At first, I thought that “Data” , “Information”, “Knowledge” were only simple terminologies that convey the same meaning. Upon studying and understanding it, there’s a variation that I will try to explain. I realized, data are bits and pieces of just about anything I encountered everyday through various media of sorts e.g., conversations, newspapers, ads, world wide web, etc. Information on the other hand is the one that gives a distinct role based on these data (for example, if I give you 3 different colors, say, red, green, and blue; would you know which one is my favorite?). More or less no. But if I say blue, then this data (the color) will now become an information for you. Furthermore, I later realized (now that I’m studying Knowledge Management or KM) that understanding data and information play a vital or key role in a much greater concept of KM. Here’s what I thought:

thehierarchyofknowledge

First, data will only have a meaningful use if we’re able to get vital or key information out of it in such a way that it can generate useful applications that we needed.

Second, these informations will only be more useful when you are able to understand, rationalize, communicate, relate, apply, and share it to others. That way, others will have a common understanding or rationalization as you and most probably, can also generate more information that can grow exponentially. In a much shorter explanation, these informations can be proven useful if synthesized by more than one head to make it more holistic.

Third, these informations where acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association and reasoning eventually transformed into knowledge that can rationalize into a much more diverse and greater concepts or applications.

*Note: Knowledge synthesis can form a higher form as seen in the graph: intelligence and wisdom generation, which I will not include anymore (these will soon provided with a much greater explanation).

When these knowledge generated exponentially, it now requires management, making the most out of these knowledge generated, thus, KM.

In a nutshell, Knowledge Management (from synthesized data and information) focuses on a higher plane of getting the desired objectives i.e., performance improvement, competitive advantage, innovation, sharing of best practices, continuous improvement, etc. In this era of what we call “Information Age”, what typically differs is the generation of “intellectual worker” vs. “manual worker”. Intellectual capital is another focus of many organization that gives competitive advantage in this fast, rapidly changing world.

Much more of KM to follow…