There are several reasons that prevent this approach from being viable. Chief among them are:

1. Organizations simply do not work that way. While some seriously desire to improve their productive capacities, virtually none want to "improve their capability to improve".

2. If that is the case, then only by completely reinventing the organizational concept can any headway be achieved. That paradigm shift cannot gradually evolve. It requires an abrupt transition such as only occurs in the wake of a catastrophe.

3. Even if it were a viable approach for an existing organization, it would require a "top down" commitment from management. As I'll argue later on, paradigm shifts simply do not occur that way. Rather, they come from the other direction.

4. To understand why such a project is anathema to management, it must be understood that the risks are huge. First, the cost of failure is high. And, to succeed, it will likely require change to the organizational model. Such change is always risky, and usually resisted by lower echelons who perceive it as "interference". That makes the rewards highly uncertain. And even if the rewards accrue, the payback period is so long, and the results so far removed from the source, that there is a serious danger that the contributions will not even be recognized.

There is another way, however. I suspect it is the *only* way for the desired result to be achieved -- not because that is the way I wish things to be, but because that is how, observation suggests to me, they are.

A Counter Proposal

The bottom line in organizational penetration is that no one is going to care *how* I do what I do until they see spectacular results. Even then, management is likely to be unconcerned about the process -- it is only the results that count. And coworkers, who can be expected to be interested in the process, will only typically be motivated only to the extent that proven success derives from it.

The point then, is that DKR penetration will occur not by showing the process, but by showing results. How can those results be achieved?

Those results will be achieved first by *individuals* in an organization who are connected to a DKR that makes them more productive. The internet will make that scenario possible, because it will allow multiple professionals in a given discipline to share the knowledge they need to succeed.

Imagine for a moment that you are participating in the design of an information system, and you have a DKR at your disposal that combines the expertise of professionals all over the world. Imagine in addition that the authoring environment is so superb that you can construct designs in minutes, cite references to the underlying papers, and be educated in new design patterns, all in real time.

How big a role do think you would play in that project? What is the likelihood that you would be credited with much of its success?

The odds are good that you would be perceived as one of the leading designers. Promotion to project lead status would follow rapidly.

Now, you are in charge of your own project. By now one or two others have inquired as to how you do what you do, and you have shown them. Word is spreading.

More importantly, though, you are now in a position to move your whole team onto the DKR. Where before you used the DKR for general design information, now you begin using it for collaborating on the project at hand.

[Note: Use of the DKR for a company project requires a "firewall" of sorts -- the information on your project must not leak out to competitors until the project has borne fruit. But on the day you are free to publish the design concepts, it should only require pushing a button to do so.]

Let's say your project succeeds wildly. Odds are good that it will. More promotions follow. As you and your team members disperse throughout this and other organizations, success and interest in the technology follows. At this point, widespread penetration of the DKR concept is being achieved, not from the top down, but from the bottom up.

It is worth noting here that we are talking about something beyond an Open HyperDocument System. We are talking about a truly dynamic knowledge repository -- something that records principles and case studies, which provides "education on demand" to its users. In short, we are talking about something which produces "collective IQ" by making available to all what is known to each.

As Jim Spohrer pointed out in his Education Object Economy, it is attribution that motivates individual contributions to the DKR. Attribution is the "coin of the realm" here, as it is in academic societies. With a DKR that preserves attributions, therefore, one can expect the volume of contributions to be high.

Interestingly, even businesses have information they like to share. Although there is also information they don't can't afford to share. For example, they may need to safeguard the knowledge of the blind alleys they investigated, because the cost of discovering that information may have a been a significant cost of development. Sharing that information gives their competitors big advantages that they themselves did not have.

Even so, there is much information that an organization feels compelled to share. To win customers, they frequently want to publish "how it works" design articles. They also tend to be proud of their practices. Often, they will willing publish information about the technologies or methodologies they used, even if they are loathe to share the details of what they discovered using those processes.

But even if we discount *all* the late-breaking information discovered by business, there is the matter of the huge volume of information published in books, magazines, journals, papers, and Web articles. If the DKR *only* improved the ability to organize, evaluate, access, and understand that information, it would *still* promote the kind of success that will lead to its eventual supremacy in a "survival of the fittest" business climate.

The foregoing has been a picture of what, I suggest, is likely to happen. As Rob Swigart so aptly pointed out in his wonderful presentation on "Future Scenarios" at the beginning of session 8, the scenario above results from "assessing the implications". In this case, we're looking at the implication of DKR availability, and the implications of the technology, given the world as we know it to operate.

The section that follows deals with the subject in a more abstract way, making the case for why that is the way it has to happen.

Why It's Going to Work that Way

It has been accepted that new ideas don't win out over old ones, but rather they ascend to prominence as the old guard dies off. That was true once, at least in the halls of academia.

But now there is another way. Today, perpetuators of old ideas are frequently blindsided by crowds of young anarchists who muscle them aside and shove them into obsolescence.

