From numbers to Narrative

I attended a talk at the NSW KM forum last night by my research colleague from Sydney Uni, John Dumay on valuing intangibles. John talked about the 'accountingisation' of intangibles i.e.trying to turn everyting into numbers. John's theme was around the value of narrative in leveraging intangible value. Perhaps there is a complementary theme here. Conventional top town governance is numbers driven, compliance to benchmarks etc...however governing in a networked world is more about engagement through dialog, strategic conversations and narrative.

Balancing Explore and Exploit:is this the right question?

I attended an interactive session at the AOM meeting on Balancing Exporation and Exploitation. All the papers were dealing with the issue of the balance between explore and exploit. Since the theme for the conference was "The questions we ask"...i.e. are we asking the right questions, I put my two cents worth in suggesting that this was the wrong question.There are many successful companies at both ends of the spectrum, from those that are great explorers and those that are great exploiters. The key issue for me is that its not a choice, but a process. The important question is how we can effectively flow from explore to exploit. I have inserted the "engage" process between explore and exploit and believe this is what we should be researching:

http://www.optimice.com.au/upload/Optimice_3Es_of_Innovation.pdf

Seems obvious to me and it seemed to resonate with the group and the facilitator acknowledged that this would really re-direct the research agenda. Afterwards I met a Stanford PhD student from the session that was focussing on this exact issue and was pleased that it was at least brought up. This brought home to me how even the explorers of the world, being our research community, can easily get into the group think situation and not see some things that appear obvious to outsiders. Also how insightful the conference organisers were in developing their theme. Sometimes we are so entrained in our own community and themes of discussion that we forget to get to look up and see what else is happening.

For example is governance always a compliance issue?

Academy of Management Meeting

I'm off this week to the Academy of Management meeting in Anaheim. I'm not sure if locating an academic management conference next to Disneyland is sending any sort of message, but my expectations are that with 6,000 + management academics and professionals its going to be a full on week. I'll be presenting my research work on corporate social capital and its link to firm performance. The program is enormous. Its definitely the place to be if you work in a business school. For me I'm looking for a mix of academia and practice. I expect to see a lot on networks and governance, so watch this space for my reviews.

On another note I was contacted by an organisation called insightory to become their featured expert this week. I don't know much about them but their site looked interesting and has the potential to connect people interested in management studies and practice.