Knowledge is the next big thing

Lately there has been a great infor­ma­tion explo­sion. We’ve now got so much more at our fin­ger­tips. There are web­sites, more tele­vi­sion chan­nels than ever, and of course books.  Tak­ing that infor­ma­tion and har­ness­ing it as knowl­edge is where the advan­tage really is.

It’s cru­cial to com­pre­hend the dif­fer­ence between the two. Think of infor­ma­tion as a book. By itself, it’s just a book. When that book is read, and it’s ideas con­sid­ered by the reader, it becomes knowledge.

So, once you’ve acquired some knowl­edge, where can you put it? You can’t really store it in a book, as it loses con­text and becomes infor­ma­tion again. The same applies for doc­u­ment man­age­ment sys­tems, wikis and any other mod­ern solu­tion you can think of. There’s only one place to effec­tively store your knowl­edge – people.

Peo­ple har­ness the all impor­tant con­text of the infor­ma­tion, the knowl­edge cre­ated when think­ing about infor­ma­tion. They also act as one of the most effec­tive ways to dis­trib­ute knowl­edge. Far bet­ter than any website.

There are many peo­ple who will try end­lessly to “cap­ture knowl­edge”, but in the end, peo­ple is where knowl­edge belongs. The sooner busi­nesses real­ize this, the sooner they can focus on acquir­ing, devel­op­ing and retain­ing peo­ple as a knowl­edge solution.