The difference is the Internet.

It is the Internet that has given me my voice. It has enabled me to reach out to a large number of people, with many ideas on a variety of topics. In this medium, no asks "What are your credentials?" There are no reviewers to please, no peers to appease. The only questions anyone asks are "How good are the ideas?", "Do they make sense?", "Can they work?".

The Internet represents a powerful, far reaching change in our evolutionary environment.

Guilds were slow to evolve. Changes in technology only occurred when those in charge approved, which often required the literal dying off of the old guard. Academia, in many ways, functions as a "guild" system. For all the invaluable, incalculable benefit it has brought to humanity, it can still be remarkably slow to embrace new truths. The cause is the same: The months and years it takes to put together a concept presentation that is sure to satisfy every reviewer, the need to appease those who head the guild, and the natural resistance to new ideas that results from having neither time nor energy to fully understand and embrace them.

Granted, that system has performed the laudable goal of preventing trickery from masquerading as science. Snake oil salesmen have by and large been kept out of the club. And obviously inaccurate thinking has been kept at bay -- not always, but much of the time. That has all been to the good.

But in a time of radically accelerating change, that system really has no hope of keeping up. Fortunately, the Internet is providing a "marketplace" of ideas and educational opportunities that may well provide the solution.

Just as the emergence of free markets spelled the end of technology guilds -- not all at once, but in time, the emergence of the idea-exchange Internet may signal the end of the academic guild system.

In a free market, those who produce more, better, faster, or cheaper became the winners. Newer technologies proved their worth, and older technologies were obsoleted. The process began a century or two ago, and has been accelerating every day up to the crazy pace we see today.

Meanwhile, individual organizations have been largely "guild systems" in nature. That was especially true early in the 20th century, when lifetime employment was the rule.

However, "lifetime employment" was put to an end by the simultaneous growth of a communications medium which presented job offers and a transportation medium that made it possible to take advantage of them. The result has been more free-flowing changing of old ideas for new ones in companies, as "new blood" was piped in.

Still, even though the pace of change has improved, organizations still function very much as individual "guilds". Norman McEachron pointed out the organizational mantra, spoken or unspoken, that is repeated in every organization across the globe: "We do it that way because we have always done it that way."

The Internet is starting to change that, and we can be instrumental in accelerating that process.

In point of fact, EVERY PARADIGM SHIFT IS A GUERILLA WAR. That's a tautology, in fact. It's true by definition. The words "paradigm shift" imply a widely-held model of things are or should be, that is being held in place by large, collective forces. How does one overthrow such a monster? Well, it doesn't happen "from the top down".

Most organizations that try to change their corporate culture fail miserably. It is not an impossible task, but it is a daunting one that takes enormous perseverance, creativity, and time to carry out. And that process only starts when the people "at the top" are persuaded it's a good idea. In other words, when they have seen it in operation elsewhere, know that it is good, and are motivated to put it into practice themselves.

In other words, the "top down" approach, even when it succeeds, is only good for copying successful paradigms -- not for introducing new ones.

As a result, the introduction of a new paradigm is, of necessity, a guerilla operation. It starts small, winning little victories. It gathers supporters, achieves supporters, and proves it worth. Eventually it obsoletes the old, _having successfully out-competed all other candidates for the honor_.

The Internet provides a massive opportunity to accelerate that process. If you, as a member of a professional NIC, can be remarkably successful at your job, then you will receive the promotions that put you in charge of projects. If you then introduce that technology to your team, and your team proves to be remarkably successful, then further promotions follow.

As you and your team members disperse throughout the organization, and migrate to other organizations, the knowledge of "how to do things effectively" moves with you. When you take that knowledge to startups, or move into high-level positions in an established organization, the technology moves to an organization-wide standing. When those organizations are remarkably successful, the "paradigm copying" begins to take place, completing the paradigm shift.

That is how paradigm shifts happen. That is how this shift will occur. But this shift is a change in the "meta-paradigm" -- the model for how paradigms are transmitted and perpetuated. By using the Internet wisely, we will accelerate the process forever -- or at least until the lights run out. :_)

[Note: One counter argument might be the telephone. Initially a very expensive tool, it was used only be executives. It "worked its way down" through the organization by virtue of a) The status value of having one, b) lowered costs, and c) the real gain in productivity it provided. This "status symbol" approach might be a model for top-down penetration of a new technology into an organization. However, in the case of the telephone it seems reasonable to argue that it did not represent a paradigm shift so much as a faster way to do existing work. Where a paradigm shift like the computer is concerned, penetration into executive ranks has been remarkably slow, presumably due to the amount of training required.]

[Note: I think it's worth focusing on business, because that is where guerilla operations can happen. Government and education are, by and large, guild systems. That means paradigm changes happen from the top down, and only when they are "proven" by experience.]

Sincerely,

Eric Armstrong
eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com
Mountain View CA