Knowledge Management & Collaboration and the “Lightbulb Moment”

I’ve seen Stack Overflow for Teams, the B2B SaaS Solution that allows companies to set up an interactive and private Q&A database, described many different ways.  On its face, it’s a Knowledge Management and Collaboration solution. This is how most describe it, including Stack Overflow themselves.  But as I listen to sales engineers, developers, account executives, customer success people, the press and other market sources, it’s referred to by a lot of sobriquets. 

Broadly, Prosus categorizes Stack Overflow in their ed-tech portfolio of companies, but in the vernacular of zoology that's more like the genus. Others have called Teams a “learning experience” solution.  Others file it under a more general heading of “Information Management”, however that might mislead us that it’s about data alone. To be clear, the information being shared is more than just business data, it’s information on how we do our jobs, how we interact with other parts of the enterprise, process, procedure, best practices, contacts, product information, and the proverbial et cetera, et cetera.  It can be almost any kind of information that exists most often in departmental silos, or worse, inside the head of just a few people who get inundated with questions (often the same ones over and over) about how their corner of the enterprise works.

It may very well be partially all those things, but Knowledge Management and Collaboration describes it best for now (but its evolving, folks - watch this space). And I think this category of products holds a certain kinetic energy in the marketplace right now.  I say this because of velocity to the “Lightbulb Moment” salespeople refer to when the customer understands the deeper meaning of the product to the future of their business.  It can proceed quickly from the more stayed “Oh sure, that’d be nice to have” to the more profound “why don’t we already have this??”. 

Anyone who’s talked to me has heard me date myself embarrassingly when I describe this moment (hey, I still think grunge is new-ish, ok?).  Because to me it’s like that seismic shift in perception when Garmin or Tom-Tom first hit the market with handheld GPS devices.  Soon these would no longer even be trapped in your car dashboard.  This was the nascent beginnings of GPS being embedded in wearables and handhelds everywhere.  It was a liberating moment for all technophiles who only a day before clutched their MapQuest printouts and dog-eared Mapsco’s when trying to find their way around.  The same question universally and simultaneously formed in everyone’s heads: “How did I get around without this??”

This leads me to my own assumption about the Knowledge Management and Collaboration (can we just call it “KMAC”?) category of products. Just as Content Management or Social Media Management were thought years ago to be “nice to have” solutions, the trajectory leads to being a budget line item for any serious enterprise.  I believe companies of all sizes are coming to the same conclusion:  knowledge endemic to the different parts of their enterprise is increasingly complex, increasingly vital, and yet remains frustratingly tribal. 

The amount of time – time spent looking for the right contact or document, researching/asking a question, waiting on an answer (a cycle on the same topic that may have been repeated ad infinitum), and then finding out you’re the proud owner of outdated information and therefore have to start the journey again – is expensive. 

For their part Stack Overflow is leveraging the power of AI to make it even faster to share knowledge across the enterprise with OverflowAI.  This is because they understand the value of time in this regard.  Take it from an old resource manager: that time IS money.  That’s not just a saying, it’s a business reality.  That’s time better spent doing jobs rather than understanding where to start.  And in an age when the speed of business is defined by the minutes spent (or not spent) providing the best products and services to your customers, wasting it is a sin.  

“Ardere et Lucere” is a motto that's near and dear to me. Attributed the 12th century mind of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, it means to “Enkindle and Enlighten”, or more colloquially to embrace knowledge and share it.  In the spirit of that treasured motto, I believe businesses everywhere will soon share the same Lightbulb Moment.