nitram 's Profile

To participate in the growing Chickenfoot community, you can:


• Join the mailing lists:
  
  
  
  chickenfoot-announce@csail.mit.edu receives low-traffic
  announcements of new releases
  
  
  
  chickenfoot-users@csail.mit.edu allows Chickenfoot users
  to talk to each other and exchange ideas

This article examines the nature and the generation, dissemination and translation of knowledge in large, global management consulting organizations. The knowledge system in consulting organizations is modelled as consisting of three interacting knowledge elements: methods and tools, providing a common language and knowledge structure; cases, carrying knowledge in a narrative form; and the experience of individual consultants that is essential for the adaptation of methods, tools and cases to the specific consulting project.

A number of recent studies have characterized knowledge-management strategies as focusing on either articulate knowledge or tacit knowledge. We argue that a fruitful understanding of knowledge management in management consulting requires attention to the relations between the different elements that represent different kinds of knowledge. Based on case studies in Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and Ernst & Young Management Consulting (now Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) these knowledge elements and the interplay between them are identified and analysed.

The main role of articulate knowledge is not to replace experience, but rather to support the generation, dissemination and use of it. A number of consequences of this conceptualization of the knowledge system are discussed in tenns of the ability of the knowledge system to generate different types of learning and the complementarity of structural and individual knowledge.

Microsoft is proud of the results of our massive investment in usability and innovative user interface design for Office 2007.  We are offering a licensing opportunity to the broader software community that enables licensees to share the benefits from our research and development in the Office UI. 

The program provides licensees the rights to make their licensed products look and behave like Office 2007.  Licensees will receive design guidelines that they will reference in the creation of their own applications.  (The program does not involve code or technical specifications and there are no protocols or file formats either.)   

There has been tremendous interest from our ISV partners to create applications that look and act like our new innovative Office UI.  We wanted to create an easy way for them to do that while protecting our large R&D investment.  Through this program Microsoft is making available an opportunity for others to take advantage of our stunning new UI in a way that’s good for the ecosystem, the customer, and Microsoft. 

You will be able to license the UI via a simple click-through agreement on our website. You will also register your products that use the UI on the same website.   

The license is provided at no cost. It is a royalty-free license.    

No. Any software product that complies with the license agreement may implement elements of the UI.

The license is available for applications on any platform, except for applications that compete directly with the five Office applications that currently have the new UI (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access). We wanted to make the IP available broadly to partners because it has benefits to Microsoft and the Office Ecosystem. At the same time, we wanted to preserve the uniqueness of the Office UI for the core Office productivity applications.