Focus on Knowledge-driven Organisations
Knowledge-driven organisations in both the public and private sectors face extraordinary opportunities, and unprecedented challenges.
The visible challenges are well recognised, and largely generic. The life-science knowledge base in particular changes at extraordinary speed, and keeping up to date is daunting. New ethical dilemmas multiply. Defining intellectual property, and finding appropriate ways of exploiting it, redefines the character of research. Mobile computing and communications technology forces innovation in working practices. Public concerns grow about the risks of research, while demands for more effective, safer, cheaper products and services have never been greater. Markets are increasingly global, and increasingly volatile. Regulatory demands increase in level and complexity year by year.
In seeking to meet visible challenges, organisations may neglect, or not even seek to identify, the invisible challenges they pose themselves, in their structures, cultures and patterns of communication. Aleff Group’s expertise lies in identifying and solving them.
In Europe and the United States, Aleff Group clients include large corporations, government bodies, reference Organisations and professional associations. They share a common characteristic of wishing to respond imaginatively, but concretely, to a recognised need for change in the way they accomplish their missions.
The Principals and Lead Consultants
The Group principals and lead consultants have extensive experience
leading or participating in multi-partner consortia, for example
public-private collaborations supported by government, or by bodies
such as the European Commission or the United Nations.
A Partnering Approach
The Aleff Group partnering approach informs the great majority of
its work, some projects now dating back nearly ten years. Major
partnerships include:
- Strategic Planning and Performance Based Budgeting: clients in State and County government, and for profit and not for profit corporations primarily in California, Florida and Washington DC
- Animal Health and Production: with the Food and Agriculture Organization, (FAO) Rome, L’office international des epizooties (OIE) Paris, and the UK Institute of Animal Health (IAH), Pirbright and Compton, the Advanced Veterinary Information System (AVIS), covering all List A, and key List B diseases, both on both CD ROM and web server; see www.aleffgroup.com/avisfmd. This site has had over 8 million visits since February 2002
- With FAO, emergency planning and response tools for epizootic disease prevention and control, published as Good Emergency Management Practice (GEMP)
- With Merial, disease and product management tools on CD ROM and on-line, including Foot and Mouth Disease and Rabies: EU, Rabies: North America, Rabies: Central and South America (in Spanish)
- A major extension of the AVIS project into zoonotics disease is now in development
- Leather production: with the British Leather Technology Centre (BLC), Northampton, Computer Aided Training Technology (CATT) a five part curriculum for operatives in leather production, in use world-wide, and Hide Quality, a program in five languages sponsored by the European Commission
- Environment: with the University of Viterbo, Italy, Agro-Biotech, addresses biotechnological solutions to challenges in environmental management and remediation
- With Florida Institute of Phosphate Research (FIPR), the MiLo Project offers a comprehensive range of professional support tools for the phosphate industry; a second program on radiation safety, MiLoRAD, is in development for publication in 2003
- experts from the phosphate industry, a series of programs on practical needs for production plants and their operatives, starting with a Plant Operator’s Manual
- With Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), the OSPREY system adjudicates and facilitates permitting for building and commercial purposes, on-line
- Farming: a series of programs on plant disease, analogous to AVIS is in development, in association with the University of Viterbo
- Food: with EBT Consultants, Athens, a new series of programs on the food production – consumption continuum, under the generic name AFSIS (Applied Food Safety Information Services) is in production. The first title, From Stable to Table, General Editor Dr. Apostolos Rantsios, focused on meat, is published to market the occasion of the world veterinary congress in Tunisia, September 2002. HACCP is in development