Kevin Desouza: Small office, big impact

Recently I was interviewed by Peter Kelley of the University Week on the Institute of National Security Education and Research, my origins and research aspirations, and views of a range of topics from the current war on terror to the pursuit of inter-disciplinary research and building global citizens of the future.

The article can be found at: Desouza Feature [http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/uweek/uweekarticle.asp?articleID=33905]

The abstract of the article:
“Kevin Desouza is an assistant professor in the Information School, adjunct faculty in electrical engineering and the director of the Institute for National Security Education and Research, a constant, a blogger and the author of seven books. Oh, and he’s 27 years old.”

For the full edition of University Week [24 (30), May 31, 2007 – Jun 20, 2007], see http://uwnews.org/uweek/uweekindex.asp

P.S. Thanks to Mary Levin for taking the photograph and spending countless hours fine tuning it...She does work miracles...

Finland Distinguished Professor Programme

Thought I share some good news with you.

I have been chosen as one of the reviewers for the Finland Distinguished Professor Programme (http://www.fidipro.fi/) which is sponsored by the Academy of Finland (the main funding organization on basic research for Finland; http:// www.aka.fi/eng) and Tekes (the main public funding organization for applied research and industrial R&D in Finland; http:// www.tekes.fi/eng).

The objective of the Finland Distinguished Professor Programme is to recruit foreign professor-level top researchers to Finland for a fixed period of time. The new positions will have the highest academic status in Finland. A person who has proved to be a talented researcher and who can be deemed to contribute to the progress of research within his/her own field of specialization may be appointed to a Finland Distinguished Professorship.

Academic Journal Reviewing: Rubbish...

Occasionally, I question the caliber of a few editors and reputation of the so-called premier journals in the management discipline. I submitted a paper to a journal during the middle of March, two months later, I get the following reply:

"I am writing because we have thus far been unable to find a willing reviewer for your piece. One reason for the difficulty is that we have already slated for our 50th anniversary issue articles on the theme of innovation. Consequently, our resources (our reviewers) who specialize in this area are greatly depleted. We're very sorry, but on a rare occasion, this happens, and we have no choice but to return your article to you without review. You can be certain that this is not a reflection of the quality of your piece. Please accept our apology for the inconvenience, and good luck in finding an alternative place of publication."

Now, do you see something wrong with this email response?

If you do not have reviewers to draw on then don’t you owe it to the authors to let them know this right away, instead of holding the paper in hiatus for eight weeks? Moreover, I am quite sure that there are several individuals who are capable of reviewing an email on innovation albeit they may not belong to your editorial board.

Surprises in academia are in short supply, but occasionally you get the weirdest of surprises….I think this is one reason to keep a Blog…to vent…and share interesting experiences…hopefully, someone can learn from this…

iSchool assistant professor will head new UW think tank on national security issues

I was featured in the Spring Issue of the Information School eNews Bulletin (see http://www.washington.edu/alumni/partnerships/ischool/200703/desouza.html) for details.

Off to England in a few days...

I will heading to England for a few weeks starting on June 9 and returning on June 25. During this time, I will serve as a faculty mentor for the IFIP 8.6 Doctoral Consortium (http://www.ifip86-2007.salford.ac.uk/) to be held in Manchester, UK. Bob Galliers (Bentley College) is the Doctoral Consortium Chair. Bob has done an excellent job in selecting an eclectic group of students who have diverse research interests and aspirations.

In addition, I look forward to meeting up with several of my European Colleagues during the month of June. I plan to spend a few days in Manchester, then head to Oxford, and finally spend a week in London before coming back to Seattle…

Connectivity among Terrorist Groups

How do terrorist networks operate? How do terrorist acquire the necessary resources to carry out their activities? My recent paper, co-authored with T. Hensgen, examines these issues. We take an information and strategic alliance perspective to the issue of understanding the formation of terrorist ties. In addition, we outline how do terrorist alliances grow and mature over time.

Desouza, K.C., and Hensgen, T. “Connectivity among Terrorist Groups: A Two Models Business Maturity Approach,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 30 (7), 2007, 593 - 613.

Abstract:
The reality of terrorism has become ubiquitous. Terrorist groups continue to garner front-page exposure, which contributes to their agenda, while stories of hostage dilemmas, suicide bombings, assassinations, and a variety of nefarious criminal activities lead the unsuspecting to wonder, “What’s next?” In order to begin to understand terrorism researchers should first understand how these terrorist groups operate and, far more importantly, what motivates others to co-operate with terrorists. No terrorist group operates in isolation. It is assured a priori that terrorist groups have to collaborate with other entities in order to further their agenda. In the conventional sense, terrorists have limited resources, limited capabilities, and limited reach. Without co-operation and support in support of criminal enterprises, they would function in isolation; their impact would be isolated. This article outlines two models that demonstrate how cooperation between terrorists and recognized, albeit criminal, institutions contribute to terrorist successes. The first, a resource model, outlines some of the resources that bind two or more terrorist groups. The second, an alliance model, layers different levels of collaborative engagements between terrorist groups and these institutions. Both models are descriptive in nature and contribute to an understanding of how terrorist groups must engage in the fundamentals of established economic practices in order to succeed.

Managing Knowledge Security – Book Flyer Released

Engaged Knowledge Management featured by HP Blog

Stan Garfield of Hewlett Packard (HP) has written about one of my books on his weekly Blog - Weekly Knowledge Management blog by Stan Garfield (see http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/garfield/). Stan featured, Engaged Knowledge Management: Engagement with New Realities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1403945101), a book that I co-authored with Yukika Awazu, as the KM Book of the Week.