The subtitle of this book is “The Art of Scanning the Environment”.
The nub of Choo’s thesis is that an organisation posseses intelligence. That is, organisations take in information, materials and energy. These are transformed into knowledge, processes and structures that produce goods and services. Thus it can be seen that organisations are at once:
– information processing systems
– decision making systems
– interpretation systems
That work with three classes of knowledge:
– tacit
– rule-based
– cultural
And so to be successful, an organisation, an intelligent organistion if you will, must adapt its behaviour according to its internal and external environment. In other words, an intelligent organisation is a learning organisation.
And so how to learn? Choo states that a climate that encourages learning, designing information processes and systemns that promote knowledge creation and use, and recognises and manages intellectual assets are the keys to successful learning organisations.
Sounds a lot like the climate required for successful innovation culture!
And so there are two factors for success:
– flow of intelligence: related to attributes of connecting, sharing, structuring information
– industry foresight: deep understanding of trends & discontinuitied in technology, demographics, government regulation & social lifestyle
Choo’s “Information Managament Process Model:
– identify information needs
– information acquisition
– information acquisition and storage
– develop information products and services
– information distribution
– information use
About environmental scanning. There are 4 styles:
– undirected viewing: information exposure with no purpose or need in mind
– conditioned viewing: information exposure about selected areas with assessment in mind
– informal search: limited & unstructured information search to address a specific issue
– formal search: deliberate effort to obtain specific information
Taking note of the definition of environmental scanning which is “the acquisition and use of information about trends, events and relationships in an organisation’s external environment which would assist management in planning the organisation’s future course of action”.
Finally, when it comes to implementing, distributing and using the information products & services there are a couple of key questions:
– can users find data to solve their problems
– how do systems add value to the data
For me, this book shows that a healthy organisation, just like an individual, is characterised by a bias toward learning.
IT Considerations 
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