Knowledge-Information-Data [K.I.D]

what is data, information, knowledge..?

Data is a gathered body of Facts

Data is raw content or inputs obtained by any means. For example finding out the customer's requirement by means of Market Research

Data can exist in a variety of forms as numbers, symbols, text on a piece of paper, bytes stored in electronic memory or facts stored in a person's mind.
There are many ways of getting data and the most popular technique is Data Mining. By data mining information can be visualized and knowledge can be discovered. (FAYYAD..et al,2002)

The word knowledge has various meaning, knowledge at its simplest level is the knowing something or be familiar with the facts, this term is commonly referred to as "Know About" (NICKOLS,2000). Knowledge at next level means the ability to grasp the facts or understand the methods, techniques and apply them suitably when required, this term is commonly referred to as "Know how". Knowledge also means collection or accumulation of facts, methods, techniques etc.. and these type of knowledge are usually found in the form of books, journals, formulas.


References:

Information Visualization in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery

By Usama M. Fayyad, Georges G. Grinstein, Andreas Wierse

Published by Morgan Kaufmann, 2002

ISBN 1558606890, 9781558606890
Website: Book Preview 30-01-2009

The knowledge in KM
Fred Nickols
Website: View Article

KM Definition

Knowledge management is a very broad topic and has many views.However statistics shows that 80 percent of KM projects are a failure
This is a interesting pdf about KM Glossary: Click to view

Knowledge is a very important part of every business organization.

To get a good basic understanding about knowledge and managing the knowledge one must read views expressed by Penrose (1959) and Drucker (1993). Penrose considered acquiring knowledge is a "Social Learning Process". Drucker coined the term "Knowledge worker" (Drucker 1959) Knowledge workers are generally people who are involved in planning, acquiring searching, analyizing, organinzing information in an organization.
In an IT field programmers, system analysts, technical writers, academic professionals, researchers are considered as knowledge workers.
Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive(1966) describes each "knowledge worker" as an executive of the organization either by his position or knowledge and that his contribution affects the capacity of the organization to perform and obtain results

The Most commonly accepted view of knowledge Management is the collection of simple facts which is "data" which when processed and structured forms "Information" and this when interpreted in a proper manner becomes "Knowledge", but now KM is also viewed in another dimension i.e reverse knowledge hierarchy (TUOMI, 1999) here the author says information cannot be interpreted without any prior knowledge and data cannot be collected without the knowledge of what information to be collected.

According to Karl Wiig of Knowledge Research Institute says that knowledge management[KM] is a very vast topic of discussion. KM is ability of an organization to make effective use of its human resources, "human capital" or "brainware" (LIEBOWITZ, 1999)

Where as Wilma Abney and Daimler Chrysler of corporate university think KM as "Know what is Known, who knows it, How it has been applied and how it can be further leveraged and shared " and these ideas are reflected in book Sharing Expertise(Ackerman., et al 2003)

"If only HP knew what it knows it would make three times more profit tomorrow"

By Lew Platt, ex CEO Hewlett Packard

The above is one of the definition of knowledge management but has made huge impact around the world. In simple words it describes the importance of knowledge sharing and knowledge management, if they had a proper way to handle and manage the knowledge acquired by the employees and the organization, then the knowledge would remain inside the organization.

As mentioned earlier that 80 percent of the KM projects are failure, the possible reason for this may be that the organizations fail in one of the stages of KM i.e either in knowledge conversion or knowledge dissemination or may their may not have a proper method to discard the obsolete knowledge or which would become a mere data..

But Wilson (2002) has different views about Knowledge Management, understanding learning and gaining knowledge is the process that goes on in the mind. And there is no way to store knowledge but it can be expressed in the form of symbols, figures, articles or 'body language' . And that each mind processes information in its own fashion and gains knowledge.

And to me KM is process of learning new things and have the ability to know when, where and in what situation it can/has to be applied, and finally discarding the old knowledge and make room for new knowledge. Managing the knowledge is some things everyone does right from the young age as mentioned by my friend salis in his blog (Read More..) and nobody teaches us how to manage the knowledge acquired, its the part of our beautiful mind. for example can you remember what is the name of the maths teacher who thought you in high school... well some will remember and most will not remember because the brain discarded that information or knowledge as it will consider it as irrelevant. But to your surprise you might still remember the name of the kindergarten you attended... amazing isn't it. And i think organizations should follow the same method used by the human brain, i know it is very difficult to match any existing machine to a human brain as it far more advanced.

