Pictures from the IFIP Conference….

Here are pictures from the IFIP conference (the opening reception, a few dinners, and the closing reception)…Pictures were taken by Ramanjit Singh, School of Informatics, The University of Manchester...

Managing Knowledge Security: Book Cover and Inside Leafs

To pre-order the book, please visit Amazon.com (Link)

Another travel update...London to Oxford

In Manchester, attending the IFIP conference took up the mornings, while enjoying pints and conversations with good friends and new colleagues was the activity of the evening. The IFIP conference was hosted in one of the most beautiful location in Manchester – The Town Hall.

After spending a few more days in Manchester, I headed to London. While in London, I have had the chance to catch-up with family and friends. In addition, I went roaming around the streets of London to take pictures of the beautiful and historic architecture (soon, I will be able to upload them for your viewing pleasure).

Today, I will head to Oxford for some writing and reflecting...

Manchester, England...

Greetings from Manchester, England…The last three days have been quite fruitful, and the next three have jammed packed events as well. Here is a quick rundown:

Day 1 – Landed in Heathrow, took the train into Paddington, and then enjoyed a traditional English breakfast. Then, walked to Euston and caught the train to Manchester. Got to Manchester and basically had dinner (Fish and Chips, and a few pints) and got some rest.

Day 2 – Began the day trying to find an Internet Café and failed miserably. Then met with a few colleagues and began to catch up with the happenings in their lives…Then, headed to the IFIP Doctoral Consortium Dinner to meet the eager minds. Dinner was great and the conversations were even better…

Day 3 – Had a busy morning at the IFIP Doctoral Consortium. I did my best to pass on a few words of wisdom (and I mean few). This was followed by the evening IFIP reception. A group of students and faculty then headed for dinner and a few pints…Dinner was excellent and so were the conversations…Then, of the group that went to dinner, a few strong-minded and energetic individuals decided that it would be good to visit a few more pubs….I got back to my room at 3 A.M…

Hopefully, there will be a few more updates before I get back to the U.S. No promises…Too many other important, and interesting, things to do in England…Cheers

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.

Pictures from the University of Chicago

I just returned from Chicago. During my visit, I spent a morning roaming around the University of Chicago with a good friend of mine. Here are some pictures…

Pictures from the University of Washington

One of the incidental benefits of hosting visitors to the University of Washington is the access to their pictures of the UW campus. Peter Baloh took some excellent pictures as he strolled around the campus. Here are a few pictures…

Bain & Company and My Two Books

Two of my books get listed in Bain & Company Management Tool Survey. According to Bain & Company, “Bain & Company launched a multiyear research project in 1993 to gather facts about the use and performance of management tools. Our objective was to help inform managers about the tools available to them and provide them with:
An understanding of how their current application of these tools and subsequent results compare with those of other organizations across industries and around the globe;
The information they need to identify, select, implement and integrate the right tools to improve their company's performance.” (see Bain & Company). The survey was conducted by Darrell Rigby.

The books listed are:

The Outsourcing Handbook: How to Implement a Successful Outsourcing Process (Kogan Page, 2006) (under Outsourcing Tools) [see Link]


Engaged Knowledge Management: Engagement with New Realities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) (under Knowledge Management) [see Link]

Peter Baloh at the University of Washington

My doctoral student, Peter Baloh (http://www.baloh.net/), from the University of Ljubljana(Slovenia) is in Seattle. He is here to attend the I3M (Institute for Innovation in Information Management) Spring Symposium. Peter has been working with me on issues of strategic innovation and knowledge management (see ideas4innovation.blogspot.com).
Peter took a few pictures as I was giving him the tour of the UW.

Chiang Mai University

I recently met with a delegation of scholars from Chiang Mai University (Thailand). Senior scholars from Chiang Mai University (http://www.cmu.ac.th/main_Eng.htm), along with a representative from Microsoft (Thailand), visited us at the Information School, University of Washington, to learn about our MSIM (Masters of Science in Information Management) program and I3M (the Institute for Innovation in Information Management). We explored collaborative opportunities, and I welcomed the opportunity to co-create solutions (and problems) with researchers and students from Chiang Mai University.

John Harvard’s Brew House

One of my favorite brew pubs – John Harvard’s Brew House (Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA)! Picture was taken during a business meeting. I think we were discussing new business proposals and innovative domains to explore. As far as I remember, I did not sign anything. If I did, do not hold that against me…By the way, this was during St. Patrick’s weekend…