My wife and I were watching Good Will Hunting last night, (basically the story of an abused kid who turns out to be a mathematical genius, albeit he finds it so easy to explain it or prove it he finds it dull). It reminded me of our thoughts of how to capture the knowledge of our best experts (albeit not as smart as the Matt Damon character). To try and capture this kind of knowledge never mind true genius is the Holy Grail (unachievable), and so we must be realistic on what is ultimately achievable. We will never replace intelligence coupled with years of experience, but what we might do is to increase the ' speed to competence'. i.e we might help make an expert in 10 years instead of 20.
A guiding principle I use is that knowledge sits in between your ears and cannot be captured in an over arching meaningful sense. We can trigger the flow of this knowledge at the appropriate time (Communities of Practices, meetings, publications etc) this works well, but if we just capture the knowledge or the documents produced, the insights reasoning and thought processes from another’s opinion are missed, rendering the form of communication only partially successful for the wider audience.
i.e. upon reading a paper I may think why did they do that, whereas some else knows that and has other questions, unfortunately the author does not know who will read the paper beyond the initial audience, and therefore will not know what or how to write for the extended audience, whereas if the author has a discussion with me he gauges quickly if I understand the areas or not and give a general explanation or detailed one depending on the subject and his understanding of me - real knowledge flow has 2 contexts the context of the giver and the context of the receiver I feel.
This is why the vast majority of knowledge bases I have seen developed in many companies (especially when they store old documents that are not used in daily activities but are the archive) fail. The users hardly find what they want and then when they do it never quite gives them the information they require. (it lacks their context, as it contains the authors context fixed in time) This coupled with the fact we all have little time due to heavy work loads means it's easier to ask then search. One to one asking (phone, email, meeting) is ideal, but CoPs facilitate this as well and hence prove to be useful. (i.e see how many companies report success (albeit they are hard to launch) this is the essence of this Keynote Speech at KM Europe 2001))
Hmm my thoughts are starting to crystalise on this but let's diverge for a few more days/weeks before I try and draw it all together into a meaningful (well at least to me) hypothesis.
