Neil, if there are "students of knowledge management" out there for whom
the accumulation of knowledge is a problem, those individuals may be the
problem. Can you tell us who these students are?
If the individual learns but does not remember--and I assume that memory
means the ability of the individual to retain what he or she has
learned--that individual is doomed to perpetual ignorance: it is the
"storage" of memory that allows the individual to learn, and without it,
the endless labor of pushing the rock up the hill once more.
You ask which is more important, "accumulation" or "circulation," and your
own analogy suggests that the question itself is the problem.
Would it not be better for the KM movement to suggest a model of
organizational knowledge development that includes 3 dimesions:
1. Knowledge generation
The organization must find or create the knowledge it needs. Find or
create: find in another organization, in the literature, in a database.
Create: by experiment, group or individual research; through explorations
via conversation and group collaboration.
2. Knowledge circulation
The "conversation:" you and the students of KM you refer to clearly
understand and endorse: communities of practice.
3. Knowledge storage and management
The organization, like the individual needs a memory. The organization,
like the individual, needs ways of finding and retrieving the knowledge it
has accumulated: underlining and marginarl notes, for example, or tape
recordings of conversations, or elaborate systems based on computers and
software.
Premise: if any of the three elements are not included in an
organization's approach to dealing with knowledge, it will probably fail.
The Brinton book, Neil, is IDEAS AND MEN: THE STORY OF WESTERN THOUGHT.
I appreciate your openmindedness on this matter: the discounting of
storage and the doctrine of knowledge existing only in dialog has become
an orthodoxy of the KM movement, and it must be difficult to question it.
Steve Eskow
Dr. Steve Eskow
President, The Pangaea Network
http://www.pangaeanetwork.com
> So the 'accumulation' of knowledge (as though it were a material thing
> that could be piled in one place) is somewhat problematic for some
> students of KM. Yet, as you point out, certainly culture is the result of
> knowledge 'accumulation' or accretion in the sense that we are all
> 'pygmies standing on the shoulders of giants.'
[...snip... by your host]
> Your mention of Crane Brinton's categories of knowledge as 'cumulative,'
> and 'non-cumulative' is interesting. I remember reading his 'Anatomy of a
> Revolution,' but nothing else of his. Where does that comment appear?
[Host's Note: Ideas and Men : The Story of Western Thought by Clarence
Crane Brinton is, according to Amazon.com, out of print. ...Rick]
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