Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

October 27, 2010

3. “In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge.”

Filed under: Authoring Topic Maps,Knowledge Management,Marketing,Topic Maps — Patrick Durusau @ 5:58 am

Knowledge Management Principle Three of Seven (Rendering Knowledge by David Snowden)

In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge. A genuine request for help is not often refused unless there is literally no time or a previous history of distrust. On the other hand ask people to codify all that they know in advance of a contextual enquiry and it will be refused (in practice its impossible anyway). Linking and connecting people is more important than storing their artifacts.

I guess the US intelligence community has a “previous history of distrust” and that is why some 9 years after 9/11 effective intelligence sharing remains a fantasy.

People withhold their knowledge for all sorts of reasons. Job security comes to mind. Closely related is self-importance. Followed closely by revelation of incompetence. General insecurity, and a host of others.

Technical issues did not create the need for semantic integration. Technical solutions will not, by themselves, result in semantic integration.

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

Powered by WordPress