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Data versus Information (or What I already know about knowledge, part 1)

Out of innocence or perhaps over-ambition I thought of discussing the fundamentals of knowledge. On my last post that was my first intention but, after looking a bit more into it, I’ll have to take it back. Nevertheless, some distinction and a working definition of knowledge are needed to deal with the subject.

The reason behind this simplification is the same present in Davenport and Prusak (2000) and Lundvall and Johnson (1994): the fundamentals of knowledge discussed today go back to Plato’s definition of it as a “justified true belief”, one that has been questioned often (Wikipedia/Knowledge). I have no intention of getting in a philosophical debate for two reasons. First, I’m no philosopher and my contribution would be very little. Second, it would deviate from the focus of my thesis, which requires only a working definition of knowledge and distinction between different types of knowledge.

First, it is necessary to understand the distinction between data, information and knowledge. The first two I deal with in this post. Their distinction to knowledge and different types of knowledge will be presented on a future post.

“Data is a set of discrete, objective facts about events” (Davenport and Prusak, 2000), and better explained through an example. When someone buys something, the receipt offers a set of data. What items were bought, at what time and date, and how much did it cost, for example. Those are all examples of data.

Data differs from information. Peter Drucker made this distinction: “data is endowed with relevance and purpose” (apud Davenport and Prusak, 2000). According to him, data has no relevance or purpose. It simply carries objective facts with no whys. Information on the other hand is meant to have some impact on the receiver’s understanding of events. According to Davenport and Prusak (2000), “it’s data that makes a difference”. And to turn data into information, the authors suggest five methods:

• Contextualized: to tell the reason why the data was gathered for;
• Categorized: to explain the units of analysis or key components of data;
• Calculated: the data went through some mathematical or statistical analysis;
• Corrected: errors have been removed from data; and
• Condensed: the data was summarized.
  

The outcome for this distinction is that data can be easily stored into computer systems while information, to be called so, needs to go through some human analysis. Storing data requires only that the amount stored does not affect the speed with which relevant data can be accessed. On the contrary, humans are indispensable for turning data into information, even though the process can be highly supported by computer systems. Adding meaning to data can only be done by humans.


REFERENCES:

DAVENPORT, Thomas; Prusak, Laurence (2000): Working Knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Questions about knowledge and learning

I present first part of my answer to Carlos’ comment on my last post:

Indeed the container shipping technology transformed the transportation of goods and made it easier, faster, and cheaper. Also, the commercial airlines did for people transportation what container shipping did for goods. The internet is responsible for information transfer which allowed control and management from great distances. However, I want to identify what technologies and tools (most likely internet-based) allowed the transfer of knowledge aiming at innovation developments.

What I wanted to show on my last post is that the focus of this thesis will be on finding and analyzing the internet tools that allow communication, interaction and development of innovation processes across international and firm borders, geographical spread of economic activities within the same effort.

However, in order to understand knowledge sharing, it is needed to understand 2 main questions: what is knowledge and what types of knowledge are relevant for the innovation process? I pose these questions first because analyzing effectiveness of knowledge sharing tools across distances will only be sustainable if first the essence of knowledge transmission is discussed. In other words: what are the particularities of each type of knowledge regarding its transfers? What makes knowledge more easily transferred?

Of course these questions will require a different set of reading than the ones I’m used to. As Lundvall and Johnson (1994) say, economists have little to say about “what is knowledge”. And that question may be too fundamental for a thesis that will use it in a practical sense. Anyhow it is needed to understand its concept and particularities in order to criticize tools that aim at facilitating knowledge transfers – the process known as learning.

So here I make a request for those of you who understand and know sources where I can gather some answers. Please, leave comments with some authors, books, articles and other sources that you know are related to these questions.

References:
LUNDVALL, B.A; Johnson, B. (1994): The Learning Economy. Journal of Industry Studies, Volume 1, Number 2.

Flexible production, geographical spread and innovation

It is hard to communicate ideas that are not totally clear to its owner. Explanations are complicated and may follow a non-linear logic until all aspects of the idea are connected together. Understanding of a scientific paper as complex as a Master Thesis, as it is the case here, is of course conditioned to how well theories are articulated to sustain the idea. And that is not where I am yet. Therefore, expect here some overlaps, some rolling back, and some fuzz, until the idea is more organized. This post is another attempt to show what the objective of my project is.

