Knowledge Management
What, how, and why

A critical perspective
Table of contents
Executive summary........................................................................................................................................ 3
What is Knowledge Management?................................................................................................................... 4
Knowledge Management: An Eye Opener........................................................................................................ 5
How to Lay the Knowledge Foundation............................................................................................................ 6
How to embrace and embed knowledge management?..................................................................................... 7
How to get the knowledge advantage?............................................................................................................ 8
Knowledge management… Doing the right things or doing the things right........................................................ 9
GE Workout................................................................................................................................................. 10
The paradoxical nature of knowledge............................................................................................................. 12
Knowledge in professional service firms........................................................................................................ 13
Knowledge and power shift........................................................................................................................... 14
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................... 15
Group members........................................................................................................................................... 16
Executive summary
Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes
Panchatantras


The process of globalization and the emergence of knowledge economy/knowledge society have lately been significantly influential in addressing the characteristics of an organization and in turn defining its culture. Knowledge workers are emerging as most important asset of an organization that is competing in the knowledge economy. With focus now being directed to newer and newer inventions and innovations, the increasing complexity of new technologies make retention and archiving of knowledgebase a crucial imperative. This project is about the emergence of knowledge economy, how it has evolved and affected the organizations across the world and in turn those who are contributors to this.

Organizations of any type can only stay competitive if they treat knowledge as a valuable asset and manage it consciously. Also discussed here is why knowledge management has come to the forefront of the minds of many knowledge managers because the productivity of these workers can be reliant upon the technology available in the workplace. From a critical perspective, though knowledge management allows workers to progress in their areas of specialty without having to backtrack to find bits of tacit knowledge that may have been lost through improper management, it also promotes an isolating exclusivity for the knowledge workers and hence redundancy factor becomes a threat in such cases.

What is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge management (KM) is a process that helps organizations find, select, organize, disseminate, and transfer important information and expertise necessary for activities such as problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning, and decision making. To define "knowledge management" we have to pull apart the two parts of that term.

Knowledge
Knowledge is part of the hierarchy made up of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. Data are raw facts. Information is facts with context and perspective. Knowledge is information with guidance for action. Wisdom is understanding, which knowledge to use for what purpose.

Management
Management is part of another hierarchy that includes supervision, management, and leadership. Supervision is dealing with individual tasks and people and works at the operational level of an organization or sub-unit. Management is dealing with groups and priorities at the tactical level. Leadership is dealing with purpose and change at the strategic level. Hence Knowledge management is concerned with the exploitation and development of the knowledge assets of an organization with a view to furthering the organization’s objectives.

Knowledge Management: An Eye Opener
The new millennium is in the midst of explosive change witnessing intense competition amongst the domestic as well as the international players. Little wonder then, knowledge management is fast emerging as a core strategy that organizations worldwide are adopting to manage and leverage organizational knowledge, for sustainable business advantage. In this world of rapid change, we have to create new knowledge and ideas constantly. We get that by looking at what we know, and applying it to what we do not yet know. According to the Gartner Group, Knowledge Management (KM) emphasizes that human interaction is the focal point surrounding the collection, distribution, and re-use of information. In today’s competitive economy it is critical for organizations to manage knowledge in a way that positively impacts decision making and customer service.

The changes taking place in the world economy have made knowledge management a business necessity, at least for large multinationals that operate on a global scale, or hope to. Managing your company's knowledge more effectively and exploiting it in the marketplace is the latest pursuit of those seeking competitive advantage. The organizations that are driven by knowledge are the ones that will succeed. The combination of global reach and speed compels organizations to ask themselves, “What do we know, who knows it, what do we not know that we should know?” The benefits of knowledge management are clear: to maximize internal efficiency, internal co-ordination, service to customers, and overall profitability. For this to happen, an organization needs to capture the tacit knowledge residing in its people, and keep it up to date in a form that is "accessible-on-demand" as well as "pushed-out-as-useful". Today, organizations are employing various novel and modern methods to transform static data and information into a dynamic knowledge base for profitable re-use.

