Common Knowledge

"The three myths are (1) build it and they will come, (2) technology can replace face-to-face, and (3) first you have to create a learning culture."

"The truth is that if we know something that we think someone else needs to know, it is difficult for us to refrain from telling them."

"It takes a certain amount of _intention_ to create knowledge out of an experience. This involves a willingness to reflect back on actions and their outcomes before moving forward."

"The similarity of task and context between the source group and the receiving group and the absorptive capacity of the receiving group are deciding factors in determining what kind of transfer method will be most effective."

"Serial transfer is a process that moves the unique knowledge that each individual has constructed into a group or public space so that the knowledge can be integrated and made sense of by the whole team."

"The goal of Near Transfer is _not_ to "share knowledge" but rather to meet a specific business goal established by management."

"Living databases, that is people, have an advantage over electronic databases in that people have the ability to understand a specific situation and then tailor their response to that situation."

"It is Strategic Transfer that people are wishing for when they say, "We don't want to keep reinventing the wheel.""

"Technical expertise in an organization is a scarce and costly commodity, so Expert Transfer has become a convenient and workable way to share expertise that may be located anywhere in the world."

"If the designers of transfer systems thought of knowledge as dynamic, they might design conduits to enhance its flow rather than warehouses for its storage."

"The issue is not about adding human components to a technological system but how to build an integrated system in which each element is integrated with the other elements to make the whole work as a system."