Below you can see the presentation that I gave at a Business Information Management knowledge sharing session on Thursday October 16. The main goal was to inform people about the concept of tacit knowledge and how implementations of Business Intelligence should take this into consideration. Looking forward to your reactions!
Add comment October 21st, 2008
Someone’s Intelligence Quotient, emotional intelligence, Competitive Intelligence and military intelligence. Just some terms you can find when you are looking for an explanation of the word ‘intelligence’. Intelligence seems to be something that can be explained in many different ways. Also, in many management publications, organisational intelligence is a hot issue. But what does intelligence mean in this context, for example when we are talking about Business Intelligence? Is it the information that can be scooped out of our neighbours’ trashcan or something intangible in the back of ours heads? Well, it is both…
Intelligence is a concept that is strongly related to knowledge. Since ancient times, philosophers have thought about the concept of knowledge. Many definitions have been developed since then, for example by Weggeman (2000). He describes knowledge as the – partly unconscious – capacity that enables someone to execute a certain task by connecting data with his or her own experience, skills and values. He defines knowledge by a formula: K = I * ESV. As becomes apparent, knowledge consists of two inseparable elements, according to the author. One part that is information (explicit knowledge), and one part that is Experience, Skills and Values (implicit knowledge). New information makes no sense if it cannot be combined with existent implicit (also called tacit) knowledge. This all sounds very logical, but in the daily practice explicit and tacit knowledge are seen as two separate forms of knowledge, while they are in fact two sides to the same medal.
Tacit and explicit knowledge are thus two aspects of knowledge. Tacit knowledge can be for example the experience with which a manager can make a decision, or for example your ability to ride a bike. You cannot explain this form of knowledge, you cannot turn it into explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge contains for example data from last year’s sales or information about the route to your work.
If we assume that Knowledge is a combination of both explicit and tacit knowledge (I*ESV), than what is intelligence? Rothberg and Erickson stated in their publication in 2005: “Knowledge has value, but Intelligence has power.” (p. 3). According to these authors and some of their colleagues, intelligence is the application of knowledge in daily practice (Gilad & Gilad, 1999; Liebowitz, 1999; Rothberg & Erickson, 2005). Intelligence is knowledge in action. If we would want to define intelligence, based on the formula for knowledge, we could state that Intelligence is the Application of K = I*ESV. This also means that Intelligence too is built upon both explicit and tacit knowledge, the two sides of the medal called Knowledge.
Intelligence = A * K
Intelligence = A * (I*ESV)
Intelligence forms an important part of the term Business Intelligence, but is traditionally seen as information, or better said: explicit knowledge. As we’ve seen in the theoretical approach to the term intelligence, it contains both tacit and explicit knowledge. Not much attention is paid to the implicit part of knowledge and intelligence, which is also very important in for example daily decision making. People working with Business Intelligence should realize that explicit knowledge, for example in the form of data coming from a datawarehouse, also needs tacit knowledge to become Intelligence. So if you want to accomplish real Business or Organizational Intelligence in your organization, combine the explicit knowledge that can be provided by your BI tools with the Experience, Skills and Values of your employees. In this way, and in this way only, you can accomplish true Intelligence!
Also read: Organizational Intelligence.
Add comment July 31st, 2008
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