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Knowledge and Knowledge Management
Mustapha Malki - Wednesday 23 March 2005Dear all,
Let me please introduce myslef. I am Mustapha Malki, Regional Coordinator of KariaNet, a regional knowledge sharing network for IFAD-funded projects in the Middle East and North Africa region. I am based in Cairo Regional Office of IDRC - Canada since January 2005 the start of my contrat-position.
I would like to join my voice Peter to help us talk the same language because since the start of this e-conference I felt a slight confusion between Knowledge and Information. And some are using both concepts like synonyms. For me, knowledge is part is part of a continuum called "data-information-knwoledge-wisdom" continuuum and if knowledge and information are part of the same continuu, that forcibly mean that we don't bear the same meaning although material transfers happend very often between the this two steps on the same continuum.
To make clear for everybody, let's take an example: take a note of music (RE for example), alone it means nothing (it is just data) but of we arrange it with other notes in a very organised way we obtain a music score (this is information). Now, different people may receive this music score and some will understand it (and play the music score because they have knowledge) while others may not understand it (because they don't have a previous knowledge to do that). Two musicians may play the same music score but with a diffrent performance. This will depend of their wisdom.
All this to say that, rejoining Peter again, that Knowledge is "between the ears" as one of my professors in Wageningen used to say. It is "built-in" (instead of "built-up" as Peter suggested), contextual, and sometimes "socially-constructed". for this latter, a legend or a fairy tale (which is most of the time "indigenous knowledge") may have a sacred meaning in some society while it can be completely disregarded is some others.
For this purpose when we talk about knowledge and knowledge management, we have to understand the process by which indivdiduals process and "transform" information into knowledge and how they convert knowledge into information so that it can be shared with others. And communication theory here is a valuable tool to understand all these processes.
More will come later...
Mustapha
Information, knowledge and good people
Cor Dietvorst - Thursday 24 March 2005Dear participants,
My name is Cor Dietvorst, information specialist at IRC and editor of Source Weekly.
I liked Mustapha Malki’s musical illustration of the difference between information and knowledge. Let me add another one taken from the book by Davis S. Landes “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations”. It goes something like this:
Before World War I, Germany’s chemical industry was no. 1 in the world. After Germany’s defeat, the English saw this as an opportunity to take over that lead position. They looted Germany’s chemical factories and research laboratories taking with them factory blueprints and production schemes. Without the knowledge of the German engineers, however, the English were unable to reproduce the German chemical plants. Within a few years after the war Germany had rebuilt its chemical industry and retained its no. 1 position.
Some thirty later, the Americans showed they had a better understanding of “knowledge”. After World War II, they took a large team of German rocket scientists, led by Werner von Braun, to the US to help set up a ballistic missile programme.
When the former director of IHE-Delft, Wim van Vierssen, was asked what he thought was most important success factor for any organisation, his simple answer was “good people”. If you employ staff based on the quality of their content skills and experience, and their willingness and ability to share this with others, you probably will have solved 95% of KM problems.
