Transferring models between domains can often help us understand a little better. It’s a key strategy of knowledge creation. Bob Andrew has done just with his article comparing a company’s knowledge base to a gene pool. This is a very elegant way of describing how Knowledge management “works” in a company.
Knowledge is adaptation
Genetic instructions are given to an individual organism at birth and are expressed during a process of development as the organism matures to adulthood. At this stage, it may (or may not) enter into reproduction and return its genes to the gene pool. Despite being able to add to it on reproduction, the organism itself is forever cut off from the gene pool. It has to make do with a fixed set of instructions that cannot be altered. It cannot dip back into the gene pool to augment those instructions if it finds they are not good enough.
Fortunately, this is not the case with a company’s knowledge. An individual can continually strengthen its own knowledge by using the accumulated knowledge gained by the company as a whole. It can then strengthen the knowledge base of the company by sharing attained knowledge with others. Provided the company allows competent individuals to act upon knowledge they have gained, the knowledge base can be immediately added to. Even if the knowledge is not correctly acted upon and mistakes occur, the knowledge base is still strengthened. Unlike nature, there does not have to be a ‘maturity’ delay before our knowledge can be expanded.