How to Lay the Knowledge Foundation
Most organizations already have a vast reservoir of knowledge in a wide variety of organizational processes, best-practices, know-how, customer trust, MIS, culture and norms. However, this knowledge is diffused, and mostly unrecognized. Hence the need for knowledge management, or what can be called a knowledge foundation. There are four key features to this foundation:
· A knowledge-based strategy
To push ahead into new products, markets, and ways of doing business requires information and knowledge.
· A knowledge-sharing culture
To maximize the impact of information collected and knowledge acquired, knowledge workers are being encouraged to share their best practices, new techniques and lessons learned with their colleagues, wherever they are in the organization or around the world.
· Technical support infrastructure
Huge investments are being made in hardware and software to ensure that the information and knowledge available within an organization is available to the people who need it and in a form that they can use. Given the costs involved, it is essential that these changes be well managed.
· Business research and analysis
There is increasing concern that despite the flood of information available, it is often in a form that is not useful or even useable. Increasingly, organizations are turning to experts who can interpret the information and make it valuable.
How to embrace and embed knowledge management?
Simple, if you want to survive you must improve. The full implementation of knowledge management has significant consequences for the structure and culture of the organization, and the roles of managers and workers. There are a number of questions that senior managers should seek to answer before moving to a full implementation of knowledge management:

• What is the central objective of knowledge management within an organization? Is the interest, for example, in leveraging implicit knowledge, retaining knowledge of employees as they exit the organization, or in more efficient access to knowledge repositories?
• What are the levels at which knowledge management must be considered, and how can it be executed at the different levels? Can knowledge management be utilized for specific projects or work groups, without impacting upon the entire organization?
• What is the scope of knowledge management in relation to the types of knowledge that it should embrace? The main divide is between implicit and explicit knowledge, but there may also be different types of focus. For example, the emphasis may be on competitor profiles, or on technical know-how.
• What are the technologies and techniques to be employed in knowledge management? Is the priority document creation and management technology or on group working technologies, such as Lotus Notes?
• What organizational roles are needed to support knowledge management, and what are the associated competencies that both individuals and organization need to acquire? Organizations have recognized that successful knowledge management initiatives depend on the commitment of top management, and the contribution of senior consultants or experts.

There will be no simple answers to these questions because in a diverse and changing business environment, the nature of knowledge management is likely to be ever changing. Indeed knowledge management in different organizations may serve different organizational purposes. There is no doubt, however, those organizations need to develop the capacity to be able to survive in a knowledge-based, global marketplace. An understanding of the potential offered by knowledge management and the way in which knowledge management can be used effectively within their business will become increasingly crucial for businesses and other organizations.

How to get the knowledge advantage?
How can companies use knowledge to secure a strategic advantage? In a nutshell, it’s about generating greater value through the knowledge in products, people, and processes:

• Knowledge in Products: 'Intelligent' or 'smart' products can command premium prices and be more beneficial to users. One example is the 'intelligent' oil drill that bends and weaves its way to extract more oil than ever from the pockets of oil in underground formations.
• Knowledge in People: "Our most valuable asset", according to many company reports, although the actual way they are treated and managed often belies this. Learning Organization' programs, is one way of nurturing and applying underutilized talent.

Knowledge in Processes: In many companies there are often differences in performance levels among different groups performing the same process. Closing such a gap saved Texas Instruments the cost of one new semiconductor fabrication plant (a $1 billion investment).

These are not the only ways that companies are creating strategic advantage through knowledge but give a flavor of what is possible. Others include active management of your intellectual property portfolio of patents and licenses, and creating new businesses that exploit your internally generated information and knowledge.

"Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power squared."
The advantages of sharing knowledge and disseminating information can be turned into a social benefit. Social capital is seen as a major contributor to power relations which can hamper knowledge dissemination. The study of two Belgian companies to reinforce the same revealed that social capital often enhances knowledge sharing. The human element of one’s political, social desires promotes only a selective form of knowledge sharing. Aristotle has captured the essence of human greed for power in a society by his classification of people into "political animals"/"social animals." The best example to this in the modern world is Web-based forums and mailing lists.

Knowledge management… Doing the right things or doing the things right
Says Dr. Dr Yogesh Malhotra, founding Chairman and Chief Knowledge Architect of the BRINT Institute, LLC. Being efficient without being effective certainly leads to business failure - as in the case of the ultra-efficient buggy whip companies that disappeared into oblivion along with horse-drawn carriages. However, companies that can more readily adapt to radical discontinuous change by rethinking their business models, best practices and business value propositions are ahead in the game of 'doing the right thing.

