Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom
It’s hard to say precisely who created this framework, but it’s been around, in some form for about a century
It all starts with Data – the raw, unorganised, unprocessed facts.
An invoice, for example, a document that records the sale of a product, to a customer, for a certain value.
On its own, an invoice doesn’t tell us very much
To gain any meaningful understanding of our sales, we need to process this data
And it was back in the 1800s that Charles Babbage proposed a a method of mechanical data processing that was faster and more efficient than humans
This started the age of data processing
but it wasn’t until the 1940s that scientists invented an electronic version of the machine
By the late 1960s, companies such as IBM produced started producing commercial versions of these data processing machines
And large companies around the world started process data at a scale never before imagined
By the 1980s it became clear computerisation was going mainstream
And with the creation of the internet, and the release of easy-to-use interfaces, the information age was born
And this is where we are today – information technology dominates our lives
Information is data that has been organised to create meaning
Tools such as spreadsheets helped us make sense of numbers and find meaning in new ways
And as the hardware became more powerful, the software became faster and easier to use
Now, in most companies, we have departments full of people whose job it is to turn data into information
Who hand that information over to people in the business operations to turn into knowledge
That’s where the line was drawn
Technology produced Information and Knowledge came from humans, which leads us to the next level of the pyramid
Knowledge is the third level of our pyramid and it represents the understanding of information within a context
Through specific skills and training, knowledge workers built conceptual understandings of the world through information
Throughout the 2000s, we saw technology become and increasingly important component of these roles
And through automation, we humans could explore possibilities much more quickly
Technology allowed them to create things that never existed before
Which they could use to explain complex ideas to leaders, who then applied their wisdom to determine the best course of action
Wisdom is the synergising of knowledge with broader concepts such as strategy, values and experience
Wisdom is the pinnacle the framework because it represents the uniquely human ability to apply judgement
It’s not just understanding whether we could do something
it’s whether we should do something
And that’s been pretty much the paradigm since the early 1980s when the age of information began
People had been talking about AI for years, but it was an abstract concept and hard to see how it could change things
That was until December 2022 with the release of ChatGPT
Of course ChatGPT wasn’t the first or only example of AI, but it was the first example that captured attention
In fact there are now countless examples of Generative AI and this already changed the way we think about the world
And that means we need to rethink our paradigm about who – or what – creates knowledge
And that means we need to rethink our paradigm about who – or what – creates knowledge
We have trained our own technology to perform commentary and analysis, and find patterns in data that we simply can’t find
Here I have asked ChatGPT to explain the reasons in French as why a particular course of action is not a good idea.
So it’s pretty clear that things are about to change
But it’s not just technology that’s changed, our society is also undergoing some transformation changes.
And as the baby boomers retire, and more people embrace hybrid work, the fundamental nature of work will change
In the next video I’d like to talk about these changes and introduce you to Knowledge Orchestrator
I’ll walk through the platform we’ve developed and explain why – more than ever – the worlds needs a better way to manage corporate knowledge
We believe this solution is uniquely placed to help transform to the modern workplace
