The Significance of ‘Ba’ for the Successful Formation of Autonomous Personal Knowledge Management Systems

“Autonomous individuals and groups in knowledge-creating organizations set their task boundaries for themselves in pursuit of the ultimate goal expressed by the organization” [33].

Work has suffered from a process of fragmentation which will continue to accelerate. Gratton analyzes its implications and highlights the slipping control over constant interruptions, the loss of time for real concentration, and less learning by observation and reflection [39]. With specializations and domain-specific knowledge on the rise, the identification of people has also shifted from their company to their occupation and profession, and “the vertical hierarchy and traditional career ladder have been replaced by sideways career moves between companies, and a horizontal labor market” [40]. Moreover, the 2013 study ‘Future of Employment’ analyzed 702 occupations and estimated about 47 % of total US employment to be still at risk due to recent technological breakthroughs able to turn previously non-routine tasks into well-defined problems susceptible to computerization [41]. Similar predictions have been put forward for Europe by Bowles [42].

The novel PKMS approach entails a departure from the current heavyweight, prohibitive, centralized, top-down, institutional developments in order to strengthen individual sovereignty by employing grass roots, bottoms-up, lightweight, affordable, personal applications. The needs have been summarized in the form of Five Vital Provisions [14]: a. Digital personal and personalized knowledge is always in possession and at the personal disposal of its owner or eligible co-worker, residing on personal hardware and/or personalized cloud-databases. b. Contents are kept in a standardized, consistent, transparent, flexible, and secure format for easy retrieval, expansion, sharing, pooling, re-use and authoring, or migration. c. Information and functionalities can continually be used without disruption independent of changing one’s social, educational, professional, or technological environment. d. Collaboration capabilities have to be mutually beneficial to facilitate consolidated team and enterprise actions that convert individual into organizational performances. e. The PKMS design and its complex operations are based on a concept, functionalities, and interventions which are clearly understood and are painlessly applied in practice.

The artificial name ‘Knowcations’ crafted for the system is made up of KNOW as a reference to knowledge and know-how and CATIONS as an intended association to the locations or spaces as well as to the vocations or abilities which are so vital to further our expertise and careers. The ‘Knowcations’ idea originated during the author’s Ph.D. studies in the early 90s. Since then, the resulting prototype has been continuously expanded and used personally for career support as a management consultant, scholar, professor, and academic manager. With the development platforms and cloud-based services available now, an innovation opportunity has presented itself for converting and advancing the prototype into a viable PKM system across platforms.

The novel distributive facet of the PKMS has a dual dimension. The first, from centralized organizational OKM systems to decentralized personalized PKM devices, has already been alluded to. The second, from document-centric repositories to meme-based knowledge bases is portrayed in a second KICCS conference paper [9]. Rather than whole documents, what is referred to and what is stored at the same time, is smaller and more distinct, a basic building block of knowledge in the eyes of the beholder (a meme). The information-structure captured should be perfectly understandable alone by itself without piggybacking irrelevant or potentially redundant information. In this quasi-atomic state it can be repeatedly utilized (and traced back) at any later stage in combination with other memes to form memeplexes or knowledge assets, defined as “nonphysical claims to future value or benefits” [45].

P.I.C.K.S. refers to the Personal Ignorance, Competencies, & Knowledge Scape [1].

P.R.O.F.I.L.E.S. is an acronym for the relationships between hosts and vectors (social capital) which define Professional Experiences, Research Activities, Outcomes/Results, Formal Education, Intellectual Capital, Literacies/Skills, Emotional Capital, and Social Networks.

P.R.O.J.E.C.T.S. is an acronym for the internal logics and logistics online activities: Projecting, Referencing, Originating, Justifying, Evidencing, Contexting, Topicing, and Scripting.

A.L.F.R.E.S.C.O. depicts external off-line tasks: Administering, Locating, Feed-backing, Reflecting, Engaging, Sourcing, Crafting, and Observing. The system, however, also provides functionalities to plan, manage, document, track, and evaluate these external tasks.

In acknowledging the trans-disciplinarity of the PKM notion, the papers and presentations received feedback from and addressed a wide scope of conference themes, including Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies, Informing Science, Management and Social Sciences, Higher Education and Human Resource Development, Innovation and Creativity Support Systems, e-Skills and e-Learning, as well as Organizational Learning, Future Studies, and Sustainability.