Some have defined KM as getting the right information to the right person at the right time. However, in a world of radical discontinuous change, there are no programmable systems that can predict in advance what the right information, right person, or the right time will be at any given point in the future. This can also help understand the key distinction between 'doing the right thing' and 'doing things right'. The relatively stable and unchanging environment of the past allowed the luxury of predicting, pre-defining and pre-determining the future based on past data. Businesses could once define their business models, business practices and business value propositions - thereafter, the key challenge remained that of optimization for increased efficiencies: of 'doing things right'.

However, changing customer trends, competitive products, and services and changing societal and governmental pressures make the existing business models, business practices, and business value propositions obsolete. Over the past decade, the pace of such changes impacting business enterprises has become more fickle and more rapid than at anytime in the past. Most of us are aware of the bloodbath in the desktop computer industry that eliminated many companies competing for business worldwide. However, some companies realized that the only performance outcomes that matter are the ones the customers really care about. They have been savvy in tailoring and growing their customer value propositions around what the customers really needed rather than what they wanted to sell to customers. Dell has been an agile player that has been able to refine and play the game of 'doing the right thing' again and again, first in desktops and later in web hosting, printers, PDAs, and storage. In the longer run, companies that can figure out the 'next right thing' and prepare well in advance to ride the next wave will be more effective in the longer run. However, it goes without saying that 'doing the thing right' also matters once you have figured out what the next cash cow will be.

KM…Is it the ultimate competitive advantage?
Knowledge is the ultimate competitive advantage only if understood from an action-oriented perspective. All the information technologies and data cannot assure competitive advantage in the long-term, nor do decisions that are made - if made at all - drawing upon insights hidden in information and data. Only translating information and decisions into actionable value propositions can assure competitive advantage. Hence, in this perspective, knowledge lies in action: in effective utilization of data and information resources for actionable decisions and, most importantly, in execution. As elaborated earlier, business managers need to define and continuously refine their business value propositions to ensure that they are not marginalized by radical discontinuous change. Therefore, this knowledge management strategy and its execution with the aid of information, communication, and collaboration technologies can provide a greater chance at being 'great' than is otherwise possible.
GE Workout
Two defining aspects of the Work-Out
1. Employees have to be able to make suggestions to their bosses face-to-face.
2. Employees have to be able to get a response – on the spot, if possible.

Key benefits of the Work-Out
• Reduces bureaucracy
• Empowers people
• Continuously reinvents ever-more-effective ways of doing business

Work-Out's four major goals
1. Build Trust. Encouraging employees to speak out critically inside the company about GE and the way they perform their jobs without negative consequences to their careers.
2. Empower Employees. Capitalizing on employees' knowledge and their unique perspective through granting them more power in exchange for expecting them to take more responsibility for their jobs.
3. Eliminate Unnecessary Work. Getting employees work smarter, not harder.
4. Create a New Paradigm for GE. Letting GE employees define and create a boundaryless organization in which the entire workforce works toward common goals. Encouraging employees to identify problems and come up with solutions.
5. Technologies to support Knowledge Management

There are a number of technologies commonly thought of when the term "knowledge management is intoned. The following diagram depicts the technologies that support knowledge management systems:

• Work flow
• Extranets
• Project management
• Document management
• Groupware
• Data warehouse
• Decision support systems
• Intranets
• Web conferencing

Pitfalls
KM has very few downsides as such. The problems that arise are basically due to
• Inadequate planning and implementation of the KM program in an organization.
• Non-integration of KM into the core operations of the business.
• Not adapting/size fitting the knowledge gained from one process for another.
• Insufficient career pathing for individuals interested in KM thereby reducing overall salability of the concept.


Two Defining Aspects of the Work-Out
1. Employees have to be able to make suggestions to their bosses face-to-face.
2. Employees have to be able to get a response – on the spot, if possible.

Key Benefits of the Work-Out
· Reduces bureaucracy
· Empowers people
· Continuously reinvents ever-more-effective ways of doing business
Work-Out's Four Major Goals
1. Build Trust. Encouraging employees to speak out critically inside the company about GE and the way they perform their jobs without negative consequences to their careers.
2. Empower Employees. Capitalizing on employees' knowledge and their unique perspective through granting them more power in exchange for expecting them to take more responsibility for their jobs.
3. Eliminate Unnecessary Work. Getting employees work smarter, not harder.
4. Create a New Paradigm for GE. Letting GE employees define and create a boundaryless organization in which the entire workforce works toward common goals. Encouraging employees to identify problems and come up with solutions.

