A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.3

KNOWLEDGE FLOWS: Interactions that (1.) create knowledge or transfer it across individuals; (2.) occur in social, fluid environments that allow firms and individuals to get better faster by working with others

So, if I read a white paper and its author's "brainstuffs" are thus mingled with mine -- am I participating in a flow of new knowledge? Does the fact that I can get back to him or her via e-mail make that a social and fluid environment?

I'm not in love with JSB & Co.'s definition because it doesn't really help me understand why knowledge flows are becoming so all-important. ( Organizations must "accelerate a shift to a very different mindset and to practices that treat knowledge flows as the central opportunity.") And, don't most of us already participate in knowledge flows? Isn't that what people do? I'm sure everyone at UCP-National, for example, is learning on the job...

What's the big deal?

Before I try and answer, I want to take a stab at identifying how and where UCP may presently be participating in flows of new knowledge.

First, two particular "social, fluid environments" o' theirs beg my attention: 

• In its role as a news provider, PE&O is right where the action is -- processing information; moving it from the newsmakers to the rest of us -- on a daily basis. (Think SmartBrief.)

• Online communities like the one found at www.mychildwithoutlimits.org are HELPING MEMBERS HELP OTHER MEMBERS by enabling knowledge transfers that support, inspire, etc.

Surely UCP is participating in knowledge flows in these cases, no?

Well, on closer inspection...

No. I'd say that knowledge is flowing but that UCP isn't really participating -- at least in the sense of trying to better itself in the process. It's acting in both cases as a middleman, facilitating the transfer of knowledge. The actual contents (of the news and online-community-exchanges) may just as well be widgets. 

Where else could we look for evidence of UCP's participation in knowledge flows? Maybe this is a cop-out, but, the fact of the matter is that it's hard to get a glimpse of them from the outside. Knowledge flows are by definition dynamic and fluid. They're happening at the edge; they've yet to be made explicit. That said --

How about Twitter, Facebook, or the like as places to look?

COME TO THINK OF IT THERE WAS A LIFE LABS BLOG POST having to do with its practice of browsing for events to attend outside of the assistive technology arena. (in search of "different perspectives on solutions for people with disabilities") This may have been a clue that Life Labs is routinely participating in knowledge flows. 

And for actual evidence that it is?

Life Labs recently announced that it's formed a partnership with the AbleGamers Foundation to co-create mobile accessible gaming stations. (link to announcement) This may someday prove to be an example of how it pays to participate in knowledge flows. From its site: "Life Labs already has a major UCP affiliate interested in several of these mobile gaming stations and is excited to be able to offer the station to the general public once a prototype is completed."

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There's still lots of fuzziness surrounding these notions of stocks and flows. I think it might be helpful, next, to reopen JSB's PLAYBOOK for PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT IN A POST BIG-SHIFT WORLD  (a.k.a. THE POWER OF PULL) and see exactly how they figure in.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.2.B

Some valuable things UCP as a whole seems to know. Notice the references from www.ucp.org to longevity and history.

Advocacy and Public Policy

UCP has a rich history of building and participating in coalitions and collaborating with other organizations in pursuit of national public policy goals.

At the national level, UCP has expertise in, among other things, monitoring and keeping abreast of what’s going on at all levels of government (laws and policies), crafting  legislative agendas for the Federal Government, and producing The Case for Inclusion (an annual ranking of how well state Medicaid programs serve Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities).

Affiliate Network

UCP's strength as a national network grows out of a long history of service to Affiliates as an advisor, supporter, and partner. 

UCP has an impressive track record of helping its affiliates succeed. "UCP Affiliates receive products, solutions, and opportunities to network and share information and expertise with other service providers and advocates." Since 2009 in particular, affiliate growth and development has become even more of a priority. UCP’s new MISSION DRIVEN CONSULTING piece offers: business model, strategic planning, executive recruiting, development department redesign, change management, and other services. (Said services take advantage of knowledge stocks that exist within the affiliate network, and amongst UCP staff and volunteer board /committee members.) MISSION DRIVEN FINANCE works with affiliates to solve financing challenges. Activities include lending money and providing financing for a variety of purposes, including construction and facilities acquisition.

