Disqus - Latest Comments for Mark Bennett

Re: Brake for Geeks

Mark Bennett — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:03:34 -0000

Short answer: both the genius and the user are only marginally culpable.
Long answer: There is a third party involved - management. While it's an oversimplification, much of the problem here can be traced back to management, beginning with whether enough time was invested in usability design to make it so that either 1 - it was almost impossible to accidentally flick that switch, or 2 - it is very clear to someone giving the phone a cursory examination that the switch was indeed, flicked. Given that hadn't happened, the user had some very constructive ideas on how to improve the throughput of user issues, and someone else had posted that staff recruitment, training, etc. were likely suffering. If true, these would also be on management's plate.

Re: Driving Innovation, Get It?

Mark Bennett — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:47:16 -0000

One way to look at Connect is to view *it* as the design document. It conveys the current thinking of the requirements, based on feedback from live and continuous usability studies and anyone can look at it to see what the current state of requirements are. It's just a lot more dynamic (and a lot richer in content) than a word doc. As long as the investment/return ratio is in line, *how* you gather requirements should be open.

Re: Admit it, we’re all free agents!

Mark Bennett — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:32:35 -0000

In "The Knowing-Doing Gap" authors Pfeffer and Sutton make a good argument that the problem with KM was that it assumed that value was found when knowledge was viewed as something primarily explicit or tangible (e.g. facts, techniques and practices) and therefore something that can be captured, measured, transferred, etc. which is what management systems are good at doing. This kind of knowledge tends to be most useful for doing something routine.

However, a lot (and some might say the most important kind) of knowledge is tacit/intangible. That is, knowledge that is hard to describe or codify, but still essential for doing something and doing it well, particularly anything novel. It's the "underlying philosophy that guides what [organizations] do and why they do it." That is by its very nature hard to capture and codify, but humans can be very good at learning it from experience and sharing it.

KM also tended to be run by folks who weren't involved in the generation of the knowledge, so knowledge went in and rarely came back out. More value is gained in knowledge sharing and use, which is about turning knowledge into action (i.e. "doing") and this is best done by the knowledge generators themselves telling what they know and often through stories vs. manuals.

Hmmm. Routine vs. Novel - sounds like ERP vs. BRP. Managed by "keepers" vs. shared by "doers" - sounds like what blogs, wikis, and social networks can help us do.

Re: Why Product Development Should Blog

Mark Bennett — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:14:07 -0000

Indeed! Meg's posts draw a lot of traffic to TalentedApps, so I am glad she's on the staff. I'm trying to follow your advice in the future Jake, and add more of a human touch to my posts. Thanks for the encouragement.

Re: Google Wave: The Killer Enterprise Apps Platform?

Mark Bennett — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:39:10 -0000

Don't forget "Goalie"! ;-)

Great post, Rich. Thanks for getting our thinking going on this.

Mark