The paradoxical nature of knowledge
A few of the fundamental concepts supporting knowledge management are now being questioned. Critics say that “Knowledge is not a “thing”, or a system, but an ephemeral, active process of relating. If one takes this view then no one, let alone a corporation, can own knowledge. Knowledge itself cannot be stored, nor can intellectual capital be measured, and certainly neither of them can be managed.” For all that this extreme position does bring out that mainstream theory and practice have adopted a Kantian epistemology in which knowledge is perceived as a thing, something absolute, awaiting discovery through scientific investigation. The question of the manageability of knowledge is not just an academic one. Organizations have increasingly discovered that the tacit and explicit distinction tends to focus on the container, rather than the thing contained.

Three heuristics illustrate the change in thinking required to manage knowledge:
1. Knowledge can only be volunteered; it cannot be conscripted for the very simple reason that one can never truly know if someone is using his or her knowledge. I can know they have complied with a process or a quality standard. But, we have trained managers to manage conscripts not volunteers.
2. We can always know more than we can tell, and we will always tell more than we can write down. The nature of knowledge is such that we always know, or are capable of knowing more than we have the physical time or the conceptual ability to say. I can speak in five minutes what it will otherwise take me two weeks to get.
Knowledge in professional service firms
From a personal point of view, being part of a professional services firm, I would say the most simple and humble question would be “what is knowledge?” From strategic and organizational management perspective, it would be easier to look at knowledge in terms of what it is not. It is not data and it is not information. Data are objective facts, presented without any judgment or context. Data become information when categorized, analyzed, and placed in context. Information, therefore, is data endowed with relevance and purpose. Information develops into knowledge when it is used to establish connections, make comparisons, and assess consequences. Knowledge can be seen as information that comes laden with experience, judgment, and values.

The primary activity of a professional service firm is the application of specialized technical knowledge to the creation of customized solutions to clients’ problems. Technical and client-based knowledge are, therefore, the key income-generating assets.

The technical knowledge of a professional service firm encompasses sectoral, organizational, and individual forms of knowledge. Sectoral knowledge is generic, widely shared by all firms in a specific sector, and may be formally codified through the syllabus of professional exams. Organizational knowledge is firm-specific and consists of distinctive products and processes which have been developed and disseminated within a firm, either through formalized knowledge management systems or through ad hoc methods of apprenticeship and socialization. Individual technical knowledge is proprietary to each professional and is derived from his or her previous work experience, education, and unique mix of client assignments.

Knowledge represents a source of power for individuals, particularly within a professional service firm. By sharing valuable knowledge with a colleague you run the risk of diminishing your value to your firm. Potentially you are no longer indispensable. To put forward an argument, knowledge should be shared with a colleague, management, or organization under three conditions. The first is reciprocity. Your time and energy are finite; you will only take the time if you think you are likely to receive valuable knowledge in return at some future point. The second is reputation enhancement. It is in your interests to be viewed as an expert within your organization; if you do not have a reputation for expertise your knowledge cannot represent a source of power. The third is altruism (or self-gratification). There will be some subjects you care passionately about and you will seek opportunities to discuss them with others. Sharing of knowledge could be viewed as exchange between "buyers" and "sellers", with reciprocity, reputation, and altruism/self-gratification functioning as payment mechanisms.

The distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge is not absolute. Much of our knowledge remains tacit simply because we have not attempted to make it explicit. It is this unarticulated yet codifiable knowledge that presents the greatest opportunity for knowledge-sharing within organizations. As outlined below, this process of knowledge-sharing is far from straightforward.
Knowledge and power shift
As quoted in futurist Alvin Toffler’s Power Shift, We are all in a power shift era. Power deals with knowledge and the role it plays in our lives. Inadequacy of knowledge leaves one alone in the battle, in war or in marketplace. Knowledge, utilization of knowledge, and retention of knowledge are the keys to success. Alvin Toffler gives many examples on how knowledge has changed lives in his incredible book Power Shift. Knowledge leads one to power, the power that would not be questioned by others. But the shifting of power has become more fluid; it can shift from one person to another quickly.

