Collective intelligence

It's knowledge management, but not as we know it

By Catherine Flutsch, Bird & Bird

I recently watched an episode of Star Trek Voyager featuring captain Janeway’s arch enemy, the Borg. As I watched the Borg queen notify her ten-billion drones of a change in attack strategy using the collective consciousness that they all share, it struck me: that the Borg’s knowledge-sharing strategy is fairly advanced. Instant knowledge assimilation, sharing and leverage looks very much like perfect knowledge management (KM). Effective KM and leverage, it seems, has given the Borg a significant competitive advantage.

The Borg’s mission statement is to achieve perfection by raising the quality of life for species that they assimilate into their collective consciousness. This statement is strangely familiar, echoing aspirational statements made by many large organisations about their KM programmes.

Oz Benamram, KM counsel at Morrison & Foerster agrees that the Borg model is pretty effective and is working towards its implementation. He believes that after roll-out, individuality would be preserved because our experience plays a large part in who we are and explains why two people can make different decisions based on the same knowledge.

My view is that truly effective knowledge transfer would also include the wisdom gained from experience and might, therefore, lead to the death of individuality. Kate Stanfield, head of KM at CMS Cameron McKenna, agrees. Kate has hesitated in implementing the Borg model at her firm due to a concern that the innovation of the maverick would be lost. She also notes that the Borg’s mission statement masks ambitions of planetary domination. If the true motivation of the Borg’s KM programme was to create better lives for the members of its collective consciousness, then the outcome of their KM strategy might be innovation and insight at a whole new level. At this stage in our technological state of play, these points are moot.

Bird & Bird’s IT manager Damien Behan, whose Masters thesis is on KM, believes that the Borg model is a typical example of IT dictating KM strategy. He thinks that the Borg’s massive investment in IT and infrastructure is unnecessary with similar benefits being achievable by the implementation of proper processes to ensure that the right individuals talk to each other. Damien’s view is that while it is tempting to invest in every new wave of IT tools, an ongoing assessment of the cost versus the benefit of every KM programme (and any IT tools that support them) is necessary to ensure the most efficient use of resource.

According to Sally Gonzalez, director, Navigant Consulting Inc, the act of knowledge sharing, including its give and take nature, is a fundamental human process. The instantaneous nature of the Borg model, Sally believes, precludes this type of human collaboration and, therefore, precludes human progress.

By boldly extrapolating the majority view of this illustrious sample to the entire international KM community, I have established beyond reasonable doubt that instantaneous knowledge assimilation, sharing and leverage is not the model to aspire to. Knowledge managers everywhere will rush to amend their KM strategies.

Catherine Flutsch is head of knowledge management at international firm Bird & Bird. She can be contacted at catherine.flutsch@twobirds.com