Matt:

YES - you get it, and I wish more did. We all too often like to take a cursory pass at culture - because it is a hard issue to deal with - but nonetheless critical to KM success. All too often cultural issues and their impact on KM (and Enterprise 2.0) are poorly understood. Indeed, recently even some former colleagues at AIIM published commentary on the culture evolution chart referenced in this post, and got it completely wrong. Their take - the juxtaposition of generations of technologies signify the advent of changing corporate culture - e.g. The advent of PCs ushered in and was responsible for the corporate culture I call Islands of me. Wrong. Islands of me can exist in any corporation - using any type of technology. Technology can support culture, and have some influence on it, but it is not the embodiment of culture.

Bill Ives, noted consultant/thought leader in the KM, portal and E2.0 space, who also was in attendance at the event, also posted a great commentary. To see his views, somewhat controversial, go to http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2008/1...

how can I forget about you folks - I'm amongst you. More importantly you raise a good point that I failed to mention about the students I spoke with. Some appeared to be more mature in experience and age - so I guess my definition of new entrants should include re-entrants.
BTW - you may be interested in something we did not discuss the other night. In a survey we did earlier this year on Enterprise 2.0, we discovered that age had no impact on adoption rates and attitudes towards these new approaches to collaboration - read KM.
Good luck on the "business leader" mission.

Scott:

Thank you for the comments. For those of you who may be a bit confused, let me clarify, Scott posted his comment here, but is referring to an article I published in Infonomics Magazine (not here in my blog. You can access the article at:
http://www.aiim.org/Infonomics/ArticleView.aspx?I...

OK - that said, Scott, yes, I agree, and that was the point I was trying to make in the article. Thank you for the further clarification. There is often a lack of basic finance in many approaches taken to justify ECM investments. The issues you cite are not mine, but those I have witnessed in many organizations. I like the way you draw a distinction between accounting and finance. Do you have examples of wheer such analysis was done?