A blog post named "Knowledge Management Tools" made the round through twitter with a number of RTs today. I have to say I was a bit skeptical by reading the title, already. My opinion is there might be tools that can store and help share information, but for knowledge to flow it needs people. The article in my mind is making the "information=knowledge" mistake mixing the words and meanings, and in my opinion this is a major reason so many efforts on really trying to get knowledge shared and flowing around an organization have failed.
How far the article goes shows the following statement:
"Knowledge Management is nothing but a collection of technologies used for authoring, indexing and storing data, and of the application of this information and knowledge, where applicable"
Sorry, but that sentence says it all in my mind. It clearly says it doesn't matter if you are talking about data, information or knowledge it is all the same, and the only thing that is important is the technology to store "it". I have a different view on what knowledge is, and what it takes to share the most valueable of it. If you focus on the technology only, you are not really giving yourself much of a chance to reap the "invaluable advantage" that this blogger talks about.
Real attempts on getting knowledge to flow in organizations look different.
Spot on Frank. That blog post you refer to is thoroughly confused between data, information and knowledge, and serves only to add to the confusion
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of confusion already - see http://www.nickmilton.com/2010/03/cats-and-dogs.html for example
Hi Nick, I really like the cat/doc example. I was actually thinking of doing something like that with Apples/Oranges etc... but your example is great and people should be able to spot the parallel. The issue is that one "knows" what a "dog" and a "cat" looks like, but "knowledge" just seems trendy, and so without understanding the concept people just use it in any (incl. wrong contexts). I hope we get a growing flock of people that will help change this thinking/behaviour on a broader basis.
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