value

Knowledge work, information work and the three success factors behind both

The last post ended with an implicit distinction of knowledge work from information work. There is a difference between the two terms, yet they can be used almost congruently most of the times. The relationship between knowledge work and information work lies in the subtlety of where knowledge “happens”. Knowledge is inherently personal and only our cognitive processes that happen in our brain can be described as knowledge work. The cognitive processes that aim at answering questions can be described as knowledge work in a narrow sense. On the other hand, information-work is not limited to our cognitive processes – the activity rather describes ways of manipulating or handling information in any possible form.

Knowledge work is a value adding process whereby personal knowledge is used to shape the communication of processed input to a certain audience.

 

What exactly is is valuable? Knowledge work means applying logic and reasoning - that's what's valuable! Knowledge work is performed each time people make decisions. Knowledge workers are people who are employed to make their own decisions based on information they receive and logic/reasoning they apply. Value is derived in finding suitable answers to specific questions, thereby reducing uncertainty.

 

The result of knowledge work, namely processed inputs is always in the form of information. Knowledge work is thus surrounded by information work

 

The value of knowledge and the knowledge work value chain

I ended my last post saying that the larger the demand of audiences for insight the larger the potential benefits when such insights are delivered. This sentence highlights an important point I have made before in my post: What’s in it for you? A personal knowledge management framework can make you earn more and become more satisfied

In a knowledge economy, knowledge is valued more highly than say physical labour. Let’s briefly look at the following chart taken from a Morgan Stanley Daily Economic Briefing (here):

 

The chart highlights quite well the overall trend of value migration. The contribution of manufactured goods to the overall value of the top three economic areas is constantly decreasing. Value typically migrates to knowledge intensive industries and away from manufacturing.

Consider this statement, found at enterweb http://www.enterweb.org/know.htm :

Enhanced knowledge work value chain and major strategic questions

In my last post I explained the importance of the audience as receivers of a knowledge worker’s output and as a source of information, i.e. supplier of input for knowledge work. I explained that it is important to ask: Where can you deliver exceptional value, which audiences show a thirst for the insights you can deliver and how can improve and become more effective and more efficient at creating valuable information for these audiences? In this post I will look at the audience in more detail. To start, look at the illustration below:

 

The illustration highlights again the value chain of knowledge work from a different perspective. When you compare this figure to the one I used to introduce the value chain of knowledge work, the difference is the role of information sources and information receivers (=audience). While in my first post I have not particularly stressed the fact that your audience is also your most important information source. This was the main message of my last post. In essence, the circle to the right describes the environment of information sources and information receivers. It highlights on the one hand people and on the other hand artefacts that are produced by people.

 

These artefacts have different formats, some may be written documents, others may be videos and still others audio recordings. These artefacts are always a result of knowledge work performed by people.

Is giving away knowledge for free good?

The spirit of open source has been distributed in uncountable subforms and interpretations and the "all for free intentions" of the web community have without a doubt contributed greatly to people's ability to access and work with digital media. However, not everything should be free - people have to eat and it's also nice for a family father to take his kids to the movies from time to time. If everything is free, how can twe earn our living?

When looking at some research studies on open-source, we find the common consensus that open source development is in no way near free. In fact, large contributers to open source products are corporations who employ core developers and contributers. The Linux operating system is to a large extent made available to people through integrators like RedHat or Suse - these companys commercially aggregate and enrich open source programs.

The same is the case for Drupal or Joomla. These two popular webCMS benefit greatly from the participation of companies that develop and sell Extensions commercially. For 3rd party developers the incentive is to create a unique extension that earns recognition whithin the community and to make it available for free to the public in order to get public awareness. It is finally not much less than advertisement for development skills.

What’s in it for you? A personal knowledge management framework can make you earn more and become more satisfied

After a rather long time without maintaining this blog I will over the course oft the following weeks post several entries to present a framework that I have been developing „offline“ over the last weeks or so. Let me start by highlighting the aim of the upcoming work. I have started this page as a test environment for a personal knowledge management system. Personal knowledge management is not new to the world and it’s promise is an environment for the individual to efficiently store and leverage resources in the production of output which is aimed at specific audiences.

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