Comments on: Do They Give You Eggs for E2.0?

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:28:25 +0000

Thanks, Samuel. You're right about the downside to numerical discussions of
benefits. Since so much of what we do results in the intangible (*e.g*.,
strengthening human relationships), why do we try to capture that in
numbers?

- Mary

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:25:19 +0000

Thank you, Mark, for sharing your kind words and memorable story. And
thanks for your post, which led me down the path of storytelling.

- Mary

By: Rotkapchen

Rotkapchen — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:28:51 +0000

No time to explain. The clue: teased immersion.

Are you serving up teases via email? Is the system optimized for email interaction?

By: driessen

driessen — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:54:55 +0000

Great post, Mary! I fully agree with you that we can use stories to sell 'enterprise 2.0 implementations'. Lots of talk is about ROI as if all the costs and wins can be translated into hard numbers. I find that using stories to sell and convince work much better because they trigger inner motivations (hope, change, fear, etc.). Money doesn't (always) do that.

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:28:25 +0000

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:25:19 +0000

Thank you, Mark, for sharing your kind words and memorable story. And
thanks for your post, which led me down the path of storytelling.

- Mary

By: driessen

driessen — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:54:55 +0000

By: Mark Gould

Mark Gould — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:20:12 +0000

Great story, Mary!

Of course, one of the leading lights in KM, Steve Denning, used story (and an African one at that) as a way of communicating the important of KM at the World Bank.

The story was a simple one. In June 1995, a health worker in a tiny village in Zambia logged onto the website of the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, and found the answer to a question on treating malaria. As Denning says, this was June 1995, not June 2015; this was not the capital of Zambia, this was a tiny village some 600KM away; and Zambia is not a rich country, it is one of the poorest in the world. “I’d tell the story and then ask, ‘Do you know what the most important part of this picture is for the World Bank? The World Bank isn’t in this picture. The World Bank doesn’t have its know-how organised to share with the millions of people that make decisions about poverty. But just imagine if it did; imagine what an organisation we could become.’” The story began to resonate, and on 1 October 1996, the World Bank held its annual meeting; the president, in front of 170 finance ministers, announced that the bank was going to become the ‘knowledge bank’.

(http://www.ikmagazine.com/xq/asp/sid.0/articlei...)