Screendragon Limited :: Creative Collaborative Environments

Collaborate Better

Mining the value of company knowledge

At Screendragon we believe that knowledge is only truly useful once it is ACTIVATED; That means once the user engages with it, is inspired by it and positively & passionately acts on it by applying it to the business. We call this Knowledge Activation.

Knowledge Activation is a move beyond thinking about delivering and managing content. It’s about moving from a mind set that optimises IT for the organisation to encompass optimising for teams and individuals.

We believe that Knowledge Activation comes from User Engagement. Sure you need best in class content delivery and content management. That is a given. It is the greens fees. User Engagement, however, is where we believe the competitive advantage lies.

Simply put: User Engagement + Content Management + Interaction = Knowledge Activation

Which raises the question: Why is user engagement so important?

User Engagement

Well, let’s look at it from a cost point of view; Organisations undertake costly & time consuming technology projects designed to communicate with employees, partners or consumers; or transfer knowledge and foster collaboration across global organizations.

With few exceptions they find these projects become more expensive than they anticipated and far less effective than they hoped for.

WHY? The single biggest factor is a complete breakdown at the user level. Said simply, USERS OPTED OUT, they refused to embrace & use the system. The system failed to engage the user.

Ying & Yang

All of which poses another question: If it’s important why is it so elusive?

Driving user engagement is both an art and a science. It’s a product of the holistic design of the underlying system, the design of the interface & the behaviour of the tool and the ongoing management of the tool and the knowledge within it.

We have found that most front line employees find the typical content delivery and management systems to be cumbersome, complicated, intimidating and time consuming – in every aspect, they find the system inhibited rather enabled the activation of knowledge.

How do smart companies get into this fix? They arrive at this sub optimal point because the criteria for evaluation were exclusively technical. Technology companies have lost their way because they have become too enamoured with software wizardry. Too often decisions are driven by technology; not driven by the consumer.

Systems that are optimised around the global enterprise and technology but not around the user don’t mine the latent value of the knowledge and talent of their organisation.

Knowledge activation only happens when you place the user at the center of the equation and make it a human problem not a technology problem. It comes from a deep understanding of how communication works, and most importantly, a deep respect for the HUMAN FACTOR.