MGT News
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Updated January 4, 2001

On January 25 - 30, 2001, Gail and Matt Taylor, of MG Taylor and knOwhere, Inc. will be in Davos, Switzerland facilitating several workshops during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. This year's focus: Sustaining Growth and Bridging the Divides: A Framework for Our Global Future

"By almost any measure, the world economy has never been stronger. We are just beginning to capitalize on the opportunities created by the Internet and associated information technologies and the boost of productivity they generate. The biotech revolution is upon us, creating an entirely new range of activities. And the absence of major international crises, or any overriding threat, is conducive to a more propitious climate for economic and social development.

But never before have the "divides" seemed so intractable: the divide between developed and developing countries; between those who have access to IT and benefit from the Internet revolution and those for whom the Internet is still a very distant dream; between the "knows" and the know-nots; between the countries where healthcare is a daily reality and the countries where even the most basic sanitary conditions are non-existent. The social, political and ethical challenges created by the cumulative impact of globalization and the IT and biotech revolutions are testing, in an unprecedented way, our leadership capabilities, our traditional ethical and moral compass, and our collective ability to devise approaches leading to a more inclusive global community.

The World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2001 in Davos will be a "must" opportunity to discuss strategies to "bridge the divides" and to sketch a roadmap for a global future. Bringing together top business and political leaders, concerned citizens and the world's most creative academic thinkers, the Annual Meeting will once again make a major contribution towards advancing the global agenda.

No other major international event creates such an interface between business, government, academia, civil society and the media. No other event puts key decision-makers together in one place, at one time, to tackle the major challenges facing the world. No other event can capture the spirit of Davos."

For more on the World Economic Forum and the upcoming meeting in Davos, visit
http://www.weforum.org

MG Taylor, in partnership with George Mason University, Knowing Journal, and Community Intelligence Labs is pleased to announce the commencement of the Knowledge Ecology Certificate Program.

KECP is an international, online certificate program offered through George Mason University.  KECP is a cutting-edge integration of diverse, complementary learnings from it's designers and faculty; thought leaders and practitioners.  This program is designed to involve you in seeding a "knowledge ecology" within your own organization as you learn.  Integrating theory and practice real-time, KECP blends the fields of Knowledge Management, Organizational Learning, Leadership, and Innovation. This Program is the first of its kind.

Why Knowledge Ecology?
Knowledge Ecology (KE) focuses on discovering better social and technical conditions for knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and use. It operates on the understanding that natural "learning organizations," like a forest or the human brain, are the best models we have for designing systems that create, sustain, and foster organizational learning and evolution.

KE is as important in the wider society as it is in business and government organizations. Its contribution starts with the emphasis on the fact that issues cannot be resolved simply by calling in policy-makers or experts. Systemic problems call for the input of a wide variety of people with diverse views and expertise, working together. They call for the active involvement of those people who are most closely connected to, and have a stake in the issues; the people with experience and an ongoing commitment and sense of responsibility to the matters at hand.

The focus of KE as a management discipline is the fact that when ideas matter we require organizational cultures in which people are able to share knowledge and are rewarded for doing so. It provides today's 'knowledge organizations' (where ideas are both the capital of business and the work that people do) with a new framework, principles and set of practices to replace the ideas about management that came out of the factory system of a century ago.

Visit the Knowledge Ecology Certificate Program Website for details of content, outcomes, dates, and costs, or contact Todd Johnston with any questions.

In Progress: In conjunction with the Knowledge Ecology Certificate Program, join Matt Taylor, Mark McMaster, Lisa Kimball, other thought leaders and peers in an online seminar and dialogue exploring the competencies of a "Knowledge Ecologist". By the end of this seminar, we will design together a source document on... "Who are knowledge ecologists and what roles do they play in today's knowledge economy?"

