Knowledge Inventories
The dubious notion of ‘knowledge inventories’ has somehow crept back from the dead. Oh brother. AWGTHTGTTA?
Creating 'knowledge inventories' is utter nonsense. It has been tried for decades, by very clever people, and gets nowhere. There have been, and will always be, spectacular failures. The problem is the Newtonian model of analytic reductionism fails outright when applied to knowledge. Beware.
Creepy vendors and consultants tried/try to advance this nonsense. Sometimes they called them enterprise portals. They sold them by the seat. Other times they called them knowledge repositories.
Thing is, anyone that used these codified inventories called them knowledge suppositories. Obsequious managers embraced knowledge inventories and vendors precisely because they were thinking with their ‘seat.’
In leading knowledge management (KM) worldwide for 25 years, and with intimate and lasting relationships with all the top, recognized, global leaders, it can be said with confidence all the notions of knowledge assets, capital, inventories, taxonomies, etc., is just patently ridiculous, useless and an profound waste of time.
Unfortunately, every few years, the 'knowledge inventory' baloney pops up again. It is always proffered by arrogant and unfortunate Western rationalists. They think they can apply analytic reductionism to complex phenomena like knowledge, networks and value. They ALWAYS fail and eventually go away.
Some embrace the enlightened knowledge thinking while others just try to force the issue. It can be rather sad and painful to witness all the wasted energy and lost productivity. On the other hand, the joy of enlightenment is palpable when knowledge reductionism is retired.
Among the greatest contemporary thought leaders concerning business knowledge management is a friend and colleague, Ikujiro Nonaka. Here is a lecture in Vienna I attended while advising one of his PhD candidates in knowledge management a few years ago. It is a good summary of the principles.
In short, business knowledge is about distributed phronesis.
Sadly, no matter how hard we try, some people occasionally still pursue incredibly dopey knowledge inventories. Fortunately, it is becoming more and more rare, since all discover it is a confident path to oblivion.
Of course ‘organizing the world’s information,’ indexed search, social profiles, information, taxonomies, sematic webs, visual search, Big Data, etc., remain critical frontiers. However, as in the past, the future of the Internet, and knowledge, is all about human connection not data collection.
However, it is often difficult to pull adherents back from the brink. In KM we have learned, painfully, that Newtonian rationalism is a cognitive pathology and difficult to cure. The afflicted are very brittle and pursue a zero-sum game. They are is best avoided.
Anyway, what we strive to do is try and show them the way out of their failed thinking and the overbearing farce of knowledge inventories. It is brutal to get them to, ‘think different.’
Today, social models and knowledge are critical dimensions of productivity. To develop these capabilities and achieve productivity and innovation, praxis intervention and phonetic science are strongly recommended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_intervention
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phronetic_social_science
In summary, business productivity and knowledge inhabits complex networks. It CANNOT be broken down and reassembled. Rather, praxis and phronesis achieve social comprehension, knowledge cohesion, leadership maturity, new capabilities, productivity, growth, business prosperity and optimal outcomes overall.
A forceful post – unfortunately although you aimed at knowledge repositories, you scored a direct on information repositories!
Let’s start with where we agree – much evil has been done in the name of the knowledge and knowledge management using information technology. Using a mental model based on a library rather than a human mind will not produce a knowledge repository, however many clever indexes you add. The human mind has a variety of elements missing in information repositories including many mental models of the world, a reasoning capability, judgement and the ability to compensate for missing information or missing knowledge. Almost all repositories use the library metaphor and are no more useful than a library with good librarians.
Second point of agreement – filling up what you call a knowledge repository (and I regard as an information repository) is a Sisyphean task and a full time job, which is a pity when people have a day job to do - one of the jobs won't be done properly. Capturing knowledge needs to be focused on valuable knowledge which can be found and re-used.
Now where we disagree:
Bent Flyvjberg indeed points out the biggest flaw of social science – in centuries, no predictive social science theory has yet been developed. That’s fine if doing research, but industry and government is looking for solutions, not questions and theories and this is why scientists and engineers find favour. Although many knowledge managers are still stuck in the information technology rut, others are not and their technologies originate in psychology and philosophy, not information science. I have seen several “knowledge repositories” which store carefully selected knowledge (and I don’t mean information), include limited reasoning capabilities specific to the business process they’re supporting. I haven’t yet seen industrialised (as opposed to laboratory) examples of judgment or learning, but the technologies are maturing all the time.
So while I understand why many people (and my generalisation includes you) have closed their minds to what they see as “knowledge repositories”, I respectfully challenge your mindset (have I understood “praxis intervention” correctly?) and ask you to do a little more research into knowledge - not information - technology (avoiding snake-oil vendors as you go).
BWs
James (Newtonian rationalist)
Reply to this
Sorry James, you just don't get it. It is not semantics either. Don’t feel bad as a newbie and asking questions. That’s important for beginners!
BTW, ‘beginner’ here is an important, critical behavior to seek. I URGE and understanding of Shoshin. Without it your transformation and of KM people is impossible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin
Again, knowledge is a human-only phenomenon; Knowledge involves complex cognitive processes: perception, communication, association and reasoning of humans -- not machinery of any type.
Your comment is badly confused by conflating knowledge and information. Until you understand the difference, talk to more people, truly embrace the uniquely human property of knowledge, you will continue to be lost.
Of course INFORMATION technology is advancing rapidly. Information aids human activities, but information has NO capacity for abstraction, while humans have infinite.
No, you do not understand praxis intervention or distributed phronesis. Give professor Flyvbjerg a call. He certainly agrees with me.
Stay on the path, you are getting close, and you may soon be enlightened.
-j
Reply to this