Steven L. Johnson

Knowledge Management is just like your brain, but for a company. You learn new things every day, and you store them in your brain so you can remember them later. Companies need to remember stuff too, they just call it a fancy name but its just like your brain.

When you’re building something with Legos, how do you know what to build? The picture on the box shows you the instructions, and your parents probably help you because they’ve built with Legos before. Knowledge management is the set of written instructions/the picture on the box and all the people that know stuff that tells a whole company what to do.

Knowledge Management is like looking at a map. On a map you can see where place are located, their size and sometimes what they look like. Instead of places on a map, companies are putting all of the information onto a map so that everyone who needs to can find it easily and use the information.

Well, let’s say you and your cousins are all together for Thanksgiving at your Grandmother’s house and after dinner you and your brother ask to be excused to watch a movie. I tell you ok, but a minute later you’re back at the table asking me for help finding something to watch, and also asking how you use the “vcr.” I don’t know where the videos are kept, but I tell you to go ask Grandma where a video might be found, and to ask your older cousin Vienna to help you use the vcr. You need to know two things; how to use the VCR and where to find a tape for it. Me knowing who can help you with those two things, is knowledge management.

You know, those homemade cookies you love are not made of magic. Knowledge management is part of why you can enjoy those cookies. First, I need to know where to find the best recipe and not only what each ingredient is but where to find it. Then, I need to know how to use the tools involved like the mixer and the oven. I know the good & the bad: you can sample the tasty dough but don’t touch the oven without mitts — you’ll get burned! I know where to store them safely (away from your Dad!) and how to find you (so you can enjoy them too!) If I didn’t know what to do or how to find what I needed, we wouldn’t have these cookies. Knowledge management helps companies know how to ‘make their cookies’ and ‘enjoy them too.’

Knowledge management is like doing an arts and craft project in pre school. First you need to know what the teacher wants you to make. Once you know that you have to figure out where to get your crayons, your glue, your scissors, and your paper. Now your teacher may tell you that you need to share the supplies with others. This means you will need to see who has the supplies and where and when you can use the supplies. Making sure you get all the supplies you from whom you need it from and completing your craft project on time is knowledge management.

Knowledge management can be related to writing a sentence for a five year old. You first need to learn small details such as letters of the alphabet. You then need to connect these smaller details together to form words with these letters. Then, you need to put these bigger chunks of information together to form a solid structure, or words to form a sentence. Finally, you can share this information with others so that it can be useful to them as well, or read your sentence out loud to the class.

Have you ever wondered how Santa knows if you belong on his naughty or nice list? Well, Santa talks to your parents, teachers, and has his helpers watch you with some of your friends and classmates to get as much information about you for the entire year. Sometimes, he even gets feedback from animals you encounter to make sure you’re not being mean to them. I don’t know how he can understand animals, but he’s pretty awesome, right? Well, he takes all of this information, and starts keeping record of it for each child in the world. And also for some adults, I’m convinced of that. Now, he’s not able to remember all of this information for an entire year, so he has to write it down somewhere. I heard he has fantastic computers, but I’ve never seen them. So when he gets to writing his list, he looks at all of this information, and if needed, gets even more information, right up to the night before Christmas. Through this thing called “knowledge management”, Santa then knows who’s been naughty or nice. He makes his list, checks it twice, and well, you know the rest.

Simple:
– Me, “Hey, 5 year old, what do you know about the World?”
– 5 year old, “Everything!”
– Me, “Ok, that’s great, lets consider that knowledge.. Now go home and tell your Mommy you know everything in the World, that’s called knowledge management.”
– 5 year old, “Knowledge management? Wow.. What?.”
– Me, “That’s right, knowledge is what you know, and what you do with it is management.”
– 5 year old, “I now know what knowledge management is! YES!… Mommy guess what…….”

Hey Kids, today we shall play a little game called Knowledge management. I will place each of you in a group and each group will create a drawing and when you done you shall share you drawings with the other group and tell them what you did and ask them to tell you what they did as well and at the end of the game I shall ask all of you the names of all the drawing. If you remember the names of all the drawing you get a prize. This is called knowledge management. which means sharing your drawing with your friends and asking them to share their drawings with you and telling me what you all know about each drawings.

