Although we live in the so-called Information Age, knowledge is the true asset. Information we have in abundance, piling up in databases and streaming onto desktops over broadband networks. Knowledge, on the other hand, is information that has been edited, put into context and analyzed in a way that makes it meaningful and therefore valuable to an organization.
Immediacy is the driver of today's economy.
Organizations routinely make multimillion-dollar decisions based heavily on the tacit knowledge of key individuals. Often this sort of knowledge is widely dispersed and closely held, and most companies still have only a weak grasp of the breadth and depth of their collective intelligence. Knowledge flows through the company in a sluggish and erratic manner. And because it's typically stored only in individuals' memories, this knowledge is lost to the corporation when people leave the company. If organizations are going to fully capitalize on their intellectual capital, they must devise systems for quickly compiling and retaining tacit knowledge, building intellectual inventories as individuals continue to learn and making these assets instantly available to the people who need them.