never stop learning!

#knowledge management and #marketing at one

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

Benchmarking, motivated students and satisfied companies

It’s time to say: I’m proud to announce we have launched a pilot project with Department of Marketing (St.Petersburg State University of Economics) and ROSSINNO, hi-tech company from St. Petersburg. During next 6 weeks the students will be working in 8 teams on 4 projects. This is absolutely new format of studying and working both for students and companies. I have no doubts it will yield great results to us.

So what this has to do with benchmarking? The thing is that I brought this idea from Finland this spring. I was taught this way at HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences. Being impressed and excited by the way Finnish universities do their job, I came back with strong intention to adopt their best practices into Russian educational reality.

That is how I found myself in front of the Department’s door at the end of August. Today is September 23, and the project was launched 3 days ago. I’m very optimistic about it and looking forward to seeing the results of the project.

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

How to create new knowledge while reading any book

Everyone has his/her own way of reading books. Books are always seen as a valuable source of new knowledge about the subject we are interested in. But who’s ever thought that we can create a new knowledge while reading books? Here I would like to share some my thoughts on how that idea can be  implemented.

The answer is as simple as that. Many readers practice different ways of marking interesting ideas they find in texts. It can be putting stickers on pages contaning these ideas or highlighting them highlighter or sometimes writing down pieces of text in special documents (making notes).

It can sound surprisingly but by doing this, we literally create a new knowledge. Making notes, reader lets ideas from the book through his own knowledge and unique experience, puts them in a new context and adds a value to them.

When we highlight pieces of text as most interesting or important for us, we thereby perform as contributors providing knowledge in context, and this knowledge isn’t the same. That becomes a bit different to initial ideas we read. Not only for us but also for those going to read this text in the future.

That’s why working actively with texts is so important.

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

Knowledge outsourcing

Can outsourcing be one of the knowledge management tools? 

I’d say “yes”, it can! Moreover, it always should be considered as a tool of this kind. A company attracts specific skills and experience which are, in fact, different types of knowledge. 

What about networked business models?

Is it also knowledge-based model of doing business? You know my answer:) Yes, it is! You draw knowledge from some companies and at the same time share your own one. That is called networked knowledge management.

And what’s the difference?

I see the difference in synergetic effect of networked business model, as it enables companies of the same network to not only use shared knowledge but to create a new one and thus make each other stronger.

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

Right corporate culture matters!

I like situations when your employer askes you for help, advice, feedback or something like this. That could be a powerful incentive for employees to share their experience, innovate, get involved and contribute to company’s success. If organized properly, it can become good tool for effective knowledge management. But does it always work? Not sure...Let’s look into the issue.

In addition to conventional marketing oriented on getting customer understanding through traditional research methods, advanced companies usually utilize some knowledge management tools for encouraging internal expertise and ideation. What company gains from it is a plenty of new excellent ideas on how to improve a product or marketing strategy, strong employees’ motivation, and better corporate climate. It is crucial for company to utilize employee’s knowledge in marketing decision-making simply due to the fact that your subordinates are likely to know more about the products you sell and customers you communicate with.

That’s in theory. What about practice? In practice, that employees’ activity and involvement totally depend on corporate culture shared in the company. If sharing knowledge is a standard of organizational behaviour, then workers will be likely to get involved in it.  And on the contrary, if workers are asked for help and advise only when the boss has no ideas on an issue and fails to manage a problem, then no one will have a motivation to give voice to it. Moreover, if there have been cases when key decisions with significant impact on employees were made without asking their opinion and advice, then this will discourage workers to share their knowledge even more. 

If you are a boss, it’s better to decide what you want to get from your employees at the beginning of the game and then consistently put it into practice.

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

How to use knowledge management in developing university degree programmes

KM in marketing

Does KM apply only to operational level in organization? Nope! Operations give us answer to question “how to produce” and/or "how to produce more effectively than your competitors”. What about “what to produce”? That’s the question to marketing. And the share of this answer to company’s profit is no less crucial or may be of the same importance. Here is an interesting example of how universities use co-creation for developing their degree programmes.

The HAAGA-HELIA Provoo Campus co-creation case

While many universities represent “the shoemaker’s wife is the worst shon” case, it seems like that HAAGA-HELIA Porvoo Campus is an example of doing things accurately in the way about that they teach students. As any other company, the university needs to understand clearly customer jobs, pains, and gains in order to create excellent degree programmes that are relevant to job market. That’s why HH has launched a project aimed at attracting a broad range of people to a redesign of their curriculum. The goal is to produce competitive degree programme through co-creation between the university, companies, experts, students, and othe stakeholders. Seems like usual marketing research, but that’s a different case. External participants join the project for free, realizing the benefits they can obtain when the new programme starts working. 

