So what, then, is “knowledge”?

And so back to the eternal question. It still seems, as it always has these 25 past years, to many people, to be the place to start. “What is knowledge?” I’ve been asked this many times at an early meeting with a new client. And I have many answers and many evasions because I don’t find it to be a very good starting place. But here we go again …

People learn all the time, and it’s a process that can’t be switched off while we live. Each experience, each sensory input, each encounter, situation, transaction – they all influence and shape our mental model of the world. This is why “practice makes perfect”. We’re not always conscious of the biases our experiences place on our view of the world.

People have ideas and speak to each other about their ideas and views. The process spreads and also changes the ideas. People help each other solve problems and get things done, combining their complementary strengths and needs.

Over time, ideas with more appeal or efficacy become more dominant and successful, and get passed to others or taught to children.

And that’s knowledge. You see, knowledge happens anyway without the need for knowledge management.

But it’s a bit haphazard.

What we do in knowledge management is to provide services and make interventions to aid the development, flow and application of knowledge. We make it less haphazard.