To begin with, the chanting nature of economies across the world from agrarian to industrialized and not to service-oriented, knowledge has emancipated the possessors in overcoming the obstacles. Manufacturers were once in control before our digital age. One example Alvin talks about is the Gillette razor company and the power it had. Gillette had all the control of its product in the beginning. Gillette controlled how many razors went in each store. How many different styles/brands of Gillette’s a store would display. The store owner had no control. To quote another example, while pursuing a major bank networking account, AT&T used knowledge management tools to integrate a global sales team’s efforts. The company set up an interactive web site offering competitive research fed by timely information from the field, which was accessed by the sales force. IT gave the team the agility to win the deal during an arduous sales cycle. Based on its success, AT&T began using knowledge management techniques to support its entire global sales force.

Scene 1: Earlier, manufacturers used to keep their competition running because of the information they knew. They had the know-how how to gather knowledge about their consumers. From this knowledge power was born. The invention of bar-codes shifted power from the manufacturer to the retailer. Bar-codes reveal a lot of information about the consumer. A retailer now has information about their consumer from these bar-codes. The invention of computers for bar-codes has shifted the power from the manufacture to the retailer. The reason….knowledge management.

Scene 2: Today these same manufacturers beg for space in stores. Retailers know what the customer wants from the information it collects through its barcode system. A very good example of how power can shift because of knowledge management and use of technology. Deeper knowledge permits us to reach high speed levels that produce items as a faster and better efficiency.

Invention and innovation in network computing and Internet has opened the floodgates of information the world to anyone. LANs and WANs can connect companies across the globe. It doesn't discriminate with the nature of the information to be sought the gateway to the information is only a 'click' away. Organizations are becoming increasingly dependent on their electronic networks for billing, ordering, tracking, and trading; for the exchange of design specifications, engineering drawings and schedules; and for actually controlling production lines remotely. Once regarded as purely administrative tools, networked information systems are increasingly seen as strategic weapons, helping companies protect established markets and attack new ones.

Conclusion
In summary, Knowledge Management involves connecting people with people, as well as people with information. Creating competitive advantage today requires developing and leveraging organizational knowledge. Leading edge firms consider their knowledge to be a strategic asset and actively and explicitly manage it as such. It is a management philosophy, which combines good practice in purposeful information management with a culture of organizational learning, in order to improve business performance. It's up to you to lead your teams to craft, communicate, and instill KM practices throughout your organization. Knowledge for its own sake does not help the organization unless it turns into action. To add value, give a competitive edge, create new opportunities, and improve profit, organizations, teams and individuals will have to make a real change in the way they see and do things. This means going beyond analyzing, reporting, benchmarking and sharing. They have to transform information and knowledge into action.
Group members:

What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge Management:
What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management (KM) is the process of identifying, collecting, organizing, and maintaining information. The information that is captured and made available for retrieval is referred to as a knowledge database.

Why we need KM?
Organizations everywhere have realized that their most valuable asset is the knowledge they generate. This knowledge has largely remained uncollected, unorganized, and mostly untapped. To add to that, technology is overwhelming us with more information than we can handle.
What are the benefits of KM?
Organizational efficacy
Growth in core competencies; explores any room for diversification
Rate of invention and innovation
Employee growth and learning opportunities
What involves Knowledge Management?
Facilitating the processes by which knowledge is created, shared, and used in organizations.
Making small changes to the way everyone in the organization works.
Convergence of changing organizational values and culture, changing people's behaviors and work patterns.
About people - how they create, share and use knowledge
Few approaches to Knowledge Management: Some perspectives
Techno-Centric
Ecological/Ergonomical
Convergence of people and technology
Schools of thought in knowledge management
Asset
Process
System

Key Concepts
Knowledge Management and Information Technology
Forces/Drivers behind knowledge management
External
Internal
Ongoing

What’s New
Interorganizational Knowledge Management

Is KM Really About Profit

Knowledge Management in R&D Environments

Dollars and Sense of KM,

Social Capital and Knowledge Markets

Knowledge Workers and Why Managers Resist Change

Success of Intranets

Corporate Storytelling

Is Knowledge Management an Oxymoron
The road ahead

CLOUD SEEDING what and why?

CLOUD SEEDING what and why?


