Education and Training Service
AKRI has many years experience in organising, designing and delivering courses that are specifically tailored to meet industry needs. This experience extends from simple IT training through Microprocessor Control and Artificial Intelligence to Knowledge Management. The service offered now is specifically linked to Knowledge Study and Innovation.
The diagram is intended to provide an indication of the sort of educational support that AKRI can offer and organisation. Individual programmes will be designed to match specific needs.
Effective Knowledge Study
Organisations that decide to adopt the approach to Knowledge Study defined here, may wish to equip their own staff with the capability to carry this out. Effective knowledge study covers the whole process including use of the knowledge study tool and approaches to interviewing for KSM.
AKRI can offer tailor made support that will help staff to become capable and then expert at applying Knowledge Structure Mapping and helping the organisation make effective use of its results. Where the staff to be trained already use Knowledge Management, a training programme that runs in parallel with a live knowledge study project can be very effective.
The Knowledge Resource for Managers
Having additional information is only part of making an organisation more effective. A good manager needs to understand what can be done with this information and be able to predict what changes can be made and which will be beneficial. Knowledge Structure Mapping can provide additional information for managers but it is up to the managers to take this forward and create a better business. This course is not intended to teach managers how to manage, it is intended to help them to understand the knowledge resource as revealed by KSM and understand what the information that KSM provides actually means within the context of business management.
Too many good pargrammes and good ideas do not deliver because people fail to see them through. This is one of the reasons why organisations need good managers.
Innovation Programme
An innovation programme for organisational leaders is offered as 6 main workshops. The programme is more fully described in the section on Innovation. AKRI is happy to provide information, resources and method to staff inside organisations who are to promote and disseminate innovation training themselves.
KSM Method and Tool
This could be a significant new capability for an organisation to acquire and any programme that is aimed at helping the organisation to do this needs to be tailored to the needs of the particular staff that are to be involved. Some companies benefit from having contract work done first and then phasing their own staff into the process over a little time. Other companies prefer to use their own staff from the beginning and rely on more intensive education and training to prepare the staff.
Ultimately, the staff that have a better understanding of the organisations knowledge resource will be able to contribute to the organisation in a variety of new ways.
Thinking about Knowledge
There is more than enough discussion about knowledge to cause significant confusion. AKRI focuses on a simple definition of knowledge, which is the things that people know. Of course, there is more to it than this but at least we have excluded most of the rest of an IT department from the task of understanding knowledge, unless they want to understand knowledge of course. IT is not the same as knowledge even if it would be more convenient if it was. A book entitled 'Thinking about Knowledge Learning and Wisdom' is now available and information about it can be found by following the link in the title.
