Knowledge Broker Stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system

Knowledge brokers are an important component of the knowledge value chain.  If one needs justification for knowledge brokers, consider what the U.S. non-profit sector looked like at the beginning of the decade: 1.6 million Organizations; 10.9 million Workers; $29 billion in funding; and 57,000 funding sources. 

Many of these 1.6 million organizations had the same target populations: policy makers, researchers, families and children.  The obvious question is, how can individuals, practitioners or policy-makers realistically assess, filter and apply information coming from 1 million plus organizations?  How can we go on creating knowledge when studies show that less than one third of research ever makes it to an application/implementation stage?

That is where we come in.

My story is probably like some of yours.  I spend the better part of my week fashioning existing knowledge into consumable formats.  I enjoy innovation and look at brokering as an opportunity for process, market and technical innovation (as opposed to traditional product and service innovation).

To me, the brokering process is founded on various fields of study (marketing, sociology, knowledge management, change management, evaluation) as well as personal values (utilitarianism, equality, service, and advocacy).  I draw on a tool belt of skills that are forever being sharpened or traded out for emerging market requirements.  Right now, I would say the skills and values I draw on most are: passion, listening, humor, objectivity, patience, an outcomes orientation, flexibility and adaptability.

It’s the latter two skills that motivated me to write this post.  Not too many years ago, under the mentorship of some wonderful future-thinkers, I spent quite a bit of time working on the front lines of developing intelligent systems.  In these systems the literature often speaks of various types of “intelligent agents” (e.g., watcher/monitor, learner, shopping/buying, search, helper/personal, change, reflex, goal-based, utility-based, interface, mobile and data/information agents).  Moreover, intelligent systems are fashioned to support decision-making; especially founded on just-in-time (J.I.T.) information.

A pitfall of decision systems is - they are often configured to answer questions/scenarios they think will occur.  The reality is: everything changes.

Consider the evolution of knowledge systems. 

Decision Support Systems (DSS): “Get me the third quarter numbers”;

Executive Information Systems (EIS), “Get me projections of fourth quarter numbers based on this scenario.”;

Intelligent System, “Can we sell Twinkies to China?”. 

DSS and EIS are not adaptive and flexible, and it’s only been through the process of trying to automate Intelligent Systems that we have discovered the limitations of automation.

Years back, to build intelligent systems and better value chains, people began writing about the value of “knowledge workers”.  Now we are beginning to better delineate what “knowledge workers” do (e.g., “brokering”).

Back to me.  I won some accolades here and there this decade for co-creating knowledge communities and collaborative portals.  Most recently, I’ve been developing a knowledge community in an entire new field of study for me that is showing promise.  But, for fidelity-sake, if you asked me how this is done, I could not spell it out completely.  Again, it’s an adaptive process, drawing on an ever-shifting set of skills.  However, there are tactics worth sharing.

Things that fascinate me include writings about goal-oriented design, personas, and a concept that Gerry McGovern coined called “carewords”. 

Simply put, using “carewords” is the process (via content analysis or survey) of determining the language information consumers (readers) like to use and then using that language to communicate back to them.  It sounds like common sense, but once we operationalized this, our readership and information use went up 200-300%!  Also, thanks to the concept of “push/pull/link/exchange” shared by friends in Canada, I spend much more time planning out networking and exchange activity in the knowledge communities I facilitate.  I am a continual trend-spotter, but monitor with ROI in mind. I spend the better part of my days trying to get people to walk in information consumer shoes; talking to persons about extending engagement with information consumers beyond seagull events, while monitoring the decline of traditional dissemination…charting detours around fading knowledge practices.

Right now we can all say, “Remember typewriters”.  One of these days we are going to look back and say, “Remember Twitter”.  I think it’s this potential for continuous innovation, resulting in increased knowledge utilization that drives my passion for brokering.

Jonathan Green

To cite:

MLA format

Green, Jonathan, "Knowledge broker stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 15, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6UYlPy

APA format

Green, J. Knowledge broker stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6UYlPy]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque