Sugarwork

Back in NYC after a fulfilling couple of days at HumanX with Sugarwork design partner Lisa L. Levy, thinking and talking all things #AI. We had so much fun walking the floors and getting glimpses of what people are working on - from video avatars to AI agents to AI data storage and preparation - and there was even a dog park! But the best parts were the human connections: - catching up with Grace Gong and seeing where she has taken Smart Venture Podcast and Smart Venture Media (watch this space!) - cheering on Ryan Kolln and his fantastic team at Appen in their sessions. I’m a proud board member and their work providing human expertise for the leading LLMs is outstanding - meeting up with Kenny Totten of AllFly, one of the startups in our travel cohort at SAP.iO during the pandemic, and hearing how they are literally taking off now - breakfast with Alisa Cohn Alexi Schwartzkopff Khee Lee Lisa L. Levy Mickala Olesen Sheldon Boboff where the laughs and insights around cooking, sailing, content creation and of course AI were simply inspiring Reinvigorated and now back to building the leading platform to enable companies to capture tacit institutional knowledge for their AI infrastructure at Sugarwork #AI #HumanX #HumanX2025 #startup #ownyourknowledge

AI is opening new doors for teams to optimize and automate processes, driving better results with less effort. But how this will evolve is still an open question. Tools like what we are building at Sugarwork focus on capturing the tacit knowledge held by in-house experts and turning it into actionable process documentation. On the other hand, platforms like Celonis capture machine data to achieve impact through process mining. ?? I’ve been thinking recently about how these approaches could?be combined: AI-powered insights from machine data paired with the rich context of human expertise. This combination would mean employees would have enormously accurate and rich insights to make smarter decisions, giving enterprises a significant edge in process improvement. Recent research highlights the opportunity: 84% of IT leaders say processes are their greatest lever for creating value, and 81% believe AI will push them to optimize processes in the next year. What's your organization doing around process optimization with AI? And what capabilities do you want to see in the next generation of AI tools? I'd love to hear!

???? ?????? ???????????????? ?????????????????????? ?????????????? ????????????? ?????? Many of us go through jarring and even unpleasant experiences when we leave a role, even if we enjoyed it. In the transition from insider to outsider, you are asked to hand in your computer, badge, and to make sure your benefits are in order, while wrapping up any projects and saying goodbye. When we feel invested in a role, this can be a difficult period. But, a respectful exit strategy is beneficial for departing employees, those who remain, and the company at large. For example, one under-leveraged tactic to honor existing employees is through a structured exit interview. Departing employees —?particularly tenured ones — have a wealth of knowledge that they have built up over years and through trials and tribulations. Investing in capturing this knowledge has several benefits: ? It honors the departing employee in the sense that they feel their knowledge is valued.? ? It ensures remaining employees have all the tacit knowledge they need that is held by the departing co-worker.? ? It safeguards the organization from brain drain, particularly for highly skilled roles. And the benefits don’t stop there. Employees who have been sent out on a supportive note are more likely to recommend your organization as a place to work, or even have a higher chance of coming back, should an opportunity arise. In fact, the way a company conducts its farewells can be as important as how it welcomes new talent.????? If you’d like to discuss how to formalize exit interviews and capture all the valuable knowledge departing employees have accrued, Sugarwork is built for such a purpose. Get in touch with us to discuss! ??

?????? ??? Losing valuable knowledge when skilled workers retire is a serious problem. Find out how one Nasdaq-listed company stopped the brain drain and strengthened their product strategy with GenAI!