References:

1. Penrose, E.(1959), The Theory of The Growth of The Firm, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, .

2. Drucker, P.(1959), Landmarks of Tomorrow

3. Drucker, P.(1993), Managing for Results,London.

4. Jay Liebowitz :knowledge Management Handbook, CRC Press, 1999 Website:Book Preview 22-01-2009

5. Iikka Tuomi : Data is more than knowledge, ISBN: 0-7695-0001-3,Website: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=772795 , 22-01-2009

The above paper also appears in : System Sciences, 1999. HICSS-32. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference

Knowledge Mgmt and Strategies

Before i explain Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Strategies [KMS] I'll try to explain what is Knowledge..?

Knowledge Management is a very broad topic and their is no widespread agreement about the definition of KM (Haggie., Kingston., 2002)

Knowledge is nothing but collection of useful information
"Information might consist of facts, opinions, ideas, theories, principles, and models" (Barclay.,Murray., 1997)

Knowledge in simple words is nothing but a definition of some information acquired by any means. Knowledge according to me is nothing but experience in life and it is not restricted to work place.

My initial understanding about knowledge was, Knowledge can be acquired by talking to different people about their experiences in life.
If you Understand the information they said, then you have acquired the knowledge... and if you share that knowledge with others and give them the right information at right time which will in turn help them to take right decision now i consider that as knowledge management.. because you could process right information at right time..

And if you can manage to take right decision on the basis of experiences and do the right thing then that i consider as a KM strategy

But one thing is for sure if you want to make a point or suggest something at your workplace you must have formal experience - to be taken seriously, no matter how knowledgeable you are...

Strategy from a organization's point is making major decisions that will affect the company's progress for a long term. "Major Business Decisions are by their very nature Strategic" (Drummond.,Ensor., 1999) and organizations need to anticipate and adapt to environmental changes . Strategy just reflects the intent of a organization to gain competitive advantage over its peers. One must not confuse strategy to strategic plan as strategic plan involves the selection,sequence,timing and specific objectives to achieve the strategy.

According to the authors bob and ron (Wit.,Meyer., 2004) strategy can be classified into four levels and they are

• Functional Level Strategy
• Business Level Strategy
• Corporate Level Strategy
• Network Level Strategy

Apart from these traditional strategies one must adapt the current new forms of strategies i.e promotional strategy (Engel., et al 2000) and strategic advertising (Percy.,Elliott., 2001) which are other types of strategies and which will give organization an edge or to be recognized in the market. Creating promotion or advertising a product that is already existing in the market is much easier in comparison to launching a new product or a new brand in the market because one must analyze the market carefully. The strategies must differ for different cultures, organization must change their strategies according to the local culture where they plan to launch the product.

There was a case/ issue in India against the soft drinks giants coke and Pepsi in mid 2006 (Gentleman 2006)that they had excess pesticide contamination in their drinks and both the companies thought that they can handle the situation like they did earlier in 2003 but to their surprise government started to ban the drinks to be sold in schools and public areas. When they had faced the same issue in 2003 they had used the usual strategy used by most companies i.e sign up some big movie/sport star as their brand ambassadors and ask them to recommend it to the public and in turn gain public confidence, and these companies knew they couldn't use the same strategy as the situation was much worse and none of the stars would come forward to recommend their products so they changed their strategy they stopped all the advertisements and instead they had tie ups with all the multiplexes, KFCs, Pizza Hut/Corner and started promoting their drinks with the respective products i.e popcorns / burgers / pizzas. Initially people refused to take but slowly it changed and they are still recovering and still not gained full confidence. Read more about this issue here

And this is how Strategies are changed according to the market/environment.

I personally stopped drinking coke and Pepsi after this incident.



References:

1. Rebecca O.Barclay, Philip C.Murray., Knowledge Praxis Website: http://www.media-access.com/whatis.html

2. Knox Haggie, John Kingston., Choosing your Knowledge management strategy Website: http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/publications/online/0258.pdf

3. Graeme Drummond and John Ensor Strategic Marketing planning & Control 1999

4. Bob De Wit, Ron Meyer Strategy - Process, Content, Context 3rd Edition 2004

5. Engel, Warshaw, Kinnear Promotional Strategy 2000

6. Larry Percy, Richard Elliott Strategic Advertising Management Oxford University Press 2001

7. Amelia gentleman IHT.com 2006 Website : http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/22/business/coke.php

About Communities of Practice [CoP]

This concept was first put forth by two anthropologists, namely Barbara Rogoff (1985) and Jean Lave. Later Lave along with Etienne Wenger developed this concept furthermore coined the term Communities of Practice. (Wikipedia 2006) and this is not a new concept, most of us are a part of at least one such community or group knowingly or unknowingly. Communities of Practice is a group of people who share common interests and they come together to achieve common goals. It also helps people to solve problems in their area of expertise.(Hass., et al 2002) The intension behind starting or joining a community of practice may vary from person to person.
Staring a community of practice in an organization is a very difficult task. It requires a lot of motivation and support from the management.


