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May 10, 2005

Much ado about Knowledge

Here's a riff about KM.

You have the hierarchy (bottom to top) of data-info-knowledge-wisdom.
Data+context = info
info+usage = knowledge
knowledge+history = wisdom

All four items in the hierarchy can be recorded, making them "content".

Every kind of this content has a lifecycle of:
-acquire (discover/create/buy)
-store (classify/format/save)
-deploy (publish)
-process (consume/transform)
etc.

Then the fun begins:
-what are the reasons for taking any action in any phase of the lifecycle of any kind of content?
-what are the restrictions for ditto...
-what are the rules...
-what are the requirements...

Why are those the reasons/restrictions/rules/requirements?
- authorization (by who)
- circumstances (where, when)
- benefits (and for whom)
- costs (and for whom)

Perhaps lastly you have the idiosyncratic stuff:
- expectations
- permissions
- quality

and those kind of things tend to determine whether behaviors with content get exercized, prioritized, banned, or whatever:
- sharing
- distribution
- licensing
- maintenance
- etc.

Now, in each of those groups of considerations above, think of every separate item as a possible term or factor or "feature" of a content package that party A can make available to party B. (Ignore that some of the features might be undesirable or irrelevant sometimes; they still have to be accounted for in production as being intentionally included or excluded.)

Next, work up all the feature permutations and price them. What's the "market" for each permutation (i.e., type of package)?

Then, if you think of yourself as the package provider, and you think of the start-to-finish provision of a package as a "made-to-order, from scratch" event, it's easy to imagine yourself quickly wondering "hmmm... how can I do this as a mass-customization gig, where my speed and cost and complexity is not pushed out of control by the unpredictability of the next order versus the previous one?"

In designing that thing, you'll clearly have to run the gauntlet of politics, property, ambiguity, and risks.

It's amazing how much knowledge it's going to take to manage knowledge!

Wherefore, my two impertinences of the day:
#1 - "When information is free, only bums will have information." (Original, thanks.)
#2 - "A fool with a tool is still a fool." (Borrowed that one.)

Don't let this happen to you!

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at May 10, 2005 3:00 PM

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