Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management has become one of the most crucial parts of any growing
business. To be able to best understand how to incorporate Knowledge
Management into a business organization, one must first understand some of the
core competencies related to Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management
includes creating processes for knowledge sharing, the action of disseminating the
knowledge through the organization, storing the knowledge in the best place
possible, and also retrieving the knowledge when needed

This can be applied in multiple contexts. To name a few: from an employee starting
at a company on the first day of work and making sure they are given all the
information necessary to succeed, to a multinational company that is past their
“growth” stage yet still finding ways to collaborate to innovate, to teams within the
same company but in different industries and specialties creating ways to
communicate with one another.

In understanding how Knowledge Management can be applied to a company, this

● Creating the Knowledge Management System (the system used to house

● Creating the Enterprise Social Network (the tool used to communicate with others)

● Creating network initiatives and a culture of sharing (the group of people willing
to share and learn knowledge)

● Creating and maintaining innovation in companies (the best practices for inspiring
creativity)

Through isolation in each of these different areas, and highlighting case studies from
companies who have implemented these processes, this thesis seeks to create a
better understanding for individuals to leverage Knowledge Management into their
own company and to learn what are the best practices for them to adopt.
The Knowledge Hierarchy and Why It Matters The knowledge pyramid is the core
concept on how to obtain knowledge. It is one of the most common figures used
when trying to highlight how to educate and teach others. To understand how to
best empower employees to be able to gain knowledge, we can use the knowledge
pyramid to understand how information is best broken down.

Figure 1.1 is a hierarchical system when looking at Knowledge Management in companies.

Figure 1.1 highlights the four layers of the knowledge pyramid. To be able to best empower
employees to learn, it helps to best understand how knowledge is progressed. We will break
down the pyramid through the four layers, and include examples of how each layer can be
presented to the employee.

The ultimate goal in understanding the knowledge hierarchical system is to make sure that
whatever system and process is in place is that employees are able to leverage data and
information to reach knowledge and wisdom levels.

Data: The base layer is data. This includes any forms of data that can be found through the
company’s system, including payment data, any forms of monetary transactions, human
resource inflows and analytics from hiring funnels to offboarding, and different forms of
financial data, including P&L statements, accounting books, and bank statements.
Understanding of the numerical facts can sometimes allow for a more comprehensive view
of the information. In concept, when unaltered, the base data layer is important because it
takes away any form of opinion and allows for knowledge to be in its core format.
Think of data as binary (E.g., 0 1 0 1 0 1 1). Examples of data can be seen as raw numbers,
facts, or (as seen in the example) bits. Please note: It should be mentioned that data, while
seemingly unbiased, can be skewed in that it only presents a partial view of the data or has
been massaged in a way that leans towards one view. When using data to evaluate the base
layer of the knowledge pyramid, it is best to proceed with caution and understand where
the data is coming from, how it has been interpreted, and if there are other viewpoints or
lenses from which to understand the data from.

When using and sourcing data, especially as the foundation in the quest of your own
Knowledge Management, be careful of what data you are using, understand that not all data
is impartial, and question the sources of where it comes from. Information: Moving past this,
there enters the middle form of the process which is “information”.

This is where the data is then digested to become meaningful to the user. Ways that data
can become useful is that the data can be selected, categorized, or presented to extract
information, to show trends, or to be turned into statements. This format can then be
communicated to third party viewers who weren’t the ones creating or generating the data.
This type of information can be viewed in pamphlets, reports (including sales, KPIs, monthly
revenue meetings) and different forms of statements (including sales increases, monthly
targets, and budgets).2 The information part is the “meat” of the pyramid where most of the
documentation is already created but hasn’t been transformed yet.

Information is when data is met with connotation, when the data that is given has context,
relevance, and meaning explained behind it. For instance, in learning of the above example
given (0 1 0 1 0 1 1), the “informational component'' of it would be explaining that this is the
outcome of a coin toss, where 1 is for tails and 0 is for heads. Information includes given
subcontext to raw data and forming it into an understandable and digestible story.
Knowledge: The second to the top of the pyramid is “knowledge”3 . This is where
information and data transcend to “usefulness”. A great way to think of this is just because
an employee has access to onboarding documents and the data of how many people
interviewed to get the job, it does not mean the employee is adequately ready for their new
position.4 The top of the pyramid is used to describe when all of the information collected
has been placed and structured in a way that the employee is able to use it and understand
it.

