Mobile Applications for Knowledge Management, Collaboration and Human Progress

I am very interested in mobile enterprise applications that deliver collaboration and knowledge management functionality.  I believe these solutions will revolutionize businesses that use them.  I saw three of these applications at Sapphire this year that I describe later in this article. 

First let me share a very interesting article by Matt Ridley that was recently published in the Wall Street Journal on May 22-23, 2010, Humans: Why They Triumphed.  Here are some excerpts:

• Collective intelligence is the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural progress or change in a population is the amount of interaction between individuals.
• The sophistication of the modern world lies not in individual intelligence or imagination, rather, it is a collective enterprise.
• Exchange stimulated innovation by bringing together different ideas. Exchange and collective intelligence is the key to human progress.
• Once human beings started swapping things and thoughts they stumbled upon divisions of labor, in which specialization led to mutually beneficial collective knowledge. Specialization encourages and promotes innovation. 
• The process of cumulative innovation that has doubled life span, cut child mortality by three-quarters and multiplied per capita income nine-fold-world-wide in little more that a century is driven by the exchange of ideas.

Mr. Ridley believes that the interactive nature of the internet, rather than dumbing down people, will in fact lead to an explosion of new ideas and inventions! Online collaboration and the sharing of idea through blogs, tweets, online forums and discussion groups lead to an increase in knowledge.  I believe the three mobile applications that I saw at Sapphire will do just that.

The mobile collaboration and knowledge management tools that I saw at Sapphire were:

• SAP's Expert Link (a proof-of-concept for internal use only developed by Leapfactor)
• SAP's Streamworks - SAP StreamWork brings together people inside or outside your organization with information for fact-based decision-making and interactive business tools for collecting feedback, strategizing, and brainstorming.
• Open Text Everywhere - As the enterprise moves away from a fixed and location-centric work setting to a dispersed mobile world; the ability to interconnect people, the processes and the core content regardless of where and when becomes a necessity and a competitive differentiator.

For more details on these applications you can watch a short video from Kevin's Video Comments - Kevin on mobile collaboration and knowledge management applications.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
CEO/Principal Consultant, Netcentric Strategies LLC
http://www.netcentric-strategies.com/
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://twitter.com/krbenedict
***Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant and Web 2.0 marketing expert. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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