Harvest Knowledge

Don't Just Capture Knowledge -- Put It to Work.
By: Pugh, Katrina, Dixon, Nancy M.,
Harvard Business Review,
May 2008, Vol. 86, Issue 5

Some interesting points

What's the point of capturing organizational knowledge if it's going to be tossed into some file and forgotten?

One way to make sure such knowledge will benefit the people who need it is to engage them in what we call a knowledge harvest: a systematic, facilitated gathering and circulation of knowledge.

Our approach - piloted by Intel Solution Services (ISS), Intel's IT consulting arm - has helped the company speed collection and transmission, and has improved the likelihood that knowledge gets productively and creatively reused.


For knowledge harvesting, the key is to identify others in the organization who could use the knowledge (the "knowledge seekers") and involve them in gathering valuable lessons.


Katrina Pugh (katrina.pugh@fmr.com) is vice president for knowledge management at Fidelity Investments in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Nancy M. Dixon (nancydixon@commonknowledge.org) is a principal at Common Knowledge Associates, based in Dallas.