Knowledge is taking the data and information given, and being able to make decisions and
actions based off of the two given. Knowledge should be used to be both decision and action
driven, and be used to be able to create systems. An example of knowledge from the
previous scenario of (0 1 0 1 0 1 1) representing sides of a coin toss is that now doing it a
large amount of times (100+ times) to observe if there is a pattern. From those data points,
we can be able to draw conclusions (e.g., whether a coin really is “equal” in probability or if
a coin has a certain bias).

Wisdom: The top of the pyramid is “wisdom”. It is important to note that not all versions of
the DIKW model have “wisdom” at the top6 : it wasn’t until the 1990’s that the International
Society of General Systems Research7 started to include “wisdom” in the model. Wisdom is
at the top of this model because it is “the use of knowledge when it is applied in action”8 .
Frankly speaking, it is the ability to put the knowledge learned and use critical thinking to
apply it to the job learned.

Using Knowledge Pyramid in Business

Wisdom is bringing together the connected ability and understanding together to connect
the concepts learned, and formulate an understanding of it. Let’s take an example from each
part of categories, and see how it can be applied to a business setting.

A Strategy Manager is working at UberEats and thinking of the next large promotion and
investment UberEats should make. It is January 2021.

● Data: Taking a fact as is without any context or notion.

○ For example- Super Bowl ‘20 attracted 102.1M viewers9 .

The Government of Massachusetts because of COVID-19 has created a 40% cap on seating
capacity10 .

● Information: Taking the fact, and using context to build more understanding of what is
happening

For example- Many people watch the SuperBowl in the United States, but most won’t be
watching it at bars or restaurants in February 2021 because of capacity restaurants and
social distancing.

● Knowledge: Taking in and understanding patterns to be able to make decisions and actions
based on what is given.
○ For example- If people are not watching at bars or restaurants, they will most likely be
wanting to watch the Super Bowl at home. Especially in colder climates, there may be less
incentive to cook or pick up food. People will want to use food delivery.

● Wisdom: Taking in all parts of knowledge, understanding the patterns and the causal
relationships on why things happen, and then taking it further to deeply comprehend the
principals and make further predictions.

This strategy was actually implemented in real life and successful. UberEats created a
promotion during the Super Bowl to offer free delivery. This promotion turned successful in
that of the food delivery companies in the US, UberEats performed the best and had 27.3%
of food deliveries on Sunday. (Up 16.6% last year).11 This example shows how each level of
the pyramid is important to developing knowledge for employees and that if used and
communicated properly, can give employees the ability to make smart decisions that can
positively impact the business. It shows that Knowledge Management is the foundation for
employees to be able to gather the right information so that they can be empowered to
make thoughtful decisions on the business.

And when taking it a step further, “how can knowledge reach a level of wisdom”? The key to
growth in an organization isn’t just focusing on how employees can learn and do the job that
they have, but in how employees can be able to leverage the knowledge they have learned
to turn it into wisdom, and create innovative new products and solutions for their company.
Chapter 5 will establish how to create open innovation, even in older more traditional
companies, and ways that crowdsourcing can be able to achieve this.

Now that we have a firm level of what each of these concepts are, we can be able to move
forward to understand how we can leverage each piece of this information to move
organizations into reaching “knowledge” and “wisdom” levels faster.

How Can Knowledge Management Be Useful to Organizations

Knowledge Management is embedded into the main foundation of an organization. It can

Organizations and companies often won’t have explicit “knowledge manager” roles or
organization / business units dedicated to it, but often companies will have Knowledge
Management tasks embedded into certain types of roles within the company. A few
examples of where one can find “informal knowledge managers” are within a PMO (Project
Management Office) Team, an Internal Strategy and Operations Team, Chief of Staff, or
Systems and Process Team.

Culture: Taking in Knowledge Management and embedding it into an organization can

Strategy: One of the most important intangible assets in an organization is both their
intellectual capital (from their human capital) and their organizational performance14 .
Being able to drive thoughtful strategy in an organization is what will separate a company
apart from their competitors.

● Systems and Technology: Using Knowledge Management and having robust processes in
place so that the right information is able to get to the right person quickly is incredibly
important in an organization . We will explore different use cases (from online forums, to
knowledge repositories, to mentor pairings).

● Organizational learning: Organizational learning is the process where coworkers (both on