2000 Events and Activities

On May 19 - 21, 2000, MG Taylor, iterations, and the Palo Alto knOwhere store took part in the Foresight Institutes Spring 2000 Senior Associates Gathering: "Confronting Singularity." This marked the second consecutive Spring Gathering that the family of MG Taylor businesses has worked with the Foresight Institute. The design of this year's event was "composed of a variety of Patches, including DesignSession® events, Take-A-Panel® exercises, Dialogs, Work Groups, and Idea Futures, to name a few. Each of these Patches fed content into the Assembler Patch, which then synthesized the information, channeling particularly useful and insightful information back out into the Patches for further dialog, setting up a robust, emergent process that leveraged the knowledge and creativity of several hundred people to significantly advance the level of conversation in our society on nanotechnology and related issues."

Read participant comments from the 2000 Senior Associates gathering, and learn more on the conference subject matter.

MG Taylor will be a featured company and presenter at the Linkage, Inc. Practical Applications for Using Systems Thinking: Sustaining Competitive Business Advantage conference on April 6 in Cambridge, MA.

"The unique format of this program includes visionary keynote speaker presentations and case-studies from experienced systems thinking practioners, followed by two-hour, skill building sessions where you will have the opportunity to practice the tools and techniques." MG Taylor facilitators Patsy Kahoe and Lisa Piazza will be conducting a two-hour session on Identifying and Overcoming Barriers to Innovation.

MG Taylor presented their first ever Group Genius Awards during the recent 7 Domains™ Workshop at the Borgess Health Alliance Navigation Center on March 23, 2000. Master of Ceremonies, Todd Johnston, presented awards in the categories of Individual Knowledge Worker, Events and KreWs, and Facilities. For more on the award and those who received a "Groupie," visit the Group Genius pages.

DTE Energy and the MidWest Society for Organizational Learning Present "Communities of Practice" An MG Taylor Design Session™ Event at the DTE Energy Learning Zone June 16th, 2000

"Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on . . . the disciplined adult intelligence."
- Norman Podhoretz 1968

On Friday, June 16, MG Taylor Corporation facilitated a one-day Design Session event at the DTE Energy Learning Zone exploring "Communities of Practice." This one-day event introduced the Mid-West Society of Organizational Learning (SOL) community to an innovative, cutting-edge learning facility at DTE Energy and to a time-comrpressed experience of the MG Taylor® System and Method while exploring "communities" and its deeper meaning to SOL.

What is the Learning Zone?

DTE Energy has recently created a new unique space called the Learning Zone. An expression of the MG Taylor Navigation Center™ System, the Learning Zone is an evolving concept in a physical facility. Many programs and possibilities are under the umbrella of the Learning Zone. One of its primary tools is the leadership center concept. Enterprises build and use leadership centers to transform the way they work to exceed the demands of our high-speed information culture. They do this by integrating work process design, innovative architecture, technical systems and information management-tools, process and environment. It represent a systematic reinvention of the way people think, decide, and work together to accomplish organizational goals. They provide organizations with an enhanced capacity to anticipate, plan, and act.

The Learning Zone was invented to address the specific technological, social and economic conditions and opportunities facing organizations now and in the future. In their broadest terms, these conditions are characterized by a rapid and accelerating rate of change, and the inability of most organizations to effectively respond to that rate of change through traditional (typically incremental and linear) approaches.

We are pleased to announce that Fast Company has designated MG Taylor as a "fast company" in recognition of its unique and powerful contributions to the New Eonomy.

Click on the image to the left to learn more. . .

The April Knowledge Management Magazine includes a feature, Collaborative Forcasting, based on "The Evolution of Knowledge Management," a one-day Design Session co-sponsored by MG Taylor and knOwhere, Inc. The event took place at the Palo Alto knOwhere Store in January and included over 30 "thought-leaders" from a range of industry and academic sectors. Among the participants were Peter Schwartz, GBN co-founder; Matt Taylor, MG Taylor co-founder; Tom Davenport, author; Regis McKenna, author and management consultant; Nan Stone, former editor Harvard Business Review; Stewart Brand, author, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog andthe WELL; and John Kao, founder of the Idea Factory. The event was co-designed and co-sponsored by Global Business Network and Knowledge Management Magazine.