Communication in CoP is both formal and informal and they are not a static group but they evolve and adapt continuously. The authors also give a example of Chrysler group which is basically a vehicle manufacturing company where CoP is put to best use and they call it as Electronic Book Of Knowledge [EBOK] Here they use the concept of "Lessons Learned" or "Best Practices"which is adapted from the ideas put forth by Wenger and snyder in 2000. And the engineers at Chrysler refer to it as tech clubs where they share the knowledge. Chrysler is also well know for its outstanding success story for reusing the lessons learned and best practices and significantly reducing the cost and process simplification. (Ackerman., et al 2003)

Its a way of sharing knowledge.
And now this CoP is adapted by most of the organizations as the means of improving the knowledge.

And this was our group's [VOSAPA] view about CoP which we discussed in the seminar.


In the above photo the dots which appear like the nodes of a hexagon are individuals,
they have two way arrow between each other which represents the two way communication among the individuals of a organization, the square represents the CoP and the organization is placed inside a CoP, the mesh that can be seen inside the hexagon represents the network that is present between the individuals of the organization.

References:

1. Wikipedia 2006 Website : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice

2. Roland Hass, Wilfried Aulbur and Sunil Thakar and edited by mark Ackerman, Volkmar pipek and Volker Wulf Sharing Expertise - Beyond Knowledge Management 2003

About Social Network / Business Network

A Social network from my understanding is a group of people or organizations that are interconnected and they communicate directly or indirectly to share their interests- it can be anything from personal to professional. For extra information check out this article on Social Network

In the current world social network has a new dimension called social networking... which is very popular and has a very concrete base. Some of the examples of social networking websites are

MySpace - which is very popular in USA and some other parts of the world [and i do not much about myspace as i have not used it, but i think i will check it out just to see why it is so popular in US].

Facebook - which is the next most widely used [No offence , as i do not know the statictics which is more popular] and it is very popular in UK and US as well and it is also gaining polpularity in the far east especially the Asian countries.

Orkut - which stands next in popularity as it is mainly used by the east i.e Asian countries it is also popular in Brazil. Not many people in West know about Orkut which is in fact a Google product [I'm really surprised that Google have not penetrated in such a huge markets like UK,US]

According to me people of US and UK might not like Orkut as main highlighting feature of orkut is that anyone can access anyone's profile and view it, they can also view and read anyone's Scrapbook [A "Wall" in case of facebook] even if they are not a friend of that person... I know its a heaven for Perverts.

Google did face some legal problems like privacy violation in india as some people used the personal photos posted by members [especially girls] and morphed them in a erotic picture and sold them online. Intension was usually to earn money or take revenge... Later Google did take actions and made photos viewable only to friends and also gave uses the power to control as who can view their photos.

Business Network is very similar to social network but in this case like-minded people with the same mindset to do business and earn money join such network.
As to my knowledge one of the most popular business network is AMWAY [No Offense].

Another popular networking website is LinkedIn which is a type of social network but they are being used to build business connections [As mentioned by Mr Aboubakr - professor in Middlesex University]

What is an Organization

Organization is a group of people who come together to achieve a single or collective goal. The people involved in an organization normally have and follow a Code of Conduct.
The intention of organization is not limited to earn profits as there are many Non-Profit Organization or Non government organization who share a common goal to help the less Lucky people...

About Me

Hi All
My Name is Abhijith , I'm from India. I'm happy go lucky by nature.
I did my engineering in computer science. My hometown is mangalore, a beautiful port city in the south India.


I can speak English,Kannada,Hindi,Tulu.. and i can understand konkani (which is one of the local languages in my hometown), i also understand Tamil and Gujarati to some extent.
I studied German language for about 6 months, although now i have forgotten may of it as i did not have anyone to speak with.... in other words i love learning new languages.
I'm also a techno freak i love handling new gadgets anything from computer laptops to mobile phones.


I spend most of the time on my laptop, surfing internet downloading movies, music, games, sitcom series.


My most favorite sitcom is F.R.I.E.N.D.S , next to it is Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Three's Company, Full House, Everybody loves Raymond, I dream of a genie.

Recently i have been watching My Name is Earl and The Big Bang Theory both the series are awesome.