My presentation on KM at the National HRD Network, Chennai Chapter's monthly meeting on Oct 29, 2010 held at Hotel Savera, Radhakrishnan Salai, Mylapore Chennai. Per the organizer's request, the presentation is more focused on the Social aspects of Cognizant's KM strategy.

1. © 2010, Cognizant Technology Solutions. All Rights Reserved.
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.
Sukumar Rajagopal
Senior Vice President, CIO & Head of Innovation
29 Oct 2010
For the National HRD Network, Chennai
Router Model of KM
Architecting the Culture of Participation

2. Today, the Social Media Revolution is Obvious
 Facebook 500MM+ users
 Twitter 100MM+ users, Billion+
Tweets
 Linkedin 60MM+ users
 100MM+ blogs crossed a while ago
 Wikipedia a major social
phenomenon
 Youtube – world changing as well
 Flickr
 ……
2
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Image source: thinkmedia.com.au

3. - Our Social Media Journey
3
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Cognizant 2.0 - Infoworld 2009 Top
100 Projects Award Winner
http://www.infoworld.com/t/it-
management/top-100-it-projects-
2009-860?page=0,3

4. 4
© 2010, Cognizant Technology Solutions. Proprietary & Confidential
Contribution Challenges – The 1% rule
1%
Rule
Wikipedia, Youtube,
Blogosphere…
Router
Model
How do I publish knowledge such that it is useful to others
and can be consumed easily by others? Especially when
Knowledge is in the “IKIWISI” world.

5. Leverage the Head Fake principle
Dr. Randy Pausch, Image courtesy - TIME.com
Video clip courtesy – http://www.thelastlecture.com
5
Click Anywhere on Penguin Image to Play Video

6. 6
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Drive Consumption
1%
Rule
1. Leverage viral effect – blogs, wikis, shared workspaces
2. Recommendation systems to recommend assets, Monthly Top
10 posts carnivals, Monthly Top 10 Forum posts….
3. Recognizing consumers – Ex: Top 100 commenters of the
quarter, Recognizing reuse of Top 10 Assets
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)

7. 7
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Productivity Gain through The Strength of Weak Ties
Adapted from: Andrew McAfee, Harvard Business School derived from Mark Grenovetter’s original landmark 1973 paper –
Strength of Weak Ties [http://www.stanford.edu/dept/soc/people/mgranovetter/documents/granstrengthweakties.pdf]
Wikis, Cweets, Blogs,
Knowledge Repositories
Blogs, Cweets, Forums,
Delivery Management
Workflow System, Process
Templates, Guidelines, Assets,
Defects, Metrics
Blogs, Cweets = Digital
Breadcrumbs
Idea Management System

8. 2 of the Most Common Objections
1. “They are blogging about movies and
jokes. And You call this Knowledge
Management ?”
2. “I bet only the people on the bench
(a.k.a Jobless) and the worst
performers are blogging”
8
© 2010, Cognizant Technology Solutions. Proprietary & Confidential
Flashback to the late 80s- “We will not
have cafeterias in-house because
people will sit and chat in the cafeteria
and waste time”

9. 5 Key Secondary Benefits
1. Higher employee engagement
2. Employees are building their networks. The
Top 1000 bloggers have a reach of 600+
employees (approx 1%). Movies/jokes are
the Social Grease.
3. Better connected employees produce Better
ideas 1 2
4. Ideas spread faster - Impact on Change
Management for Org-wide initiatives – CSR,
Go Green, Innovation
5. Onus of effective communication slowly
shifting to the communicator (unlike email)
– surprised by the emphasis on analytics
9
© 2010, Cognizant Technology Solutions. Proprietary & Confidential
1. Where to get a good idea – steal it outside your group
htttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/arts/22IDEA.html
2. Structural holes & Good ideas by Ronald Burt
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ronald.burt/research/SHGI.pdf
Abovementioned research spotted via http://bhc3.wordpress.com
Cognizant analyzed social media
contributions, particularly blogs. It
found that bloggers were more
engaged and satisfied than others
and performed about 10% better,
on average.
- Tom Davenport, Oct 2010, HBR

10. © 2010, Cognizant Technology Solutions. All Rights Reserved.
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.
Thank you