New technologies and solutions and Knowledge Management are successful only if there is a supportive shift in the culture of an organization.

For a hundred years people have been trained to hoard knowledge and to play safe behind the walls of their own knowledge. Now can people be expected to behave differently, just because the CEO introduces a new technology platform?

Over the years I have studied, used, implemented and even tried selling a number of different groupware platforms. Some are wonderful for threaded discussions, others have paid attention to layout and graphical aids, and others, well, forget it. Who is going to wait a week for IT to make a change in the setup? Unfortunately, I have always found missing an appreciation for the social dynamics of electronic conferencing.
That is, until Niki Flandorfer, co-founder and CKO of metalayer, realizing the connection between online communities and corporate culture, discovered Elisabeth Sundrum’s web site, www.ecultureteam.com. Elisabeth and I have both become fascinated by and enthusiastic supporters of metalayer and the work Niki and Markus Hegi, founder and president, have been doing with their talented team in India and Zurich.
I’d like to share my own personal impressions about what metalayer presently offers and ways it may well develop. I am writing this section in appreciation for what Markus, Niki and the team have done in a very short amount of time, and as an invitation for continued co-creative dialogue around the next versions of metalayer, which is now being, prepared.
Many companies and other organizations are in the painful transition process from the sterile and rigid communication patterns of our Industrial Era hierarchies to a more open, dynamic and co-creative knowledge environment. Unfortunately, they try the “silver bullet” approach without understanding that these investments pay off only when there are equal investments in liberating the creativity in the company.
As Elisabeth and I have tested out metalayer, we have come to realize that they are offering organizations a dynamic Knowledge-based Layer, very much in the spirit of Nonaka and Takeuchi. True, other groupware platforms offer this, but there is something special about their creation. Metalayer does not have slick graphics like Groove or the high-powered marketing capabilities of eRoom, but there is something simple, logical and direct about the metalayer environment.
Initially conceived in 1999 as the “metalayer” between the Presentation Layer above, and the Application and Data layers below, Markus and Niki envisioned this metalayer as creating the necessary contextual space for community conversations, allowing people in business organizations to connect around innovative ideas, rather than just between boxes in a hierarchical organization. They are only now coming to understand that Nonaka and Takeuchi’s, “The Knowledge Creating Company” can best explain their intuitive vision with the wonderful metaphor of the hypertext organization in the book. This understanding reveals how two brilliant technologists can see beyond technology to the dynamics of human communities in the business world.
Nonaka and Takeuchi document a very interactive process between tacit and explicit knowledge. In addition they suggest companies come to understand the “middle-up-down management” process. Middle managers work the gap between the visions of top executives and the down to earth experiences of front-line employees.
In their understanding of organizations there are three layers, the hierarchy, the task forces and the “living knowledge base.” Markus and Niki are now realizing that when they established metalayer, they were seeking to enable companies and other organizations to tap into and leverage their living knowledge base.
As I indicated above, we realized they were creating the third element in organizations, the community layer where “authority of knowledge” is so much more important than “authority of position.” Therefore, Elisabeth and I are using this section to engage Markus, Niki and their team, in a co-creative effort to discover the dynamic interrelationships between the best in “community enhancing technology AND co-creative corporate culture.” As everyone will quickly recognize, the book is still being written on this topic.
We sincerely appreciate the comments and input from Markus, Niki and the Team on earlier drafts of this section. We are all learning together about what is being created in community. The thoughts here come out of our own attempt to understand metalayer both technically and socially.