Tuesday, 3 April 2012


Where does Knowledge come from? (2)


A few months ago, I published a blog post called "where does knowledge come from?"

In this post, I made the point that althrough one of the most common models for KM is the DIKW model (where Knowledge comes from Information, which itself comes from Data), most people will, when asked, say that Knowledge comes from Experience.

I thought I would test this assertion, and I ran a quick poll in Linked-In.

The question was "Where do you think Knowledge primarily comes from?", and the 4 options are shown in the picture here.

43% of people think it comes primarily from Experience
48% think it comes from Experience and from Information
6% support the DIKW model in thinking it comes primarily from Information
Only one person thought it came from neither

In my blog post on Experience Management you will find the diagram below


This diagram supports the poll results, and highlights the importance of Experience as a factor in Knowledge Management. When we look at the feedback loops involved, we can see the important of experience management in KM, and can also see that if we take a purely Information Management approach to KM, we miss at least half the picture.

4 comments:

Glenn said...

Hi Nick,

Thanks for sharing your research results and your take on this. I voted for experience and very much like your diagrams and interpretation. It makes good sense to me :)

Best wishes,
Glenn

Luke W said...

Useful piece of research, I missed the poll but I'd put my +1 on experience too. I'd love to ask the person who voted for 'neither' what their other ontological source is!

Thanks for sharing Nick,

Luke W
Community Manager
OneDesk

Nick Milton said...

Thanks Luke and Glenn

Don Benson said...

Nick

Interesting poll and results and to consider the responses to the frequency distribution of learning types described in the Kolb learning model.

Thank you

Don

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