For my whole entire career, I've been fascinated by how companies create knowledge. When I was at McKinsey & Company - our teams were incentivized to make shareable the insights we got so other teams and clients could benefit. With every project, we got smarter and smarter. At most large enterprises, however, this practice of building upon knowledge is not often done. Expert knowledge is not regularly drawn out; when people retire or move on from a company, that knowledge is simply lost. However, Japanese firms have been deploying a "spiral of knowledge" methodology for years now to out-innovate their western counterparts. What does this look like in practice? In the 1980s, Matsushita Electric Company was developing a bread-making machine. But they were having trouble getting it to knead dough correctly. Finally, an employee had a solution; to study the breadmaking techniques of a famous breadmaker in person, and use this as a model. With these techniques as a basis, the organization came up with a product that set a sales record for a new kitchen appliance. But what this story really illustrates is the “spiral of knowledge”; a pattern of knowledge creation and movement through an organization.?There are three steps: 1. First, the employee captures tacit, undocumented knowledge from the breadmaker.? 2. Then, this tacit knowledge is documented into explicit knowledge, shared with the wider team, and embodied in a product.? 3. Finally, through the experience of creating a new product, the team enriches their own tacit knowledge base, starting the spiral of knowledge all over again. While a lot of organizations focus on explicit knowledge, this story illustrates just how important undocumented, tacit knowledge is for driving innovation —?and having a method to capture it. In today's world where everyone is talking about agentic AI - what is needed is the ability to first capture tacit knowledge from employees so that you can build agents. In the past, tacit knowledge was very hard to capture, but with AI, it is significantly easier now. That's why I founded Sugarwork. We are using generative AI to capture insights drawn out from experts. Capturing tacit knowledge at scale will enable companies to experience the competitive advantage illustrated by Matsushita. I believe that harnessing this knowledge will be a force multiplier, with clear winners being those that know how to do it. I welcome thoughts on this! #ownyourknowledge #tech #AI #startups #tacitknowledge #knowledge

It is a wrap for #KMWorld 2024! We celebrated our one year anniversary out of stealth in the best way possible at the premier conference for knowledge management: ?? Having Chip Valutis, PhD and David Battat share their lessons learned using Sugarwork to capture tacit knowledge at an $800MM Nasdaq-listed medtech company - videos forthcoming! ?? Announcing our partnership with Ondexx together with Michael G., so that companies can search both tacit and explicit knowledge by integrating our solutions ?? Spending time with our fantastic advisors Jeff Cummings (our growth expert) and Dawn Brushammar (new addition to our team as our knowledge evangelist! You have to check out her and Rebecka Isaksson's Knowledge FIKA podcast: https://lnkd.in/e_bWEjUW) ?? Trading notes with incredible thought leaders including Rebecka Isaksson, Stan Garfield, Moria Levy, Emily Harburg, Ph.D., and Tony Rhem ?? Meeting many organizations whom we can't wait to work with to capture tacit knowledge at scale #ownyourknowledge Judith Michelle Williams Vanessa Liu Nikita Khanna Liv Stark

??? 3 insights from the Supergoop! webinar: leveraging AI to create process documentation We learned a lot in our recent webinar with Jeannie Barnes, commercialization manager Supergoop!, when she was interviewed by Sugarwork co-founder Judith Michelle Williams. Here are some of the insights! 1. 80% of critical knowledge in companies is not documented.? And Fortune 500 companies lose $31.5 billion annually due to critical knowledge loss. Ouch! 2. Creating and documenting cross-departmental processes CAN be fast. Supergoop had to create and document a process that ran across seven departments from scratch, and achieved this goal in just 2.5 weeks. 3. Sugarwork gives management a bird’s eye view of challenges faced by different departments. Besides quickly automating process documentation, Sugarwork’s heat map gave Supergoop’s management team an easy way to visualize where organizational challenges lay, and useful feedback on what was driving them. See some more highlights below! ????

???? Webinar tomorrow, 10/21 @12:30pm ET: ?????? ?????????????????? ?????????????????? ???? ???? ???????????????? ?????? ???????????????? ?????????????????? Catch Judith Michelle Williams, Co-founder of Sugarwork, and Jeannie Barnes, Commercialization Manager, Supergoop, as they discuss how Supergoop! uses AI to capture detailed steps across different departments and instantly generate tools and documents to immediately improve collaboration. Register ???? https://lnkd.in/eCmgzR4Y

?? Do you want to avoid spending lots of time and money documenting cross-departmental processes? Undocumented or out of date processes lead to inconsistent handoffs, unclear areas of responsibility, and missed deadlines. But documenting them can be hard. ??? In this webinar, Judith Michelle Williams, Co-founder of Sugarwork, and Jeannie Barnes, Commercialization Manager, Supergoop, will share insights on how Supergoop! uses AI to capture detailed steps across different departments and instantly generate tools and documents to immediately improve collaboration. Register at the link: https://lnkd.in/eCmgzR4Y #ownyourknowledge