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A few days ago, I answered the question “what is knowledge?” I’m going to take it one step further, outlining our personal knowledge deficiency, and why we need others to share their knowledge.

To begin, imagine all knowledge could be represented by a circle. What you know is represented as a slice from this knowledge pie. Your slice may grow with education and experience, and the example in my humble pie chart is probably overly generous, but suitable for making my point.

Next, we have what we know we don’t know. This is the knowledge that we know of, but don’t know the details about. For example, I know that when I flip a switch on the wall, a light turns on or off. I know that it’s not magic, but the science of electricity. I don’t know the details, but I’m ok with that. I know that I don’t know how it all works, but I know that someone does.

Beyond the first two slices, and consuming the majority of our knowledge pie, lies what we don’t know that we don’t know (say that ten times fast!). This represents knowledge — truth — that we aren’t even cognizant of. There is a very good chance that someone knows this knowledge, but a substantial part awaits discovery. This represents our opportunity. Knowledge is power, and until we find the secret of omniscience, we need the knowledge of others to achieve more.

Next up, the power of knowledge sharing.

technorati tags: knowledge, KM

Earlier this week I suggested that sharing knowledge is a positive action that benefits both the person sharing and the recipient. Steve challenged that statement, and I felt that a proper response was necessary. I’m going to explain why (and when) knowledge sharing is a good thing, but I’m going to do so over a couple of posts.

To begin, I’ll start with a definition of knowledge. Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, provides a well-accepted explanation that this diagram clarifies.

Simply put, knowledge is where truth and belief intersect.

In other words, for me to claim knowledge on an subject, it must be true, and I must believe it to be true. Of course, it’s possible that I might later learn that what I thought was true was, in fact, false. If such a case were ever to happen (hypothetically, of course), then you would say that I, in fact, did not possess knowledge on that subject. The same is true on a macro level. As we discover new truths about the world around us, previously held views are found to be false.

The three areas outside of the intersection should not be neglected. First, there are truths that we do not believe. We may not know enough to believe them to be true, or we may be skeptical of the reliability of proof. The second area, belief, contains what we either cannot know (i.e. does God exist?) or do not know, but personally believe.

The third area… I’ll go into more in my next post.

technorati tags: knowledge, KM

One of the more interesting seminars I attended at KM World dealt with the opportunities to use blogging behind the firewall. Of course, blogs such as this one tend to ramble, but a well-focused, topical blog can provide two things that help employees deal with info glut: human filtering that gleans the really valuable nuggets from all of the information on a subject, and contextualizing that information with storytelling and personal perspective.

Blogs are easy to create, even easier to maintain, and can bridge the gap between adhoc communication such as email or instant messages, and structured knowledge stores.

This got me thinking. With all of the excellent tools on the market, many of which are free and/or open source, why not create an entire knowledge management system built using free components. Blogging software, forums, news and content management systems and RSS feeds could all become part of a KM package that even small companies or low-budget non-profit organizations could afford to implement.

What do you think? Am I out to lunch? In left field? Up a creek without a paddle? Let me know.