My fellow FastForward blogger, Paula Thornton, recently published a great post, Knowledge Must Be Applied. First she breaks down the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom continuum. I agree with her that I have always had problems with it. There is so much overlap here as tom Davenport also remarked as Paula quotes, “I resist making this distinction, because it’s clearly imprecise…for years people have referred to data as ‘information’. Data, information, and knowledge aren’t easy to separate in practice; at best you can construct a continuum of the three.”
She then goes on to bring in other writers on the topic including John Tropea who looks at several writers in his post, Knowledge Management…NOT!, and concludes, you cannot “capture knowledge, as it’s not possible to capture meaning, the meaning is derived by the person encountering it, all the capturing we do is simply information management.” I agree and I never liked the term, knowledge management. In the early 90s we defined knowledge in terms of actionable information that provides business value or something to this effect. A person had to put the information into the useful action.
Read Paula’s post as she provides more details to the argument. I agree with her last and concluding sentence, “Knowledge is something that is applied — for action — within specific contexts. This is not the realm of what is portrayed as Knowledge Management, but it something that is facilitated by Enterprise 2.0.”
I first became excited about what came to be called enterprise 2.0 by its ability to realize the early vision of what was mistakenly called knowledge management.
I cringe a little when we paint an entire field, and all of its practitioners, with a broad brush. For instance, the data-information-knowledge-wisdom is just one viewpoint on KM and there are many in the field that feel that this model in particular is highly flawed. Ditto for the name "knowledge management" - many feel that the "management" term is not appropriate.
The field of KM is highly fragmented, with few broadly accepted definitions - even the terms KM and "knowledge" are often debated on the Actkm mailing list. This fragmentation and lack of accepted definitions makes it easy for people to create straw man arguments and apply other rhetorical techniques to point out the failings (and there are many) of KM initiatives.
It's fair to criticize the shortcomings of KM projects and KM implementations (again, many) that have failed and also very accurate to point out that KM is not a technology issue per se. But it's important to balance that criticism with some mention that the field is not homogeneous and that practitioners are still learning and evolving methods/practices.
Does Enterprise 2.0 = KM ... no, I don't come down on that side.
Does Enterprise 2.0 enable KM methods and practices to be better applied ... yes, definately.
Posted by: Mike Gotta | July 22, 2009 at 07:08 AM
Mike _ Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree with everything you said and have made similar comments in the past. Paula and I have had some discussions on this. Some of our disagreements turn out to be semantic and we have agreed more than disagreed. However, I started practicing KM in 92 and I have seen many KM successes over the past 15 plus years when KM was aligned with business processes. While it is not a perfect term, it has survived longer than most approaches and is still going. I do agree with her concluding statement which I interpreted in a manner that this is consistent with your last comment. I first become excited about the possibilities of what we now call enterprise 2.0 in 2004 when I saw how it could help realize the vision of KM.
Posted by: bill Ives | July 22, 2009 at 09:21 AM
Maybe since we dont have an accepted definition of knowledge, the rest of the disagreements could follow from there? But, given the impact web 2.0 technologies are having, and the direction of e2.0, knowledge must be looked at in a way much larger than before, and this might lead to the management part being a misnomer, at least in the classical sense? Unless we can look at it in terms of management when it comes to the e2.0 paradigm?
Posted by: Atul Rai | July 23, 2009 at 08:19 AM
When data or information is aggregated and collective intelligence extracted or augmented reality, do we always move into the realms of knowledge and wisdom?
The application of knowledge depends of the circumstance -
1 - what is the richness or maturity or completeness of the source data? thinner or incomplete data cannot be applied to create knowledge
2 - what is the critical level of accuracy or consistency desired so as the pass the results generated as knowledge? mission-critical knowledge and wisdom can be build only from equally mission critical source data
3 - what happens when future research findings prove the base assumptions of a universally accepted "wisdom" incorrect? does that invalidate all knowledge based on the same hypothesis?
Posted by: Eric Kotonya | August 02, 2009 at 03:49 AM
Eric. Thanks. I think that is the end knowledge is practical. If it served a purpose for good (not evil) but later there is something better then it does not invalidate what went before it just changes things going forward. We can them appreciate what people did with incomplete knowledge. Bill
Posted by: bill Ives | August 02, 2009 at 08:43 AM