As with weather patterns used to predict sunshine and thunderstorms, communication flows allow for predicting positive and negative developments in groups of people. It requires a delicate combination of mathematical modeling, experience, and intuition. Knowledge Flow Optimization is extremely valuable as an early warning system, showing high-pressure systems, impending storms, and other relationships in groups that are difficult to anticipate through other means. It offers insights into organizational dynamics. By analyzing and aligning business processes and knowledge flow, organizations get a unique opportunity to increase the productivity of knowledge workers through greater creativity, efficiency, and quality.

Business process reengineering forever changed the way companies do business, introducing a process focus and streamlining structured business processes. Knowledge Flow Optimization (KFO) does the same for unstructured, knowledge-intensive innovation processes. By visualizing the flow of knowledge, making it transparent, and reengineering its flow, organizations and individuals become more creative, innovative, and responsive to change. KFO offers companies a chance to complement their business process maps and organizational charts with much more fluid maps of relationships. By making the communication flow transparent, KFO can make existing business processes more efficient, allowing organizations to make better use of people by unburying them from conventional multilayer hierarchies. By establishing flexible ad hoc workflows based on communication and relationships, people become more efficient in their roles which in turn leads to greater individual motivation.

Three Dimensions of Online Behavior

Model communicators obey a set of rules for how to interact with each other. The picture below characterizes the online behavior of individuals participating in online communities along three dimensions: interactivity, connectivity, and sharing. Ideal COIN members respond quickly to an e-mail: being highly interactive, they know many people with whom they like to connect, and they gladly share what they know with their friends.

The first dimension of collaborative behavior measures the degree of interactivity. The more interactive online users are, the better for their virtual personalities and the community life of the virtual communities in which they participate. Highly interactive people are responsive, usually replying to e-mails the same day they were received. They also make themselves available via online chat. This leads to a vibrant community operating at a fast pace.

The second dimension measures a person's degree of connectivity. Within an online community, team members should be highly connected so that everyone responds to messages from everyone else within the group. A wide and active social network that results from being highly connected is crucial for getting the job done, whatever the job. The more connected people are, the better for the community of which they are members. Preferably, COIN core team members all know each other and are socially connected.

The third dimension of collaborative behavior measures the degree of group connectivity and knowledge sharing. The more team members are willing to share what they know, the higher the quality of their shared deliverable.

The picture above illustrates where COIN members fall within the three dimensions of collaborative behavior. The more members of a virtual community interact, connect, and share, the better the online community operates. In a high-functioning COIN, members - be they creators, communicators, collaborators, or knowledge experts - are all connected, interact with each other frequently, and share what they know and found out.