Knowledge management is a difficult concept to explain, because it can mean so many different things to different people and organizations. At its heart knowledge management is concerned with enabling individuals, teams and entire organizations to collectively and systematically create, share and apply knowledge in an effort to better achieve shared objectives. Explaining something like this to a 5 year old? Talk about cookies.

“You know how when you visit we make chocolate chip cookies for you to take home? Well what if we could find a way to share our recipe with your mom and save it in a place she’ll always be able to find it – so next time you want a cookie you guys can make these! This works the other way around too, if your mom shared her recipe for chocolate cake and I knew where to find it – I could go look up the recipe instead of trying to find a new one or making one up myself. Then we could have the chocolate cake you love at my house, whenever!”

Knowledge management is the practice of organizing, storing, and sharing vital information, so that everyone can benefit from its use. This can be achieved using a technology based system such as SharePoint. Where everyone can add and edit information that are relevant to the job. The information should be organized, accessible and updated frequently.

Knowledge Management is like sharing your best kept secrets with everyone and learning together. When you touch hot iron and then tell your friends not to do it you sharing important knowledge. When your friends teach you how to play new game- you gaining knowledge. Maybe you developed new strategy in playing video game- maybe you know where points are stored for Mario or best way to beat Candy Crush- if you tell someone, you are sharing knowledge. These are just small learning examples, in order to manage “new knowledge” someone must record it and post it for everyone else to see- this is what knowledge management is. This is why you can find rules for all games online or look up strategy to beat your friends in video games. We all better off when we learn together from each other.

I think knowledge management is something which is not on the balance sheet or the income statement of the company, that is what boosts the company’s market value. This is the ability of the management to use the expertise of the available resources to achieve the business goals. This the knowledge of who, what, when and how.

When I was five I found it very difficult to tie my own shoes. My kindergarten teacher showed me her method (loop, swoop and pull). Not much luck. So then she brought me over to some of the more ‘advanced’ students and I watched and listened to them. Many mainly similar techniques. At last, someone using bunny ears! I had it; went home and showed my parents. I’m pretty sure Mrs. Heater knew the bunny ears technique but she instead opted for a little bit of knowledge management. To explain it to a five year old, I’d take any situation we were trying to solve and open it up for discussion with others. It’s amazing what you can learn when you bring together the shared experiences of others.

I was watching a documentary on Netflix about MakerBot last week (http://technical.ly/brooklyn/2014/10/03/netflix-goes-inside-makerbot-original-doc-print-legend/), and it seemed like, at the beginning, that was the case. That this was all about people crowdsourcing designs and really trying to make something custom on their own that could not be translated to mass-scale production.

However, because of how much it costs to start one of these businesses, it seems like all of them have been bought by much larger corporations and folded back into industrial production. MakerBot was purchased by Stratasys, who focus on selling to industrial consumers. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeshsharma/2013/09/24/stratasys-bold-moves-a-conversation-with-company-chairman-scott-crump/) 3D Systems, their largest competitor, focuses on selling to industrial users, including aerospace, healthcare, and automotive companies, and they are continually purchasing new companies to get bigger.

I think there is a small market for custom printing, but it doesn’t look like, at the rate the industry is going, that it’s going to scale. All the money is in B2B.

It depends on what the product is. For some smaller niche items it may catch on but I don’t think it will for the bulk of mass manufacturing products. The key reason for that is that the barriers to entry are too high for most traditionally manufactured goods. These include expensive high-tech machinery, large amounts of capital, IP (and potential for infringement), etc. The open source 3D printing model is certainly interesting though – for example has anyone seen what the guys at Defense Distributed have been doing?

In my opinion, we will see impact to both, centralized Industrial Corporation and small entrepreneurial companies. While 3D is new and costly, it makes sense for small companies to take advantage of customization and explore new horizons. We most likely see adaptation of 3D in many areas of our lives. Eventually big manufacturers will catch up to a trend and will find a way to make 3D cheaper and profitable on big scale. Most likely we will see smaller companies working on niche products and bigger companies taking advantage of standard, but more customized products. Consumers will be winners from the new technology because of cost of manufacturing can go down with technology and savings from transportation cost.

