At Coherent Partners we practice what we preach. Part of that effort is investing time in expanding our own knowledge and sharing that emerging understanding as a way of developing it even further.

In our essays we capture what's compelling about each topic and how it's relevant to your problems. We'd welcome an opportunity to discuss these papers, believing that conversation among a community of interest always improves understanding. Contact us with your reactions and we promise no salesperson, spam, or mutant snail-mail will mysteriously appear on your doorstep… at least not from us.

These papers also appear as a regular column in the IT News section of Wisconsin Technology News.

Dateline 2010: The Decade in Review (PDF)
We all know how good 20/20 hindsight is. In this paper, we use a little "pro-active" hindsight to imagine what this decade will look like from the vantage point of 2010. Like any predictions, these are probably more useful for the thought they stimulate than for their absolute accuracy.

Best Practices or Not (PDF)
Businesses that jump on the World Class Best Practices bandwagon are often disappointed. What may be 'best' for one organization, may be inappropriate for another. Often employees sense this long before managers. This paper explores how to get value from Best Practices without being hampered by them.

Intranets and Users Who Love to Hate Them (PDF)
Both users and creators of corporate intranets are frustrated. In a recent Moreover survey, 58% of respondents said the Internet was their primary information resource at work, but only 11% considered the Intranet to be their main source of information. Given all the money and effort that's gone into intranet sites, why do users find so little value in them?

Draining the Information Swamp (PDF)
The first thing to do when draining a swamp is to stop random inputs of more water. With an information swamp, information needs to be managed better as it is captured and created.We need better planning, not bigger pipes.

Sizing Up the Bill for the Information Revolution (PDF)
The days of technology for technology's sake are long gone and not much mourned. However, the recent round of cost cutting hasn't led towards an obviously more valuable and satisfying technology portfolio either. Companies are left knowing they have to invest in IT somehow, but wanting more confidence that the dollars they spend will achieve results for the bottom line.

The Old Economy vs. the New Economy: Isn't That Monster Dead Yet? (PDF)
If we listen to the hyperboleers, we might believe there is a B-movie style, winner-take-all, battle of the monsters going on between the new economy and the old economy. But in the real world, both economies have a role to play. The old economy represents the expertise we use to produce objects, and the new econony represents the growing importance of the knowledege and experience attached to those objects.

Knowledge Assets: Golden Eggs (PDF)
Knowledge assets are all over the organization. Like eggs in a hen house, some of them are obvious and some of them are hidden. And only a few of them are golden. How do we make sure we're finding and supporting the best ideas and the knowledge assets that create them?

The Knowledge Management Dilemma: Resolving the Oxymoron (PDF)
Any leader wading into Knowledge Management faces a dilemma. Knowledge lives in people and it resists traditional management techniques. What starts out as a simple plan to re-use business-critical knowledge can rapidly become an exercise in engineering corporate culture. Is there a way to encourage knowledge-driven organizations without falling into the trap of trying to manage the unmanageable?