Tracking Tomorrow's Hot Investments through Wiki Collaboration

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Tracking Tomorrow's Hot Investments through Wiki
Collaboration

• Tracey Carmichael
• SLA Conference 2007
• Legal Division Corporate Librarians Roundtable,
  June 6, 2007

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Introduction

• The problem
• Investors put too much of their investment
  portfolios in fad investments whose risks they do
  not fully understand
• The causes
• Issuers fail to describe their products
  attributes and risks
• Advisors dont understand the products they are
  selling
• Investors dont have the information or skills to
  protect themselves
• The Commissions response
• Identify and respond to emerging retail
  investment trends

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Trend Monitoring Program

• Identify sources of knowledge
• Met with staff throughout the organization
• Consulted with industry
• Created an inventory of sources
• Commissioned environmental scan from Investor
  Economics http//www.iei.ca/

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Trend Monitoring Program

• Create ways to capture and share what we know
• Developed user requirements
• Considered software solutions database, wiki,
  workflow, content management system (CMS)
• Decided to create a wiki

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Why a Wiki?

• Builds information analysis
• Preserves all the input
• Records the names of contributors
• Controls access permissions
• Easy to use
• Transparent
• Exports content in Word or PDF
• Cheap

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Emerging Retail Investment Trends Wiki
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Investment Product Assessment

• Monthly meeting to assess a new product
• Topic leader prepares a presentation
• Preparation includes research and consultations
  with experts more content added to the Wiki
• Team discussion and planning next steps
• Continue monitoring or stop monitoring?
• Take action?
• investor education, industry compliance, rule
  revision

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Common Obstacles to Wiki Collaboration

• Fear of publicly displaying a lack of knowledge
• Too busy
• Attracts the young, repels the older generation
• Over-reliance on referencing the work of others
• Lack of common frame of reference or professional
  vocabulary
• Fear of losing power by sharing knowledge
• Intolerance of mistakes, unproven ideas, etc.

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Overcoming the Obstacles

• Focus on recording relevant knowledge, not only
  unique knowledge
• Accept collaboration off-wiki but record outcome
• Measure participation and reward it
• Minimize technical hurdles
• Get management buy-in and sell the benefits
• Provide training and support
• Assign a moderator, editor, or topic leader
• Start with a committed team, accountable for
  results
• Tie collaboration to performance management
  system

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Next Steps

• Reassess requirements, one year later, and
  consider migrating content to our CMS
• Redesign wiki architecture
• Flatten structure for each product
• Provide better indication of product status
• Increase participation

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Questions?Tracey CarmichaelManager,
Knowledge Management ServicesBC Securities
Commissiontcarmichael_at_bcsc.bc.ca