Introduction: Knowledge Café Applications The Knowledge Café is as much a state of mind as it is a fixed process

Conference Café **

Reading Group Café

The Knowledge Café is as much a state of mind as a fixed process.

It is a way of viewing the world through a  conversational lens.

It is about looking at any organizational process or activity and asking:

How can I apply the Knowledge Café philosophy and principles to make this task more effective by making it more conversational and engaging?

In my experience, most organizations that claim to be running Knowledge Cafés only run them occasionally for knowledge-sharing purposes. They have not fully appreciated the power of the Café and the many applications to which they can be applied.

Furthermore, they generally have not taken the time to understand the process thoroughly and do not run them well. For example, they assign more than three or four people per table, thus reducing what should be engaging, intimate conversations to a series of dry monologues.

In short, they squander one of the most powerful business tools at their disposal.

This chapter describes some of the more common Café purposes, but if you are looking for specific detailed stories of how various organizations have adapted the Knowledge Café, go to the Knowledge Café Stories chapter.

Note you do not need to call your event a Knowledge Café; you can give it a name that more closely matches its purpose. It does not even need to be called a Café.

• Reading Group Café A reading group, reading circle or book discussion club
• Engagement Café Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.
• Marketing Café ** Holding marketing conversations
• Sales Café Ditch the pitch - create sales conversations
• Future Café Explore trends and issues that shape, influence and impact the future
• Scenario Café ** Learning from situations
• Collective Sense-making Café ** Only a community of minds can show us the truth
• Focus Group Café An improvement on traditional focus groups?
• Ideation Café A conversation to solve problems or generate ideas
• Idea Campaign Café A series of focused conversations to generate ideas
• Decision Making Café Using the Knowledge Café to make better decisions
• Question Storming Café ** Questions can be more powerful than answers at times
• Conference Café ** An ideal way to close a conference

Posts that link to this post

•  The Role of the Knowledge Café in Open/adaptive Strategy An ideal tool to help implement open strategy

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Conference Café **

Reading Group Café

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Knowledge Café Space

Conversational Learning

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