, but already existed somewhere, just waiting to be found, in the warp and weave of this vibrant human network?”

It will take some time before the idea of crowdsourcing would reach its full potential. And to be able to do that, we would have to address the following to make it work the way that will benefit everybody.

• Crowdsourcing is a very powerful political tool to expose and weed out corrupt public officials. We should be able to distinguish between the legitimate sites that promote public accountability, to those that are being used as a lynch mob to exact personal/political vendetta by groups with vested interest.
• As more and more people are willing to ride the wave of change, the era of opportunistic business enterprise taking advantage of the people who are willing to play their part in improving product innovations are not far fetch. There should be a reward system wherein people’s ideas are recognized and his contributions to the development of the product are well documented as well.
• Another challenge for anyone entering the co-creation/crowdsourcing arena is how to compensate people fairly for their ideas.
• While crowdsourcing will take the slack out of the system, it could seriously depress wages for anyone pursuing a career in advertising, graphic design, and industrial design.

The opportunities presented by crowdsourcing far outweigh any concern about its effectiveness to insulate itself from unscrupulous business and political practices. As exemplified by Gandhi, the world can be a better place if we can utilize the power of the people to decide what is best for them. Jeff Howe described it aptly, the solutions to our greatest problems are out there just waiting to be discovered. The possibilities are far and wide, the answers within sight. It’s just a matter of time.
 

I personally wish that crowdsourcing would be as successful as cloud computing and outsourcing in the near future. If not in monetary terms, at least in cleansing the world's political system of scalawags.

The best minds don't always have the best ideas. Otherwise, most of the world's problems have already been solved by now. Ordinary people are just that, until they are discovered to have the extraordinary talent.

Vision is all about the ability of seeing the future based upon on-going developments that  are happening around us, and how it would shape-up to be in the future.
 
We need people with visions to make this world a better place. People who are able to see beyond what a normal person can see. These kind of people are not found in any government agencies. They are out there waiting to be tapped. If we can reach out to them, then the work ahead is halfway done.