Posted by Denham on March 21, 2000 at 00:03:51:

In Reply to: Re: Knowledge transfer- Review of Common Knowledge posted by Bo Newman on March 20, 2000 at 22:05:58:

Looking at Dixon's "Common Knowledge" through a knowledge ecology lense, I have these comments:

Task characteristics and knowledge sharing:
Nancy uses, how routine the task is, not in the sense of similariry, but how easily the task can be expressed in terms of explicit steps and the frequency. These are important attributes for knowledge transfer (along with an appreciation of key changes in context). I'm not so sure these are the best task characteristics when we look at learning and knowledge sharing, which are important aspects of to consider when looking at transfer in a holistic (ecosystem) perspective. Here I tend to favor the generic task ontology developed by Chandrasekaran and colleagues:

Task and method ontologies

e.g. classification, diagnosis, problem solving and others.

Transfer & learning
There is little attention to reciprocity, dialog and generative knowledge exchanges in Nancy's categories. I get the feeling Nancy favors knowledge transfer as passing objects and only recognizes transfer resulting in greater than the parts in "far transfer" (tacit exchange). Seems in true knowledge sharing there is always some measure of reciprocity, knowledge creation and learning on both sides. One of the most effective ways to share knowledge is to take time to share meanings, surface assumptions through constructing ontologies, practicing deep dialog and crafting distinctions.

I missed FAQs, co-location, yellowpages and boundary spanning between communities as alternative promising ways to share. Knowledge travels via relationships and I think this aspect could have received more attention in the book. Knowledge transfer goes far deeper than just passing information and Nancy's treatment of context and absoption potential was new and through. It is encouraging to see an entire book devoted to this key knowledge practice.

Thanks for your review Bo, I too think this is an important text, deserving of a place alongside Brown and Duguid's "The social life of information". Use of simulation and cases, in particular Time-Revealed Senarios (TRS) are recent advances to assist with knowledge sharing:

Time-Revealed Senarios

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