The data, information, knowledge, wisdom hierarchy is interesting to me and how we can use this model in collaboration. One aspect of collaboration is the development of a robust and accurate knowledge base for your employees. Giving employees a place to go first to take the information they have and make it meaningful, understand next steps and ideally add to the knowledge base with more details for future users. Being able to access this information through a variety of means becomes more important as users look toward the knowledge base for answers. Let's look a little closer at the hierarchy oft abbreviated to DIKW.
Data is the most simple form are variables that are quantitative or qualitative. In a networked world they may come from different sensors and report whatever they're measuring. Or in a business world data may come from different sources such as employees, news reports, and surveys. As you can well imagine, data coming from so many different sources means there's a lot of data to be collected and stored. By itself, data doesn't have much meaning. For example if I say it's 72 degrees that doesn't mean much unless you have other data points that you can correlate and turn into meaning. Let's make a list of data points:
These data points don't mean much until we consolidate, correlate, and turn them into meaningful information. Interestingly enough, this is done by the collection of enough relevant data points. At this point, we don't even know if the data collected is from the same location, but by adding just a couple more data points we then can understand the scenario:
Now that we have data points and context, we have information. Just like data, this information doesn't mean much until we turn it into knowledge. Just as we require more data to make information, we require more information to make knowledge.
By adding more information, such as historical trends, we can then consolidate, correlate and identify anomalies, or just as important identify everything is as expected. If we add more information to the scenario, we get a greater sense of what's going on and what it may mean:
We're now in a position to use knowledge to draw conclusions and understand the impact of these conclusions. As we consolidate data to information to knowledge the relevancy to other pieces of information grows. The foundation for "Scientia potentia est" or "knowledge is power". Our knowledge tells us:
Wisdom allows us to apply perceptions, judgements and actions to our deep understanding and knowledge of the situations occurring. Ideally, if our perceptions are correct and our wisdom optimum, we can take action to better our environment and from our perspective meet business goals. In our scenario different courses of actions may ensue:
Through the collection of a lot of data, we're able to correlate into information and compare to additional information that enables us to use our knowledge of what is and what's supposed to be to draw conclusions that require action based on our learned wisdom. In this scenario there are different actions depending on what you're looking to achieve, but the one who is wisest with the greatest perception is able to take in all the data, information and knowledge they've amassed and say "Replace and calibrate the sensor, it's obviously malfunctioning.".
From a collaboration stand point this means your data points must be valid and validated regularly. If the data is wrong, the information will be off and the knowledge you develop will also be off. The goal is to build up a knowledge base that is accurate and current then use the collective wisdom in a collaborative fashion to make the best judgement and course of action. The less time your best and brightest need to concern themselves with the accuracy of the information they have and can focus on what to do with it, the stronger your organization's position will be. As you're able to automate the collection of data across the Internet of things and make that information available in the proper collaborative environment with the right people, the more you'll be able to take proactive actions and not be reactive to change.
How are you enabling the wisdom hierarchy in your organization? How are your people best collaborating to take your company to the next level? What are the tools that you've employed and what tools do you see yourself employing in the future?
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.