The story of my life: reflections on how my interests were shaped
I just discovered that an extended profile piece on me that appeared in Inside Knowledge magazine in October 2006 is now available online under the title The Knowledge: Ross Dawson.
It is fascinating to me to read it a few years later and consider what has and hasn’t changed. It provides an extremely good overview of my life story and how my work interests have been shaped. It also picked up on my personal interests such as improvisational music and recording as well as my family.
Please have a read of the full article if you’re interested – it’s a good story. Below are a few quotes from me taken from the article.
“The network approach to open innovation is very powerful, especially when you can uncover the nodes, find out how these domains are connected and how you can link people more usefully,” he says. “Some people don’t understand the idea of open innovation. They had better get it soon as you haven’t a hope if you rely solely on your own internal innovation capabilities.”
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“What I’ve seen is that one of the ways to draw on the best resources around the world throughout the innovation chain – from conception to development to commercialisation – is through ethnic and country dispersion. As people immigrate they still have deep roots in their native countries and have global networks that are a key source of innovation.”
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“While this [networked consulting model offered by Future Exploration Network and Advanced Human Technologies] isn’t a new business model it brings to bear a lot of my thinking, ideas and practice from the past 12 years, and offers a real alternative to the traditional consulting firm. Rather than choose a company because it has good people, go to an organisation that can access people whether they are inside or outside the company.”
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“Change has been rapid and we can see that social media is now a key part of the landscape. The fundamental issues for media companies are about creating content in different formats, distributing it through new channels, accessing audiences and generating revenues.” Using systems approaches to understand these industry shifts is another focal point in Dawson’s field of vision. “By bringing multiple parties together to look at the enablers and roadblocks you can collaborate and map a path that will bring about change.”
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“Knowledge and relationships are inextricable. If a relationship does not have a knowledge component then it’s a commodity. There must be mutual knowledge: an organisation must have knowledge of its customers and they must have knowledge of the business. You create value beyond simply delivering a product or service when you make clients more knowledgeable by, for example, helping them make better decisions. It’s about human connections, not just digital flows.”
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“Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist from the last century, said that if we have a single perspective on anything then we know it is fundamentally flawed. We can only really understand and relate to our world through multiple perspectives, which we can get from different people, languages and physical viewpoints. This relates to how relationships in a knowledge context give you multiple perspectives and a richer view, which result in more effective decision-making and analysis.” Some of Bateson’s thinking is embedded in neuro-linguistic programming, techniques that Dawson studied – and have become implicit in everything he does – to better understand the way we think.
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“Everybody was looking internally at their employees and finding processes to leverage their knowledge. There was very little talk of how businesses touch clients, suppliers, regulators and the outside world.” To address this gap Dawson set up Advanced Human Technologies as a platform for working with networks and relationships. He also dedicated his first book to the subject. “It was a fairly new idea, but people picked it up as it was so obvious. Today, in a world of web 2.0, business process outsourcing and globalisation, people accept and understand it implicitly.”
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“Few companies actively support some of the key determinants of high-performing knowledge workers,” he says. “One of their major characteristics is that they actively build networks. The knowledge management movement has helped build yellow pages tools and knowledge broker roles, and most companies see the value in networking events that bring high-potential people together. What I don’t see, however, is a broader or more structured approach where companies encourage people to reach out across departments, divisions and organisational boundaries and coach them on how to build these networks.”
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“Writing books is a big part of who I am,” he says. “I have a long list that I want to write but am almost certain that the next one will be on supplier management. In a global world and modular economy, how can we find, work with and build relationships with the best people, organisations and resources available? This will be a fundamental differentiator in the future.”