Of course the affiliates themselves -- 100 strong -- rely upon their own knowledge stocks to provide: housing, physical therapy, assistive technology training, early intervention services, individual and family support, social and recreational programs, community living, state and local referrals, employment, employment assistance and advocacy...

Public Education and Outreach (PE&O)

UCP’s knowledge of disability issues has been accruing for more than sixty years. 

UCP's Public Education & Outreach (PEO) efforts include two primary components: Public Education Resources and Public Education Campaigns. Here are a few PE&O offerings within those groupings that rely on “knowledge stocks”:

One-Stop Resources Guide. I’m sure lots of know-how and know-what have gone into the ways in which the resources (Education, Employment, etc.) are structured; the way content is acquired /edited /filtered /etc.; the relationship-building that those activities entail...

UCP as news provider, news aggregator. UCP is set up to produce a set of electronic publications -- from scratch -- that people like me rely upon for steady flows of different types of information about: assistive technology, health care, and more. Publication titles include: Limitless, UCP SmartBrief, and Full Spectrum.

Online communities. UCP has the wherewithal to be able to offer the online resources and communities, e.g., My Child Without Limits, we began to scrutinize in section eight.

Other

UCP National no doubt depends on many other knowledge stocks to sustain itself, stocks pertaining to: how to manage a health (vs. say, some other type of) non-profit; how to successfully organize and integrate its key departments; how to capture corporate sponsorships; how to host events; how to raise funds from donors... 

*  *  *  *  *

LET'S SHIFT GEARS and move from this (crude) attempt to account for UCP's knowledge stocks to a similar search for knowledge flows.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.2.A

Looking for disability-related services and organizations near you? No need to fret or look any further. UCP has compiled a “comprehensive, one-stop shop of resources for every U.S. state and territory.” IT'S DONE ALL THE FILTERING FOR YOU. No need to worry about quality or quantity, either. UCP’s “knowledge of disability issues has been accruing for more than sixty years.” It's a source you can trust.

Accruing means adding. Accumulating. Stockpiling. Stockpiling knowledge in this case. Which leads us to KNOWLEDGE STOCKS.

John Seely Brown defines 'em as “what we know at any particular time.” Knowledge stocks are embedded in – maybe I should say they reveal themselves in the forms of – things like product or service offerings, proprietary technologies, and unique insights into how to organize production or marketing activities.*

The State Resource Guides I alluded to above are products of UCP’s Public Education and Outreach (PE&O) wing. As such, I think it’s fair to deduce that PE&O is organized – at least in  part – to “protect and capitalize on existing stocks of knowledge.” My questions, then: 

In what other ways is UCP organized to do this? (i.e., protect and capitalize...) What else does UCP know now that it's banking on being able to use to generate value going forward? 

I’m going to throw some things out in the next post that I think could reasonably be called UCP knowledge stocks. An exercise in classification it'll be.

To what end? 

Making what UCP knows more explicit may help to signal where to look for new opportunities, where to look to innovate, where new approaches may be in order...

A ways down the road.


*I think of Michael Porter’s value chain definition: a chain of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver something valuable (product or service)

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.1

UCP has developed a comprehensive, one-stop shop of resources for every U.S. state and territory. Never scour the Web again for bits and pieces of disability information and resources from disparate sources!

That second sentence jumps out at me – it prompts me – every time I see it. Invariably it causes me to think of knowledge stocks and knowledge flows, and the central roles the two play in the meditations of John Seely Brown, et. al. 

One of that bunch's biggest ideas goes like this: 

It used to be that organizations could win by: (1) knowing valuable stuff, and (2) extracting value from -- while simultaneously restricting access to -- what they knew. Nowadays, however, that approach isn’t cutting it. Why not? Mostly because “in a world changing at an increasingly rapid pace, the half-life of these stocks of knowledge is depleting at an equally rapid pace.”

The new way to make it as an organization is to shift the primary focus to flows of new knowledge. 

“It’s no longer about what you know,” they say, “but rather, what relationships you have and what you can learn from these relationships.” 

