Drool. It sounds like I need to get to the library. Joy London points to a David Gilmour article that suggests taking advantage of our natural tendency to hoard knowledge. Make that work really well and then set up a system to help people broker that knowledge. I hear strains of The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
excited utterances: Going for Brokering
In the October issue of the Harvard Business Review (subscription required), David Gilmour, president and CEO of Tacit Knowledge Systems, advocates the abandonment of the "publishing" model of KM, i.e., the collection, organization and push of organizational knowledge. Gilmour says "people guard their information and selectively release it. This tendency to hoard knowledge isn't effectively tapped."
But instead of characterizing knowledge hoarding as a disadvantage, Gilmour suggests a way to take advantage of a knowledge hoarding culture, whether a corporate or "collegiate" partnership culture. Gilmour suggests a "brokering" model of knowledge sharing. A brokering model is based on the idea of self-interest: i.e., people will share information when they see a pay-back to themselves. "If sharing information makes someone stand out among others within the company, then knowledge will be shared. So, why not let those people who are strive to be valuable to their company connect with others with the same goal?"