The ultimate idea-sharing system
I came across a post on the ThoughFarmer blog where Chris McGrath shares Bob Buckmans, chairman of Buckman Laboratories, seven ideas for "the ultimate idea-sharing system" (from the book "If Only We Knew What We Know"):
- One transfer step in the transmission of ideas between individuals, to avoid distortion.
- All employees have access
- All employees can contribute content
- Available anywhere, 24/7
- Search function that indexes every word
- Users contribute in their native language. Translation provided where appropriate.
- Content updates automatically
Now just add some spices such as ease of use, visibility of people and their contributions, support for free-form and rich conversations and content, hyperlinking, presence information, social networking, social filters, tagging and folksonomies, ratings and reviews, feeds and subscriptions...
It is worthnoty that the seven ideas above were written in the 80s, before the web existed.
The basic requirements on information technology solutions to get ideas and knowledge flowing are not new. What is new is that we now have a platform where all these requirements can be fairly easy implemented (the web) and that we are beginning to understand what spices to add to an IT solution to make people adopt and use it.