[Sigia-l] Buzzwords (was microcontent - a definition?)

[Tanya Rabourn]

> celebrity blogger and VC. VCs are about as up-to-the-minute on 
> buzzwords as
> anyone on the web terrain. They chase buzzwords, they help create them 
> and
> then cash in on them. You do the (rest of the) math. Personally, I 
> don't

This discussion reminded me of an essay I read a few months ago. In his 
essay for "the biology of business,"[1] Brook Manville gives an 
interesting take on knowledge management and buzzwords. If I understand 
him correctly, he claims that he found the traditional means of 
maintaining an enterprise taxonomy inadequate for knowledge discovery 
for their intranet since their field relied on inventing buzzwords to 
market. Using traditional methods seemed to give weight to terms that 
had been reified. However, it was the loosely defined, poorly 
understood buzzwords that were their commerce.

On the whole I was pretty disappointed with the description of his 
solution, but it's an interesting problem to think about.

1. pgs. 89-111 "Complex Adaptive Knowledge Mangagement, A Case from 
McKinsey & Company"

-Tanya