For the lack of connection on the specifics of the topic, I must write as the ideas emerged in my head, and will even support it with visual aid, that maybe will be clearer than my words – I’ve been criticized often about my complex writing style, and that it makes harder for the reader to get my ideas. In advance, I’m sorry for that. Anyway, until I find the best way to translate these thoughts to paper, I’ll be trying around here. It is nevertheless a good exercise to do so.

References:

DAVENPORT, Thomas; Prusak, Laurence (2000): Working Knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

DICKEN, Peter (2007): Global Shift: Mapping the changing contours of the world economy. 5th edition, Sage Publications, London-UK.

LUNDVALL, B.A.; Johnson, B. (1994): The Learning Economy. Journal of Industry Studies, Volume I, Number 2

Qualitative change

Now I can really start on this.

The opening word of this blog was merely that. My first ideas, with very little reading about the topic itself, and no time to search for the sources that led me to those affirmatives.

At this time I present some arguments on why “Globalization has shattered the idea of centralization and vertical integration” and transformed our current economy. Why it is possible to affirm that it is increasingly a global economy, although there is no pure globalization as – I admit – it may have sounded at the opening word.

I take the same approach here as used by Dicken (2007) where he presents some chains of thought about globalization only to conclude that, there is no single truth about globalization or localization. According to him, there is a spectrum of realities between this dichotomy, making the world economy far more complex to analyze.

Before moving on to the argument on why the world is increasingly global, though, it must be said that Dicken (2007) makes his analyzes emphasizing that the economy, although influenced by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), National States, Labor, Firms and Consumers, there is asymmetry in these relationships. And for him, the unbalance in these relations is towards firms, especially the transnational ones, emerging also from the possibility of internationalization of assets.

The author presents that, even though movement of people, money and goods across national borders is present in the world since before the industrial revolution, the change affecting our current reality is ‘qualitatively different’ from the past. As the author explains:

Today we live in a world in which deep integration, organized primarily within and between geographically extensive and complex transnational production networks, and through a diversity of mechanisms, is increasingly the norm.

Such qualitative changes are simply not captured in aggregative trade or investment data. (…) For example, in the case of international trade, what matters are not so much changes in volume – although these are important – as changes in composition. There has been a huge increase in both intra-industry and intra-firm trade, both of which are clear indicators of more functionally fragmented and geographically dispersed production processes (Dicken, 2007, p. 7-8).

However, as said before, this is not to say that transnational production networks (TPNs) are the only available production model. On the contrary, this often reflects on regional, national, and local levels. After all, production has to take place somewhere.

The choice of place though, is highly influenced by the different set-ups of localized institutions that such as culture, local values, and environmental issues. And while states and local economies are embedded territorially, transnational corporations, ‘slice through’ these boundaries searching for more flexible regulations and socio-cultural conditions that fit the needs for their activities. The result of such a process is the geographical spread of activities that qualitatively changed current economy (Dicken, 2007).

_____

Suggestions, comments, critics, please feel free to post and discuss. The objective here is exactly to bring contributions and share views to create a debate to enrich our understandings.

Thanks in advance!


REFERENCES:

DICKEN, Peter (2007): Global Shift: Mapping the changing contours of the world economy. 5th edition, Sage Publications, London-UK.

Opening word

For those of you who have gone through it, you know how much effort you need to put into something you want to be more than enough. My master thesis is this 'something' for me at the moment. Therefore I created this blog to share ideas, thoughts, authors and discuss them, get new insights, sources, especially because I'll be dealing with areas that I haven't read so much about.

My name is Marcelo, and I'm finishing my Masters in Innovation Knowledge and Entrepreneurial Dynamics (MIKE-B) at Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark. My focus area will knowledge management but from a web perspective.

Globalization have shattered the idea of centralization and vertical integration for most - if not all - companies. Networking, strategic alliances, transaction costs (particularly knowledge transactions) have become central not only to production through outsourcing, but also for new market and technology developments. The question that raises is...

How do companies and their partners interact across borders and geographical distance to share different kinds of knowledge aiming for innovation?

Hope you can help me turn the answer to this question into something outstanding.