Posted by John Bardos on July 24, 1999 at 16:07:39:

In Reply to: Re: Exactly my point! posted by P. Richard Hansen on July 19, 1999 at 17:49:11:

Hello,

I believe that you have a very strict defintion of Knowledge. Perhaps you are right and 'information' is a better term to describe the recorded 'knowledge' of KM initiatives.

Calling 'best practices' 'knowledge' is not accurate unless that 'knowledge' is acted upon and internalized.

For instance, suppose a world class chef painstakingly documents his recipe for his favorite cake. Is this knowledge? It is a limited representation of the chef's knowledge but it is not knowledge to anyone else.

If I act upon this information and make my own cake. I gain my own knowledge. Of course it is not the same as the knowledge of the original chef. But, I still have a cake that tastes pretty good. I have learned something new. I have gained knowledge from mere information on a piece of paper. Maybe my new knowledge is only 5% of the quality of the original chef. That is still an improvement for me. Knowledge has been transfered. Even though following a recipe is inferior to working with the chef in person, I have still gained knowledge.

It is the act of using and internalizing information that makes it knowledge.

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