2006 World’s Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Named
A couple of days ago Jack Vinson shared over at his weblog a post regarding the recent announcement on the 2006 World’s Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) winners. At the time that I am getting to write this particular weblog post it looks like the original link is actually no longer working (Perhaps they are updating it or it has been relocated) but you would be able to find the 2006 Global MAKE Study Executive Summary over here. Either way, Jack was kind enough to share with us the Top 20 winners and here you have got them listed so that you can take a look into them:
- Accenture
- Apple Computer
- BHP Billiton
- Buckman Laboratories
- Dell
- Ernst & Young
- Fluor
- Hewlett-Packard
- Honda Motor
- McKinsey
- Microsoft
- Novo Nordisk
- PricewaterhouseCoopers
- Samsung Group
- Sony
- Tata Group
- 3M
- Toyota Motor Corporation
- Unilever
As he mentions, as well, it is actually rather interesting to note how most of the 2006 winners are actually companies that were not there in 2003, which, to me, comes to indicate how much alive and kicking Knowledge Management is overall. We may be witnessing another stunning comeback from KM into the business world but the surprising fact is that most of the Top 20 winners are actually companies not very much related to the IT world. On the contrary, they actually deal with whatever other industries, which would make this list even so much more refreshing as it clearly shows how Knowledge Management has gone beyond the boundaries of the traditional IT industry into multiple industries that are starting to realise how much needed a KM strategy might have been. And, by the looks of it, things are running smooth with those relatively new KM strategies because they are all making it all the way into the top, which is, indeed, a very good thing. Quite inspiring.
I must say that while going through the list, and reading through the executive summary, I was a bit surprised not to find IBM listed in the Top 20, when in previous years, including 2003, it was actually listed on the Top 10, more exactly at #9. That clearly indicates to me how IBM might have lost a little bit of its focus in aligning its KM and overall business strategies, or, another possibility, that it might not have gone out there often enough to show what is actually happening in the KM arena both inside and outside of IBM. I suspect that part of the reason why IBM this time around this year has fallen into the 22nd place from the MAKE winner list is because we might not have gone out often enough and engage in different conversations with all different parties involved (Customers, business partners, IT industry, etc. etc.) showing where IBM is going with both its KM and business strategies.
I mean, pretty much the same way that different industries have been embracing a renewed Knowledge Management, thanks to that hyped social software, so has been IBM acting upon over the last few months, along with trying to embed it all into the different traditional KM strategies already put in place to walk hand in hand. But somehow it looks like the message might not have been strong enough nor good enough. We may need to continue engaging in the conversations taking place out there so that perception may change in, perhaps, next year’s MAKE winners. Who knows. The interesting and exciting fact is that the challenge is on and it would be quite rewarding to know if with next year’s MAKE winners things would be much more different than this year. We shall see. Only thing remaining now would be, would IBM be ready for the challenge? Would we be ready for it? Time will tell.
Tags: MAKE, Knowledge Business, Knowledge Enterprise, Knowledge Management, KM, Social Software, IBM, KM Strategy
