Module 1 – Case
DATA, INFORMATION, AND ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE
Assignment Overview
Every company has, to a greater or lesser extent, an information subsystem—that is,
a means by which it gathers data, interprets it, and makes it available to employees
through a distribution system. Whether we are talking about marketing information,
cost projections, accounting results, or internal quality reports, every company
depends on information to inform knowledge to support its planning, decision-
making, and control.
So how does knowledge fit into the picture? The emergence of the field called
knowledge management has highlighted some key propositions in the last 10 years
or so. All organizations are storehouses of knowledge that operate in information-rich
environments made up of people and things both inside and outside the organization
itself. Organizations organize, interpret, and evaluate this information to solve
organizational problems.
Networked information technology enables the processing and utilizing information
to advance knowledge. People’s brains are the key knowledge resource of any
organization. Codified knowledge stored in books, audio, videotapes, and computer
systems can be an important knowledge resource as well.
There are organizational processes and strategies for IT management and
management in general. Therefore, these IT processes and strategies, in particular,
can significantly enhance the ability of organizations to use their knowledge
resources for problem solving.
Several of these themes will come up again in later modules in this course. But by
way of introduction to the subject, examine some views of how information sharing
works. Listen to each of the lectures below and then take the quiz (which does not
count in the grading). This will be followed by a case where you see the power of
information sharing enabled by networked computer systems.
These lectures and quiz will help you with the case:
Listen
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Case 1 Review Quiz: This quiz will not count toward your grade but allows you to
assess your knowledge.
Case Assignment
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Crowd Funding
What does one do to obtain funding for a new invention, movie, or company? Do you
go to the bank? Do you go to venture capitalists? Do you go to angel investors?
Crowd Funding is an alternative to these traditional sources of funding.
Kickstarter.com is one of the largest of these crowdfunding websites. Here a person
posts about the project with a description, maybe a video, and the funding needed.
Backers then pledge money to the project. If the funding goal is not reached, then
the project is stopped with return of any pending obligations of support.
Kickstarter started in 2009, and since that time has been focused on helping creative
types find funding sources. Since 2009 it has received almost 2 billion dollars in
pledges from 10 billion backers for over 260,000 projects such as films, music, stage
shows, comics, journalism, video games, technology, and food-related projects. So
this is a great opportunity for aspiring new artists, inventors, etc., to obtain funding.
This is happening on Kickstarter with 1000’s of dollars pledged each day, where the
creator of the projects keeps 100 percent ownership of the project in which investors
decide they want to invest.
Go to Kickstarter.com and look at the various project categories. Select a category
and a project of interest to you. Provide a description for one of your selected
projects, including the offerings and number of backers. Discuss the pledges, the
amounts of the pledges, and the numbers of people for different pledge amounts.
What does the pledge amount tell you about the motivation of the customers?
Explain why crowdfunding may be advantageous to new entrepreneurs. How does
Kickstarter seek to build a community for the entrepreneurs?
What information must an entrepreneur provide to get funding? How does
Kickstarter manage the collection and transfer of pledges? Would you use this site
yourself or recommend it to others?
Assignment Expectations
You are to produce an analysis of Kickstarter. In doing this analysis you will answer
the questions asked. Use a table to show the Kickstarter offerings and the number
of backers. Then discuss these pledges and why this crowdfunding is of advantage
to entrepreneurs. Using several products compare the type of information the
entrepreneur needs to get funding and discuss if you would invest or recommend to
others. In 3 or 4 pages, provide your discussion and analysis—we encourage the
use of spreadsheets and tables to justify your response.
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