Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent KM reference and "How to Do It" book!, October 2, 2003
This book is a must read for analysts, their managers and analytic solutions developers.Ed Waltz's newest book "Knowledge Management in the Intelligence Enterprise" capitalizes quite handily on the theoretical and practical aspects of "information theory" as presented in his previous book "Information Warfare Principles and Operations" and his extensive contacts and experience with the U.S. Intelligence Community. Waltz's book provides a comprehensive reference that readily marries the technologies, techniques and latest theories and practices of Knowledge Management with the priorities, real-world evolutionary pressure, culture and tradecraft of the U. S. Intelligence Community. He artfully covers the complex trade offs between organizational culture, social trends, real-world realities and analytical innovation. There are more good ideas and success paths identified within its pages than any other book that I have read in the Knowledge Management field. His insights and prescribed solutions warrant close study and contemplation by anyone involved in developing, fielding or using advanced analytical methods whether they are in government or private industry. This book is not a "coffee table" book or a Clancy page turner, but could easily serve as a graduate level text book for developing, fielding and using advanced analytical methods against a wide range of challenging problems. His writing style is very methodical and concise. He is rigorous in citing authoritative sources and his writings are extensively footnoted. (The extensive footnotes and associated hyperlinks may well be worth the price of the book alone.) Mr. Waltz is currently the Technical Director of Intelligence Systems at Veridian.
|
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magnum Opus for Organizational Decision-Making, November 2, 2005
Ed Waltz has produced a book that is far more useful and important than its title or intended audience suggest. It is perhaps the single finest soup-to-nuts how-to manual on how an organization can design its decision-making processes to maximize utility, whether this takes the form of national security or profit or anything in between.
Waltz covers knowledge management (KM) encyclopedically, from the intake of data on the external and internal environments (e.g., the market or the battlespace and the organization's own capabilities and situation), through the processing and assessment of the data, to its finished state as an input to rational decision-making. Topics include the basic principles of intelligence in the classic national security sense, through the epistemology and methodology of knowledge-creation and -management, the characteristics of a learning organization, analytical and synthetic methods, and the IT implications -- what network, data and computational systems and tools are required to implement advanced organizational learning, and the power these can confer.
The unexpected importance of the book lies in its applicability across the entire spectrum of organizational planning and decision-making. In this regard, 'intelligence' is simply a rubric for information and knowledge, which can be applied to national intelligence, military planning, and in fact to all governmental agencies, private-sector corporations, law firms, hospitals, etc. -- all organizations, that is, that plan and decide based on data and analysis -- which would seem to cover most of them.
Waltz emphasizes the information-technological dimensions of KM and ideal reasoning processes organizations need to implement. The only topic that remains to be discussed involves human cognition, group processes and organizational culture and specifically how these behavioral tendencies impede perfect rationality and how management can overcome this impediment. Psychologists, however, have provided a substantial literature on cognition, while basic research and theory in the socio-cultural dimensions remains immature.
For organizational managers who have read the theoretical literature on learning organizations and knowledge management (e.g., Peter Senge and Nonaka & Takeuchi), Waltz's volume is the practical and technical handbook for actual corporate implementation. Given its value, its price, which is steep for individuals, is a pittance for those who need it most.
Moreover, for a technical treatise that warrants close study, the book is surprisingly easy to read. Although packed with complex concepts and interrelated processes, the graphics are extensive and clear and the text is engaging. The reader feels like he is receiving a personal briefing by the author, who now (2005) is Chief Scientist of BAE Systems Advanced Information Technologies.
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful and well documented, June 20, 2004
The information in this book is applicable to a wide variety of organizations. It is packed full of visual models and tables. The literature is cited appropriately and not excessively. It is a small book but not a quick read. It contains insights that I have not seen in other places, such as a brief reference to the relevance to Jungian personality theory (as implemented by Myers and Briggs) to the design of a collaborative culture. I think the book is worth the price because of the number and quality of the insights it contains. The author writes clearly. There is some use of symbolic logic and formulas. Most of the ideas are communicated in text and/or by visual models.
|
|
|
|
by Edward Waltz
by Mark M. Lowenthal
See all 82 books this book cites