Every cloud has a silver lining. One of the elements of nature and the basic need of human life to survive on this blue planet is water. Water as time passed became a scarce resource and we have started looking skywards for relief. The sight of a dark cloud in the horizon of a summer sky most definitely would bring on a smile, as the cloud is the beginning of the hope that it might bring with it a shower to cool the temperatures down. More so when this is a cloud that is spotted in a drought effected area, where the only source of water is if the gods above so decide.

All of us know what a cloud is. But the concept of cloud seeding does conjure images of someone up in the sky planting seeds of clouds. Cloud seeding in its basic form is the method of weather modification. The uses of cloud seeding can be used to increase precipitation. First we need to understand how clouds are formed and how precipitation takes place.
Warm air that rises from above earth’s surface cool down into droplets of water which are the smallest component of a cloud. These droplets contain dust, salt, or soil present in the atmosphere, called cloud droplets, which group together to form a large cloud. Cloud precipitation can happen in any one of the two ways. During the warmer temperatures millions of cloud droplets join to form a single droplet in a cloud and during cooler temperatures the same droplets from crystals of ice which when heavy or large fall back on to the ground as rain, snow, or hail.
The complex process of cloud seeding can be explained in a simple way as introduction of other particles into a cloud to enhance condensation and precipitation. The three methods of cloud seeding are static mode, dynamic mode, and hygroscopic seeding.
In the static mode of cloud seeding rainfall is created by adding silver iodide or dry ice to cold clouds. Vertical air currents are enhanced in the dynamic mode whereby heavier clouds are harvested as much larger number of ice crystals are used than in the static mode. Releasing of salt crystals is called hygroscopic seeding, this is done with the help of airplanes or through rockets launched from the ground.
Why cloud seeding[1]:
From scientific community point of view, as only a small part of the available moisture in clouds is transformed into precipitation that reaches the surface, what this mean is that scientists and engineers could explore more possibilities of augmenting water supplies by means of cloud seeding. If more water could be transformed into precipitation, the potential benefits appear very attractive.
However, there has been a lot of debate about the effectiveness of this form of inducing rain. First and foremost people see this as man’s intervention of nature. Many see it as stealing of rain from another area. All this debate has led to quite a few arguments as to the boundaries of cloud seeding and weather tampering. People argue that it is difficult to measure the amount of natural precipitation when it is orchestrated.
However, there is clinching evidence from the scientific community that supports this methodology especially that of winter cloud seeding in hilly areas when compared to warmer counterparts. Societies like the Weather Modification Association, World Meteorological Association, and American Meteorological Society affirm the same.
History behind those clouds
The seeds of this method of cloud harvesting were sown by a scientist Irving Langmuir and the first such attempts were made in Massachusetts in 1946. Scientist Bernard Vonnegut takes the credit for using silver iodide in cloud seeding. Silver iodide and carbon dioxide ice is used to start winter snowfall and to stop hail.
The first organization that start cloud seeding in a commercial way was Irving P. Crick and Associates of Palm Springs[2], California in 1970 and the contract work for the Oklahoma State University in 1972 was conducted to increase the dying water resources of Stillwater lake in Oklahoma. The most successful of the experiments was conducted in Snowy Mountains.
The forerunner in this field is China, which increases rainfall in its driest regions through cloud seeding. Increased usage of this method by China has subjected it to much criticism from neighboring countries which soon realized that China’s gain was their loss.
Cloud seeding in India
After much thought, the Southern Indian states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have tried to test cloud-seeding operations for rains in drought-hit areas. After almost 55 years what started as an experiment is giving meaningful commercial results thus increasing the viability of using this procedure to augment rain.
In Karnataka, “Project Varuna” was launched in September 2003. According to the official reports, this operation achieved almost 95% success. An average rainfall of 50-70 mm was observed and recorded in Haveri, Gadag, Bagalkot, Bijapur, Koppal, Raichur, Gulbarga and Bellary districts.
In Andhra Pradesh: Faced with erratic rainfall in the decade gone, by Andhra Pradesh government on July 21, 2004, launched cloud-seeding operations in 10 of the state's districts. This was carried on for a period of 105 days. The state government has engaged aircrafts from Banagalore and the selected districts of Anantapur, Chittoor, Cuddapah and Kurnool in Rayalaseema, Mahbubnagar, Nalgonda and Rangareddy in Telangana and Guntur, Prakasam and Nellore received artificial rain. This project was named “Project Varuna” with a planned outlay of Rs.12 crores. In Andhra Pradesh also, this experiment resulted in moderate success with about 50-70 mm rainfall observed in
Boon or ban?
Theoretically, "cloud seeding" can work only for clouds containing super-cooled water droplets (i.e. in a metastable condition) by initiating ice nucleation. But even without cloud seeding this may happen...may be at a different time and place. Should humans intervene to decide the time and place, as it could be a highly sensitive issue? We can, therefore, never be sure if cloud seeding will work because clouds in meta-stable condition can always result in a rainfall with or without cloud seeding. The large investment thus could go futile. It is also not a proven fact that cloud seeding is a success. It is strongly debated and there is a growing suspicion among people about it. To add more, there is no evidence to support that Silver Iodide is a nontoxic chemical. It is likely to be toxic when ingested. A wide-scale use may make it evident. Silver ions can be very toxic to small for life forms and can get concentrated in plants.
Commercial use:
Cloud seeding is also used in some instances to reduce the size of hailstones (Small pellet of ice that falls during a hailstorm), and to reduce the amount of fog in and around airports. Cloud seeding is also occasionally used by major ski resorts to induce snow fall.
Will it work???
It would be too early to predict the future outcomes of cloud seeding. However, with the available and observed data, it could be concluded that cloud seeding would work only if there are suitable rain-bearing clouds in the region. The energy involved in weather systems is so large that it is impossible to create artificially rainstorms or to alter wind patterns to bring water vapor into a region," pointed out the executive council of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) at its meeting a few years ago[3]. There is still no convincing scientific proof of the efficacy of intentional weather modification efforts," concluded a committee appointed by the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) in a recent report. In some instances there were strong indications of induced changes, but this evidence had not been subjected to tests of significance and reproducibility.
To establish credibility of cloud seeding, a lot more scientific research and observation would be needed. Also, funding from state and central governments and other scientific research agency would certainly be a boost to this endeavor.
[1] Source: http://www.rap.ucar.edu, http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40383000/gif/_40383115_cloud_seeding203.gif
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
[3] Source: www.wmo.ch/web/arep/wmp/STATEMENTS

