WHY WE SHOULD NOT SHARE KNOWLEDGE

This is a nice little paper from an author in Singapore (Thanks to Julianne Gilmore for telling me about it.

“Knowledge and Tragedy: or why we shouldn’t share knowledge”
“First, it’s not enough to simply deliver the knowledge, important though that is. The key is whether knowledge is, or can be, acted upon……Second, we don’t have to have perfect knowledge management, nor would we particularly enjoy it. In a competitive world, we simply have to be better at managing knowledge asymmetries than our current competitors are……Finally, we need to recognise that the corporate plot occupies only a part of most people’s lives. Knowledge sharing and knowledge secrecy also operate in our personal trajectories through life. By Patrick Lambe, www.straitsknowledge.com, 2003.

I think it relates to a posting a few days ago about the red tape involved in registering businesses in poor countries. Governments in these countries ask for more information than they can use, than the need, and than is healthy for their economies.

There is a dictum in medical screening: “don’t ask for information that you can’t use.” One could add other dicta:
· Don’t ask questions to which you don’t want to hear the answers;
· Don’t ask for information you can’t afford to use;
· Don’t ask for information your respondent can’t afford to supply;
· Don’t ask for information that is more expensive to generate and use, than it is beneficial to use.