Knowledge Management

Knowledge is facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject (oxforddictionaries.com, 2013).  Knowledge is crucially important in every aspect of humankind.

In other words, knowledge is more valuable than money primarily in terms of problem solving, critical thinking, business, work, daily life and so on. Frankly speaking, knowledge plays an important role in society since it makes people build up their self-empowerment thus it can help to reduce unemployment in society which consider as the main factor for economic growth. When people have knowledge, they tend to make their decision wisely based on the knowledge or experiences that they have learnt from. Undoubtedly, not only individual who gain benefit but also the whole society as well since good human resources can thrive nation to be an outgrowth one like one quote stated, “It is somehow more important for a country to plan a human than a tree”. Talking about the history of knowledge, in 70’s number of knowledge history have contributed to its evolution. In 80’s knowledge as a competitive asset was apparent. Lastly, 90’s until now knowledge was introduced in a popular press which is the most widely read work to date is Ikujiro Nonaka’s and Hirotaka Takeuchi’s (unc.edu, 2013). Particularly, there are many ways to obtain knowledge including ask, read, write, listen, practice, and etc. We have learnt since the day we see the sunlight; we learned how to crawl, speak, eat rice from our parents, and believe it or not people will never stop learning till they die. Ideally, life is nothing without knowledge. Knowledge can reform human’s attitude to do the right thing making them eliminate their bad mindset or behavior. So he or she would be more optimistic to themselves or even with the others. More than that, knowledge makes people interact more effectively because they can adjust themselves within different community meaning they would be able to work or communicate with other people easily. Remarkably, people will have a big circle of friend, acquaintance, professional contact when they have higher knowledge. With this in mind, successes will breeds more success because most living souls usually like to make friends with smart people and when they come up together, they will definitely share their familiarity or knowledge with each other thus a good attainment will come. Namely, one quote stated, “Pen is mightier than a sword” (Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1839). Surely enough, knowledge is the key to success and without knowledge we could not accomplish much in life as well as for our society. On the other hand, this essay is going to elaborate more on the importance of knowledge in organization, knowledge economy and many other concerns which related to knowledge.

      As mentioned earlier knowledge is pivotal in different dimensions. Obviously, every organization or business will totally need knowledge for their start up even for a small business. If not they will never know how to organize, control, plan or even to attract customer. In this case, knowledge would make people in the organization be able to handle with any difficulty that they face strictly problem solving. Without knowledge, one could be like a frog in the well which never sees what happen outside in the real world. Hence, knowledge can make people clear up with any obstacles even if sometime they don’t know how to deal with it, but they still can seek for a help in a smart way. Following this further, knowledge would make organization have a particular vision that they need to fulfill as organization ought to gather people together with the knowledge that they have and ask them to share directly with each other. Throughout this specific goal, organization is supposed to do things in regular, always drive forward especially they can track down their progress whether they can accomplish that goal or not. Not to forget about sharing, knowledge sharing is paramount in terms of organization’s performance. Productivity, employee and customer satisfaction would grow because each person share with what they have, so they know what should and should not do. For instance, just imagine that Google has ten thousand of employees and what if all of them have a good education background, which mean high level of knowledge; therefore Google will have ten thousand different good ideas which can thrive this organization to glory. In the meanwhile, if we take a look at knowledge economy, it is a system of consumption and production that based on intellectual capital. The knowledge economy commonly makes up a large share of all economic activity in developed countries (investopedia.com, 2013).  Basically, knowledge economy becomes the most important factor to determine the standard of living and managing business. Precisely, knowledge economy becomes more important as an input which could be resources or any other inventory. By here we mean that when you know knowledge economy, it makes you aware of the input that you might produce in your country which turn out with a good product therefore it makes the GDP grow even higher. By the same token, knowledge economy makes people be capable to control labor or capital such as factory, equipment, or machinery effectively and efficiency. Consequently, both party namely citizen and nation will be better off. With today knowledge economy, experts try to concern about sustainability of economy growth which aims to focus on an enterprise policy that works for high-growth firms and investment to maintain scientific and research. Not only this, but they also look at individual sector to build up an industrial strategy for the knowledge economy (theworkfoundation, 2013). Apparently, data can be defined as the raw of facts. Information is a framework of data which have a useful meaning. Meanwhile, knowledge is a new form of information which has been transformed into something more than just useful (nugrohoariefp.wordpress, 2012). Data flows through information then to knowledge. For example, more than 50% of male like to play football which could make them to reduce stress and become healthier. So 50 is a data, 50% of male like to play football is information whereas the whole of the sentence is a knowledge. These three components need to follow up or flow from one to another in order, but not randomly or else people will not know how to interpret it and will become useless. Long time ago, people use only data because they don’t have any aid or ability to transform it into information or knowledge. After that people started to use information because they would be able to interpret it from data. Lastly, with the advanced technology and knowledge, people can transform data to information and then knowledge which is technically essential to share to the next generation. Not only individual who need it but also business, organization or even the whole nation need to have knowledge in order to accomplish the task that they want. Generally speaking, none of the business or organization wants to go bankrupt; they all want to run it smoothly. To put it more simply, knowledge creation and knowledge management are the main reason behind for the success of the company. To make it happen, company need to concentrate on the performance. They need to make it clear like what do they want especially revise back with what they have done; in case they made mistakes try to figure out and improve it. More importantly, company need to be aware with the competitor and if they do it better than you so try to learn from them and ask yourself like why can’t you do like that. In the meantime, company need to be knowledgeable with tacit and explicit knowledge and just make sure that these two can transfer to each other. Equally important, organization can also set up a special training or conduct a learning community in the organization in order to teach them more, share experience with each other especially gather feedback. Regarding to feedback, they need to accept both constructive and even destructive criticisms. Once the organization implements the action above, it is extremely certain that they can follow the creation and management knowledge at the end.

      All in all, no matter who or where you are, you can always grab knowledge mainly in reference to three main sources such as family, school and society. Remember that, you can gain knowledge or learn depend on your emotion and commitment since it is not important on how rich you or beauty you are. As a human, you need to learn from day to day and have self-discipline that today you learn more than yesterday and tomorrow you will learn more than today. Try to grab knowledge as much as possible; you need to perceive that knowledge is the food that your brains are hungry to eat. Likewise, accumulating knowledge and experiences are like investing money in the bank because one day you will take it out and use it. Only knowledge can change your life. Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing where with we fly to heaven (William Shakespeare).

References

Definition of Knowledge. (2013). Retrieved from oxforddictionaries.com: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/knowledge

Definition of knowledge in English. (2013). Retrieved November 22, 2013, from oxforddictionaries.com: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/knowledge

Definition of Kowledge Economy. (2013). Retrieved from investopedia.com: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/knowledge-economy.asp

Dennis.Hoffman. (2013). Knowledge Economy. Retrieved from economist.asu.edu: http://economist.asu.edu/p3/knowledge

Importance of General Knowledge in Life. (2013). Retrieved from targetstudy.com: http://targetstudy.com/articles/importance-of-general-knowledge-in-life.html

Introduction to Knowledge Management. (n.d.). Retrieved from unc.edu: http://www.unc.edu/~sunnyliu/inls258/Introduction_to_Knowledge_Management.html

Prasetyo, N. A. (2012). Sharing Knowledge : The Differences Between Data, Information and Knowledge. Retrieved from nugrohoariefp.wordpress.com: http://nugrohoariefp.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/sharing-knowledge-the-differences-between-data-information-and-knowledge/

What is the importance of education to our society? . (2012). Retrieved from preservearticles.com: http://www.preservearticles.com/about-preservearticlescom.html