I think that we will see a shift in corporate structure landscapes and see growth in the open-source model, but that both types of organizations will continue to exist. With crowdsourcing and new technology, the open-sourced business model with small scale 3D printer production will offer entrepreneurial opportunities with minimal risk. This type of model would be appealing to those who are just starting out and not committed to a large capital investment. Large corporations will likely continue to operate as-is for many more years, but may find benefits to 3D printing or an open innovation crowdsourcing type projects.

Based on our discussion in class last week, growth in the decentralized, open source model may be what the US needs in order to stay competitive. With China able to make customized products quickly and efficiently, technology like 3D printing could help us compete with these Chinese companies. There will always be a place for centralized corporate industrial structure, particularly in industries with a process that relies on expensive machinery.

It depends what type of manufacturing is being done. For major manufacturing lines that produce car parts, canned food and the like then no. These products are just too numerous to use open source methodology. A smaller company would not be able to keep up with the demand and the cost per item to produce would be much higher than in larger corporations that can produce on a much grander scale. Additionally these larger companies can promise a much better guarantee in product reliability to the customer because they have much more to invest in the infrastructure. More niche products however, will absolutely start moving toward this open source way. With 3D printers and all the information on the web people are working together all over the world to test the limits of technology. With that, smaller companies keep popping up that produce these specialty products.

I believe, in most cases, crowd-sourcing for start-up capital and using new manufacturing technologies and offshore manufacturing is a good model in the early stages of a business. Eventually, as the business grows, the company will likely need to change its model to a more centralized traditional finance & manufacturing structure. Crowd-sourcing works for start-up capital, but I would argue that it is not a sustainable strategy to continue to fund your operations as the business grows. Additionally, the model that is chosen will largely depend on the type of manufacturing being done.

It has been interesting to read everyone’s responses so far, and generally, I agree with what you all have said. I too think that the crowd-sourcing model is something that right now is probably best suited to accommodate smaller specialty products, and that for the foreseeable future the historically centralized corporate industrial structure is still going to remain prevalent. 3D printing technology is what I think makes this an interesting question, not necessarily for the present but rather the distant future. It is my understanding that the cost of equipment and materials is far too high at present to make a crowd-sourced, 3D printing modeled business that can rival large corporations. While it is likely that some materials will always remain expensive, what is really interesting to me is the likelihood that the technology/equipment will become cheaper as time goes on. Will the cost of the technology ever reach the point where we are able to “waste” it, as Carver Mead observed with transistors? I’m not sure, but if so, I would expect the manufacturing landscape to be altered dramatically.

Open source decentralized model is widely spreading across different fields but I believe that the centralized model will continue to exist. Given that most businesses are designed for proprietary software, procurement policies are often biased against open source. Most companies only do business with well-established companies that have good financial records and have been in existence for over three years. However, the benefits of open source such as ecosystem expansion, low cost and product quality improvement have made the decentralized model more attractive to businesses. Online sites like Wikipedia and Facebook allow massive crowds across the world to voluntarily contribute their creative web contents.

I think decentralized open source manufacturing will play a larger role in years to come, especially as pricing of 3D printers and other technology decreases. As technology gets cheaper, open source will gain popularity and present new opportunities. However, as others have said, it won’t be a complete shift from centralized corporate structure. Agents and publishers still have a place and a market to serve, as will large corporations and centralized manufacturing.

With 3D printing, will we reach the “waste it” point anytime soon? I have my doubts that we’ll see it approach anything close to transistor speed, but that would be interesting to see. When I think of 3D printing, I think beyond material items and get a little futuristic. I wonder what would happen if a non-profit on a small scale could find a way to “print” food for the hungry, or something of that nature, especially if we reach that “waste” point. Sure, cans of shelf-stable consumables are cheap-ish, but imagine the implications of printing food at a fraction of the cost of making the trip to buy something, stock it, then prep and serve it out. Sure, it’ll likely be disgusting, but to me, that’s the long-term potential of 3D printing and open source manufacturing. I would like to see 3D printing reach the point of The Jetson, but I doubt any of us will live to experience that magic. Medications are another avenue I can see being approached, but regulation and patents may scale back certain leaps in technology. Imagination aside, I think the distant future holds incredible open source possibilities and industry shifts as a result of technology like 3D printing. It’ll carve out an increasing section within the current model, but it won’t replace it altogether.