UCP was founded in 1949, when the older ways had just begun to hold sway. Obviously, the organization has evolved over the years. (Witness its ongoing efforts to keep up with changes in information technologies.) Are its mindsets and practices, however, all the way up to today’s speed? That’s the sort of thing I want to delve into in this sub-section. 

Additionally, I’d like to know: 

• In what ways is UCP organized around the notion that value comes from protecting and capitalizing on existing stocks of knowledge? 

• How and where is it participating in flows of new knowledge? 

• How might it stand to gain by implementing JSB’s ideas? 

• Is there a systematic way to go about doing that?

You may have noticed that I haven’t been mentioning Red Treehouse. Reason being? At some point herein I want to zero in specifically on UCP’s Public Education & Outreach (PE&O) offerings. In my opinion, those are similar enough to (all of) Red Treehouse’s offerings that, if anything useful comes of the zeroing in, both organizations will be served.

*what we know at any particular time

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 5.0

More than just bits and bytes, this digital infrastructure consists of the institutions, practices, and protocols that together organize and deliver the increasing power of digital technology to business and society.*

Ultimately, I want to evaluate how well these two orgs. are utilizing the world's digital infrastructure to deliver on their high-level promises – beginning with a basic accounting (below) of what I call their “digital deliverables”: those offerings o' theirs that I as a user or visitor can access with my laptop.

Two notes: I don’t have a particular framework for doing this accounting. No cool tools, in other words, to bring to the party. Nor do I have any insider knowledge whatsoever.  

Red Treehouse 

Short and sweet: There’s the web site. There’s a separate Facebook page (that, for some unknown reason, isn't linked to or from the main site). I‘m tempted to add press releases to the mix, but will hold off. All I really want to do now is say a couple of words about the first.

The web site brings together “three sources for information and support”. It’s structured so that users can search for and find the following: 

1. RESOURCES, guides and tool-kits.
2. Names, contacts and helpful information about community ORGANIZATIONS.
3. Calendar of EVENTS, trainings and activities happening locally.
   

Ohio families, young adults, professionals, and organizations make up the user universe. Those who register receive monthly heads-ups regarding new content that’s been added to the site. 

UCP

UCP's web site is bigger and more sprawled out than Red Treehouse’s. I’m just starting to get a grip on the structure and logic behind it. 

One of the largest health non-profits in the country, UCP differs from Red Treehouse in that it operates a large affiliate network and also advocates for public policies “that ensure fair and full citizenship for people with a spectrum of disabilities.” A sizable chunk of the real estate at www.ucp.org is dedicated to those two functions. What's left of it (the real estate, that is) is tied mainly to UCP's Public Education & Outreach (PEO) efforts. It's those efforts that lead me to want to compare the two organizations in the first place.

PEO combines two primary components. First, there’s Public Education Resources. UCP’s online offerings in this category remind me very much of Red Treehouse’s offerings in their entirety. Included therein are in-depth online Resources, and State Resource Guides: contact information for state and local disability related services and organizations. “Never scour the Web again for bits and pieces of disability information and resources from disparate sources!”

Public Education Campaigns is the second PEO component. Subsumed under this heading are four (4) issue-specific campaigns, each of which has, or will have, its own web site. The four are: My Child Without Limits, Brave Kids, My Life Without Limits (to come), and Siblings Initiative (to come, as well).

About PEO online, I'll just say generally that newer digital tools are richly in evidence. Here you'll find blogs, tools for helping people with reading disabilities, online communities, live stream webcasts, and more. Social media use looks to be lively, especially as it relates to the issue-specific campaigns. 

UCP has been experimenting with trying to harness the power of the Net for some time. Much of the experimenting has stemmed from the Life Without Limits initiative begun in ’04. Peruse the site's pages and you still see references to older LWL campaigns (Don't Block My Vote and Who Will Care?), social media experiments, a crowd-sourced immersive scenario game (Ruby’s Bequest)...

Aggressive, if not progressive, use of digital technologies has been and still seems to be a UCP preference. I hope to dig deeper into it going forward.

*from The Power of Pull  (2010) by John Seely Brown, John Hagel III, and Lang Davison