Yes, the stuff that is in your head. Knowledge is the residue of experience. Experience is a human phenomenon. To have a learning organization, you must have people who practice learning, and become better and better at it. To transfer an individual s knowledge to the organization is no mean task.
Computers can help.
But there are many obstacles and complexities. First of all, if building a knowledge base means that the professional practitioner must do extra work, it won t happen. Few organizations are sufficiently enlightened to encourage knowledge recording, so there is no perceived payoff for the individual who tries to cooperate with the knowledge gathering process and a significant downside, in terms of the additional effort. Second, we pay people to be bottlenecks. Bottlenecks rise in importance in the organization.