Note: Knowledge Management Magazine has removed the April 99 issue from their online archives. Copies are available in both knOwhere stores, or you may request one by email.

knOwhere Store featured in Palo Alto Weekly, July 28, 1999
"MONTESSORI FOR ADULTS"

Palo Alto's Knowhere Store teaches companies new ways to achieve goals

Full Text of article

ERNST & YOUNG LICENSES DESIGNSHOP® PROCESS

Strategic Alliance with MG Taylor Corporation Expands ASE Presence

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., December 16, 1998 - Ernst & Young LLP and MG Taylor Corporation announced today an agreement under which Ernst & Young extends its license of MG Taylor's DesignShop® process. Ernst & Young and MG Taylor have had a more limited licensing arrangement since October 1997. Under the new agreement, Ernst & Young receives certain exclusive rights to use the DesignShop process through October 1, 2003.

Full Text of Press Release

Archives

The week of June 21, the Navigation Center® of Borgess Health Alliance (BHA) in Kalamazoo, MI hosted an MG Taylor Corporation Seven Domains Workshop®. In addition to participation from many areas of BHA, Detroit Edision Company (DTE) also participated with a team of fifteen. The workshop marked the first multiple-day design event for the new Navigation Center and was the first Seven Domains Workshop in over a year. Unlike past Seven Domains, this workshop did not focus on one or several of the domains, but rather on the model as a whole system and it's use as a tool in support of the work of Navigation Centers. Three themes interplayed and "nested" within each other: personal creativity; the emergent paradigm and; the Seven Domains. The whole of the event was themed as a "glass bead game."

Because this Seven Domains Workshop was exclusively for our Navigation Center clients, the contents of the event website are not publically accessable. If you are intersted in accessing the website, or contents thereof, contact Todd Johnston.

On May 21 - 23, MG Taylor facilitated the Foresight Institute's "Group Genius Weekend: Foresight for the Next 30 Years," a PatchWorks^™ event which took place at the Palo Alto knOwhere Store. In attendance were nearly 200 of the most forward-looking minds on the planet -- leaders and visionaries in emerging technologies, freedom, and dynamic change. Over the course of the weekend, participants systematically explored a broad range of ideas and issues accross many vantage points. Space, healthcare, weaponry, machine intelligence, science fiction, the environment, privacy and surveilance, encryption, biotech, law, goverance, brain science were all topics discussed and interwoven into a systematic exploration of how nanotech and related fields may affect all of our lives over the next 30 years.

The event was MG Taylor's first official PatchWorks event and was well received by participants. Foresight's Chris Peterson responded to some questions put to her in a recent Foresight Update. MG Taylor extends a big THANK YOU to all of the individual volunteers (the entire KreW of 40+ knowledge workers were volunteers from the MGT, knOwhere, and Foresight networks, many whom had never participated in or seen an MG Taylor process), sponsor organizations and businesses who helped make the event possible.

You can also check out pictures of the geniuses at work.

For specific questions regarding this PatchWorks process, you may contact MG Taylor Corp. For questions regarding content and outcomes of the event, contact the Foresight Institute.

Gail Taylor, MG Taylor Corporation co-founder, was a featured speaker at the Women's Foodservice Forum 10th Anniversary and National Conference, "Open Minds, Open Doors: Leadership in the New World," in Dallas in March. Over 1700 people attended (compared to 82 ten years ago) to take part in the conference and hear from such noted speakers as Maya Angelou, poet, writer, actress; Sally Helgesen, author of Everyday Revolutionaries; working women and the transformation of everyday life; and Doug Ivester, Chairman and CEO of The Coca Cola Company.

Gail made three presentations, all geared towards the Executive Track of leadership, entitled Group Genius: Escaping to a Higher Order.