3D printing has come to revolutionize the manufacturing industry just the same way the Internet changed the Technology Industry howbeit a slow but steady process. With lower cost of most technology products individuals will soon be able to afford 3D printing which has the potential to decentralize and democratize manufacturing, especially as technologies improve . This could become the new normal. That would take away manufacturing from an industrial structure and place it in the hands of entrepreneurial and thereby reducing the barriers to entry to industrial design, manufacturing, creating a new crowdsourcing model for manufacturing leading to better consumer products .

Innovation will likely come from more decentralized modes of production, but centralized production which drives cost down will continue to be prevalent. American values are at crossroads where there is emphasis on innovation, hard work and accomplishments (The American Dream) but American consumers still want (and need) a bargain. Secondarily, sustainability of companies using decentralized methods of production is questionable. Being able to scale and make a significant profit with some of these models can be very challenging.

There are already so many good comments, but just a few observations: 1.) We are at the very beginning of these technologies, and the eventual capabilities and applications may surprise us. 3D printing and related technologies will get better and better. Just guessing, but many people living in the 1950’s would have predicted flying cars being common by now, but not iPhones. 2.) Corporations will find uses for this as well. True JIT inventory would be hugely attractive to many companies. (lead time on a high-end bicycle is still 180 days for instance). Specialization of information (such as great, tested, designs) may continue to grant a certain amount of power consumers are willing to pay a premium for. We all own some form of computer, but how many of us owns a Bloomberg terminal? 3D printing is cool, but it’s the first step. Next up, nano-tech!

I like the comparison of 3D printing for manufacturing to the advent of the internet — This is, as many have said, just the first step and we don’t know where it will lead. That being said, I do think that both the industry and consumer matter in describing the future of 3D printing. It’s a phenomenal tool for small-batch, custom designs but for true ‘mass production,’ the large companies still have the upper hand in scalability and driving down internal costs. I’m reminded of how we discussed that some sources are infinitely more successful in providing & organizing information online, though nearly anyone, anywhere could post information online. There is a kernel of truth in Google’s home page: Google search vs “I’m Feeling Lucky”. Same thing with 3D printing, while the technology is available to far more people, thus opening up the market, the power (and greatest profits) still lie within the traditional corporation. However, the sleepy manufacturing industry cannot afford to lose much (if any) market share to smaller, nimbler new organizations. It will be interesting to see how 3D printing impacts the domestic manufacturing industry and if it renews the US’s capabilities in the tough global market.

I do believe that manufacturing with shift from a centralized structure but not as rapidly as people may expect. Crowdsourcing and new technologies are becoming increasing more popular but I still think this needs time to develop in order to resonate with a variety of different high level executives who are ultimately making the final decision. Crowdsourcing is a phenomenon that I believe is more beneficial to smaller companies and in this sense may take a little longer to catch on with some of the larger, more established companies.

What I believe to make the most sense is that manufacturing will shift from the prototypical centralized corporate industrial structure to a decentralized open source model, and then back into the centralized corporate industrial structure. As I believe the process circulates to and from both business practices periodically pending on which market place has the best success. Once practices are perfected in the decentralized model, corporate industrial organizations will either acquire, merge, buy-out, partner, or sponsor the independents who facilitate the open market. Thus turning the system back into a centralized corporate industrial structure.

There will always be a need for mass-produced items, especially commodity products; however, with new technologies that allow individuals to produce their own boutique/artisan/craft, etc., type products and sell to large markets on websites such as Etsy or Amazon. Therefore, I think that manufacturing will not necessarily shift away from a centralized corporate industrial structure but instead make the pie larger to include a decentralized open source model.

I think the market regulates this it’s a matter of supply and demand. Most of the common products which have a higher demand are produced through the centralized corporate industrial structure. There is a niche for Open Source products as well and I think it is much smaller from the common products. The open source products can target higher margins as well because of their uniqueness.