OUR STORY

In 1995, Ron Young founded Knowledge Associates at St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge, UK, at a time when new exciting software tools were emerging for the first time, collectively called ‘Groupware’. This enabled people to work more effectively in virtual teams. This also empowered virtual team members with identical, synchronised and replicated copies of information on their personal computers. Knowledge Associates then entered into partnership with Lotus Education in Boston, USA, and London, UK, to teach their international partners how to capitalise on Lotus Notes, how to use Lotus Team Room, and Organizational Renewal as a result of this radically new way of virtual working.

The key lessons learned during that time were to realise that virtual team leadership, virtual team communications, virtual team collaboration and innovation were, in many respects, completely different to physical team working, and required new virtual team education, training and tools. As a result, Knowledge Associates developed an advanced methodology for virtual working 'KNOWLEDGER Team’ and ‘KNOWLEDGER Innovation’ methods, systems, tools and training and a ‘KNOWLEDGER Platform’ (version 1 powered by Lotus Notes).

In 1998, Ron Young was invited to be a part of the UK Government DTI team that produced a White Paper for the new UK government, entitled ‘UK Competitiveness in the Global Knowledge Driven Economy'.

This was a high level strategy for the UK that recognised that effective collaboration, co-creation, knowledge and innovation were difficult to copy, and therefore key to global competitiveness and sustainability.

In the period 1998 – 2003 Knowledge Associates Cambridge were partners in two European Commission funded collaborative research projects, Know-Net and LEVER, totalling 3 million euros, together with Ernst & Young, INSEAD Business School in France, and DFKI Artificial Intelligence research in Germany, to further develop methods, systems, processes and tools. This was tested based on an improved KNOWLEDGER Platform. This enabled organisations to identify, create, develop, share, retain and apply their key and critical knowledge assets. An overview of the methodology was published by Springer in 2003 in the book ‘Knowledge Asset Management’ which also contains further developments and testing for the KNOWLEDGER Platform (version 2 powered by Lotus Notes).

The key lessons learned during that time were to realise that knowledge must be treated as a fundamental and strategic asset that could make a big transformational difference to achieving organisational objectives, and not just a resource to incrementally improve existing daily operations. It was recognised that rapid virtual learning and effective personal, team, community and organisational knowledge and innovation management methods, tools and platforms were the key strategic assets and the ‘new digital DNA’ for designs for 21st century organisational renewal.

“Those organisations that manage their knowledge assets wisely will dominate the 21st Century”, Ron Young 2003.

In the period 2003 – 2014, with the exponential expansion of the world wide web and freely available social media technologies, Knowledge Associates applied and further developed the Knowledge Asset Management methodology (KAM) and KNOWLEDGER Platform for public and private organisations in all the major industry sectors around the world and further developed the KNOWLEDGER Platform (version 3 powered by world wide web and social media technologies).

The key lessons learned during that time were to be able to identify the key and/or critical knowledge assets and their measurements for different industry sectors, and to realise the power of moving from slow responding and high cost ‘IT centric’ systems to faster and lower cost, easy to use, powerful ‘people driven’ social tools and platforms.

Eventually, Knowledge Associates further developed from this era KNOWLEDGER Platform (Version 4), powered by an integration of the Goggle Cloud platform, GSuite tools, Apps, social media tools, and customised knowledge driven solutions.

In the period 2000 – 2003 and again in 2015 – 2018, Ron Young chaired the British Standards Institution (BSI) Knowledge Management Committee in London, as part of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) development of the first international standard for knowledge management. ISO 30401 Knowledge Management Standard was published in November 2018.

In the period 2015 – 2020 Knowledge Associates companies were created in the key regions of the world with Knowledge Associates International based in Cambridge, UK and new companies in Japan, USA, Russia, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, South Africa, Brazil and Estonia.

• Knowledge Associates are now globally teaching several ISO Standards for effective

• Collaborative Partnerships (ISO 44001),

• Knowledge Management (ISO 30401),

• Asset Management (intangible assets), (ISO 55001),

• Innovation Management (ISO 56002) and

• Quality Management (ISO 9001).

• Furthermore, Knowledge Associates are today helping organisations to integrate several ISO Standards into one, integrated, and more holistic management system.

In 2019 Knowledge Associates became certified by the British Standards Institution in these ISO Standards within the BSI Associate Consultant Programme (ACP).

In 2019 Knowledge Associates were invited by the European Commission, Brussels, to present our work on collaboration, knowledge and innovation management over the past 20 years, at the EC Joint Research Centre ‘Knowledge Week’.

In the period 2018 – 2019 Knowledge Associates worked with the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (mbrf.ae) in Dubai, with a mission as ‘a world leader in knowledge and development’, to internally implement the ISO 30401 Knowledge Management Standard principles and requirements according to the ISO Management Systems Standard (MSS). This was achieved in August 2019 and MBRF became the first non-profit public organisation in the world to be certified by SGS, the worlds leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company, recognised as a global benchmark for quality and integrity.

In June 2020 BSI / Knowledge Associates presented a first international webinar for ISO 30401 Knowledge Management from London, UK and ran a first online 1 day ISO 30401 Knowledge Management seminar in Tokyo, Japan.

In March 2021 BSI /Knowledge Associates launched a virtual training program comprising three 2 hour zoom video sessions over 3 days (6 hours total). The program was delivered by BSI and the Knowledge Associates faculty, interactively, from Cambridge and London UK, Melbourne, Australia, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Mumbai, India, Moscow and Tomsk, Russia, Hong Kong, to an international audience.

In June 2021 the UK Government Kickstart scheme enabled Knowledge Associates Cambridge to create an eight person 'Digital Transformation Team'. This comprises three positions for web development and social media management, two positions for video production, two positions for application software development (Cloud and Blockchain) and one position for technical support for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products.