I see it as, perhaps, the main feature of co-creation approach to marketing, as well as its main advantage. What also interesting is how the university can manage to handle all the information collected from stakeholders. This requires another set of marketing capabilities.That’s why I’m gonna conduct a small research to reveal how this project was initiated, designed, and is realized at the moment.

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

Proudly found elsewhere

It’s hard to describe how boring Russian scientists and practitioners are sometimes! Even not dealing with any academic stuff, they continually tend to come up with too academic terms for their professional fields. Take a look at this and you’ll see plenty of words with -zm, - sm, and something like this at the end.

In this sense foreign specialists differ significantly from the Russians. They like coming up with very descriptive terms helping to understand better the meaning and essence. Just for example, here are two terms from knowledge management vocabulary - “not invented here” and “ proudly found elsewhere”. These terms describe very common ways of thinking and behaving in companies and reflect different attitudes towards using experience and best practices of other companies. Let’s test them! Does anyone need definitions of these terms to be provided? I don’t think so! They’re clear) That’s the point

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

Work to learn or learn to work

One more argument on course projecting issues occured today. As usual, the question is broader than it seemed  when we were arguing. I am talking about an eternal issue of what should go first: learning or working. At first glance, it concerns students always facing the need to have some experience to get their first job. I see their question “where can we get an experience if no employer wants to hire someone without experience?”. But it also applies to people who want to upgrade their skills and  get promotion. One question for teachers and learners araises: Does it make sense for people to start studying something new without opportunity to practice new skills? My answer - yes, there is a sense! Otherwise it looks like vicious circle. And I know there are many “but”. Nevertheless, I say ‘yes” and suggest discussing it in the future

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

Procrastination

A researcher inside me demands to explore the nature and find out the roots of procrastination, but procrastination hinders me from doing it. Joke:)

The thing is that procrastination needs to be revealed and eliminated not only when it comes to business and very busy people. It’s a giant concern for teachers and  learners regardless of whether it’s a corporate programme or your personal road towards university degree.

Moreover, I would claim teaching might be seen as an art of struggling with procrastination. So, the way you teach should always include a strategy and tools for overcoming procrastination

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

How consultants and teachers look differently at opened trainings

Two days ago I had a fascinating discussion with one of my partners, a sales consultant and CEO of a consulting company, arguing that it’s useless to expect people on trainings can learn all information by heart and immediately start adopting it in their everyday work. I strongly opposed to that but it didn’t look like a simple disagreement between us. I saw really deep difference. I suppose it’s a matter of goal. For me as a teacher and knowledge management enthusiast the goal of every training or course is always to share new knowledge (evident or tacit) and, of course, to make learners use this as fast as possible. Her personal goal when organizing opened trainings is to get people interested in the topic, to show how it’s  important to keep up with development of their field and (lets be honest) to emphasis her own value as a specialist in certain field thereby she promotes her services and the company.

I see a significance of content marketing ( I’m sure everyone understands that we are talking about a form of content marketing) and like it but I can’t agree that these two activities are surely conflicting ones. You can combine sharing good content with teaching people. In this case, is that a matter of ethics or business? That’s the question:)

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

To the previous post

Seems like I've figured out what happened on Wednesday. I have absolutely got disaccustomed from hearing usual lectures going as an endless word flow from a teacher. That discourages me a lot. That was the thing. But I have got a week off, so there will be time (I hope) to dig into work and sort stuff from team projects out.

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

handling e-learning

There are some evident advantages of adding e-learning to your armoury, but please remember to check it in very beginning to make sure it works properly. A blank page is what I’m observing now instead of my course on Eliademy.com. Deadline has passed, and that isn’t my fault

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

A boring teaching

What’s a boring teaching and what is it to teach boringly? Sitting on a boring lecture I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong. Just few guesses so far. Could a manner of speaking be the reason? I think it could. A voice could be too. Something else? It’s never been a problem for me to see why some speakers are boring. But now it’s a kind of challenge to me. Don’t know why, and that’s annoying me(

[teachlearnfreak-blog]

The Dinosaur

Max, my 17-year-old next-door neighbour, entered HAAGA-HELIA University this winter after studying a semester in one of the St.Petersburg’s universities. He told me this morning that for his generation I’m like a dinosaur. I didn’t ask him if there is a reason for me to trouble about it or it’s just a fact. But I know I have to admit I’m a dinosaur. And I keep studying regardless of that I’m 29 because that’s the only way to survive:)