They may finally have got it (but there again ….)

It’s nice to see IBM finally catching up with ideas and approaches that were first advocated by myself and others a decade ago, when we were IBM employees. At the time we received requests to toe the corporate line. Now I am not angling for an apology here but I do find it curious that both Larry Prusak and I advocated a human collaborative approach to KM back in the old IBM days but were largely marginalized by the techno-fetishist school of KM that dominated at the time. There seems to be a sort of inertia in large companies (certainly in IBM) which means they adopt ideas behind the market curve. Certainly the case here. IBM should have been advocating this approach at least five years ago if they wanted to be seen as a leader in the field. Don’t get me wrong, its good to have them as a follower as it helps get acceptance. However I notice that the shackles of corporate control have not been fully shaken off with internal developments being used at least in part in preference to using the richness of the external software environment.