“Where do you want to go today?”

“Where do you want to go today?” "Embrace, extend, and extinguish"
Is your business people ready

A few catchy slogans of Microsoft in the last few years; testament to the importance of change management and learning organization. The success stories are endless…the reasons...embrace risk, encourage employees to make mistake, learn from those mistake (“do not repeat”). As proverbial saying goes…Edison learnt 1000 ways of how not to make a bulb. Compliment innovation and invention; result a win-win situation for everyone.

Organizational culture…defined as a set of values, beliefs, and understanding shared by the organization and its people. How does it take an organization to higher levels of competitiveness and success is critical when we analyze the implications of it. Does it help promote the shared values among employees or does it create rifts (due to culture shock/indifferences/self denial). Only those companies which have a learning and adaptive culture remain competitive in the long run. Whether it’s 7 Ss or APRIL, high performance, results, and returns are the factor that determines the success.

Also, cultural assumptions stifle and advocate management propaganda and ideology. Complexities and nuances of cultures often overlap.

Why change management or to say organizational change fails? Because management ignores the early warning signs of discomfort, inadequate communication, and often a top-down approach of decision making which leaves a very little room for negotiation.

Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y popularized Human Relations approach and lead the foundation of many other management schools of thoughts. However, depending on circumstance and both internal/external forces, an employee who is X could become a Y employee.

But often the companies who operate in an uncertain environment, it becomes difficult to adopt the best practices and thereby stay tuned. Companies like 3M’s Post-It pads gives credence to the idea champion who are harbinger of creativity and innovation, but surely there would have been numerous such inventions which never reach to the production line. Dichotomy of assessment and goals, resistance to change, and often overlooking any force that affects organizational goals explain why change management fails.

The ugly face of the organization, whether by design or default, leaves a huge negative impact on the individual and society. Take Pyramid of Egypt or use of cheap foreign labor by Wal-Mart, both are examples of organizational domination and exploitation. However,; whistleblowers (Face of the year: Enron, Sharon Watkins) are nowadays recognized and suitably awarded for their courage and stand.