Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 22:00:28 +0530 From: Satish Hulyalkar Hello, I have analyzed it a step ahead. What we call knowledge is mostly VARI (Value Added Rich Information) Knowledge is process and is person (human) oriented only. KM is allowing a human being to enrich the process by refining the VARI gathered till last occurrence. I have published a paper on this in Competia.com Those interested may contact me for a copy. Satish Hulyalkar Consultant Telecom & Knowledge Management Pune/India Ph: +91 (20) 2567 4343 E-mail: satish@SatishHulyalkar.com http://www.SatishHulyalkar.com Original Message ---------------- Subject: [LIS-Forum] Definitions of information management and knowledgemanagement Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 12:51:12 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam Friends: This is what Paul Whiffen, a KM consultant, says on the distinction between knowledge and information: "This (the distinction between knowledge and information) used to trouble me until I came up with this: a) Knowledge is what is inside peoples' heads; b) Information is what you get when you write it down (or make a report, tape, file or whatever - ie, Information is the physical media representation of knowledge). At first I thought that surely it can't be that simple - but this distinction has served me very well now for years. Outcomes of using this distinction lead to the following deductions: KM is about putting in place the environment to enable and facilitate knowledge moving from human head to human head whether they are separated by time or geography or both (all aspects of the environment including cultural, technology and process aspects); IM is about managing your documents (or whatever your media is) in support of KM; I.T. (which, after all, stands for Information Technology) is therefore about the technology being in place to enable / support IM (which in turn enables KM). As I say, this is simple. To me it was worryingly simple at first but so far it has always served me well. Hope this helps, Paul. Paul R.Whiffen Knoco Ltd www.knoco.co.uk Phone: Mobile + 44 (0) 7808 162 302 Office + 44 (0) 1420 560 147 (Alton, Hants, UK) Email: paul.whiffen@knoco.co.uk or paul.whiffen@global123.freeserve.co.uk