Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage within the Australian Mining Sector: A Conceptual Model for Data Mining Integration within a Strategic Knowledge Management FrameworkSanaz Moayer, Scott Gardner, and Megan Paull

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actKM 2012Paper Presentation and Discussion

Presented by Chandni Kapur

Context Setting

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It’s going to be fun because I’ll provide a quick overview and then we’ll do an activity

The good news is…I’m not an expert, so I won’t be getting stuck into defining anything

This interested me because it’s a conceptual framework, so some good ideas to ponder on …

The framework presents a novel opportunity to improve performance…

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Soft human systems

Hard ICT

By combining the benefits of data mining within a strategic KM framework

Let’s assume some common truths…• There are many established benefits of KM• Similarly, the benefits of Data Mining are known to us• And we all agree the importance of Sustainable Competitive

Advantage within a business or industry

• YET a holy grail exists…. • The What if conversation…• The if only we could scenario… • The we need to….

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Why the mining sector?

Traditionally…

• KM literature traditionally contextualised in professional services sector

• Resources sector mainly focussed on process improvement and cost reduction

• Viewed as a capital intensive industry

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Geologists (49%), scientists (46%), engineers (62%)

Contract workers

Legal

Shared services

The knowledge landscape is quite complex…

Geographically, some of the most challenging networks

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Some might say innovation

hubs?

Just to set that into a different context…

33.33%250,000,000,000

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$

Data mining plays an important role in the resources sectorFunctionality:Data mining is a technique for identifying patterns and relationships between data in a large database. There are a number of sub processes involved…

Purpose:Managers can query relational data bases to get responses to questions. This is especially useful in overcoming unstructured problems of the complex nature.

Outcome:Competitive advantage lies in being able to solve these unstructured problems better than competitors

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Sustainable competitive advantage is a strategic choice • Hard to imitate processes• Optimised business performance• Agility in responding to shifts in market

conditions• Increased knowledge capability – better

information through data mining• The KNOWLEDGE WORKER

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The choice would be influenced by the environment

• What KM model or system the organisation chooses to invest in

• What strategic lenses are critical for the organisation

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Interrelated views on strategy• Market Based View

(Porter 1980)

• Stakeholder Based View (Freeman and McVea 2001)

• Resource based view (David 2011)

• Portfolio of Expertise or Knowledge Based View(Spender 1996) 11

• How are we positioned in the market and across our supply chain?

• How are we implementing processed and working with our stakeholders?

• How have we managed/configured our resources?

• How are we learning and sharing?

The framework

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Here’s an interesting word choice…

“These perspectives should be incorporated into a company strategy and manifested in operational plans, supply chain processes and management routines…”

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Next steps for the framework• Present the paper at a conference• Receive peer comment• Validation, testing and application within 3

KM active Western Australia based organisations using a case study approach• Post testing – create a broad inventory of

data mining tasks and KM processes for each firm

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Good ideas, need great implementation

• Work in your tables or in pairs• Show us how this could be put into practice • Assume the Executive are happy to consider this approach

so they have some background on the framework• Use practical situational factors (no fairy land approaches

please!)• Use left and right brain approaches • Prepare an elevator pitch for the BOARD (3 min)

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15 minactivity

Some prompters… • What would that mean from an org structure

perspective? What would the teams look like? • What could be some quick wins?• What would be the critical success factors?• How would you address any challenges?• What conversations will you have? • What’s your 90 day plan?• Top 20 conversations to have…

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