My Research Interests
Listed below are the areas I would like to research academically. One of the topics below, or most likely some combination of them, will comprise the focus of my eventual doctoral dissertation. My interests are interdisciplinary, but represent the intersection of humanity, technology and industry – themes relevant to the subjects I am currently teaching.
Collective Individualism: Also abbreviated as “collectividualism,” collective individualism is a knowledge management process that leverages the contributions of independent, but interconnected participants to solve a shared problem. I am interested in learning how businesses can understand and adapt their organizations to harness the power of this “I Win/We Win” philosophy.
Collective Intelligence: Collective intelligence is the capacity of human communities to evolve towards higher order complexity and harmony, through such innovation mechanisms as differentiation and integration, competition and collaboration. I am curious how people develop communities of practice around specific areas and how organizations can inspire the same kind of thinking in their operations.
Crowdsourcing: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a specific person and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people who work on the job. The risk with this strategy is that managers might misinterpret this as an opportunity to over-delegate and do nothing while they task their subordinates with endless responsibilities. My interest is in understanding how this philosophy can be operationalized to ensure the most beneficial results.
Distributed Computing: A method of computer processing designed to generate a solution by giving small pieces to many computers to solve and then combining the solutions for the parts into a larger whole. The idea operates on the fact that the process of solving a problem usually can be divided into smaller tasks, which may be carried out simultaneously with some coordination. I want to understand how tasks can best be broken into smaller pieces to maximize the human resources within an organization.
Maximizing Performance: I would like to understand how and why some organizations are able to elevate themselves beyond basic existence into a coveted realm of high performance within the framework of H.I.G.H. O.C.T.A.N.E. additives: humble, introspective, generative, hopeful, objective-driven, communicative, truthful, action-oriented, networked, and emotionally intelligent.
Social Media: Social media uses the Internet to enhance creativity, share information, and encourage collaborate among individual users connected across a network. I would like to learn how businesses use social media to make contacts, share information and build business. As a classroom and online teacher, I also want to investigate the impact of social media on the management and marketing of knowledge.
Revised: January 21, 2009
[...] was really a trailblazer in the current trend of virtual communities of practice, an area of my academic research interests. However, I know full well that whatever I read might not be [...]