Knowledge Map

Last night I started working on something I'm going to call my "Knowledge Map". I haven't finalized how I will depict this, for now it is a list. The list contains domains that I have worked in or studied. Some of the items on the list are:

• Business Models


• Evolution


• Profitability


• Customer Service


• Logistics


• Process Design


• Supply Chain/Demand Pipeline


• "Lean"


• Behavior


• Technology


• Development


• Management


• Branding


• Marketing


• Psychology


• Sales


• Advertising


• Six Sigma


• Accounting


• Etc.

Each category will contain books, articles, ideas, links, etc.

What I am thinking is some type of "drill down" capability that allows me to show both the functionality of a business unit as well as its key enablers. Each unit would more than likely have multiple enablers and those enablers might support multiple functional units.

One thing that I really like is the idea of Functional Mutualism: the advantageous alignment/association of two or more functional areas of a business. I'm hoping that creating this "map" will enable me to more clearly identify associations/dependencies between units in an organization as well as construct ideas and solutions that improves the velocity (and output quality) of the entire organization.

Comments

[Chuckie]

I had thought of doing this, not for an organization, but as a way to track personal knowledge management.

It sounds like a good idea, good luck.

[Marc Orchant]

Jon - interesting concept. You might consider using a mind mapping tool to start the visualization process. It's terrific technique for visualizing the relationships between the nodes. I recommend Mindjet MindManager. It's a robust application with great hooks to Office apps and MS Project.