At today's open house for Dominican's Center for Knowledge Management, Christina Stoll described a new analogy for knowledge management. Rather than think of the typical data-information-knowledge-wisdom hierarchy, she likes to think of a jigsaw puzzle.
In an unassembled jigsaw puzzle, you have lots of pieces that don't make sense. This is data. As you put them together, you apply your spatial reasoning skills to fit the pieces and colors together. When you are done you have a picture. This is information. I particularly like the transition to knowledge... Knowledge comes in sharing your thoughts and ideas about the picture -- or maybe even the process of assembling the pieces into a meaningful whole.