The changing face of knowledge

Abstract

A change is occurring in how people think about who in the organization has credible and valuable knowledge that the organization can use to solve its difficult problems. This shift is a movement away from the idea that knowledge is found only in a select group of experts or “best” practitioners and toward the idea that useful knowledge is distributed throughout the whole of an organization. Knowledge‐sharing systems at Ford, British Petroleum and Lockheed‐Martin reflect this change.