Tuesday, February 13, 2007

CUDdling up to Knowledge Repositories

Knowledge Management in a way, and I guess unknowingly, takes some of its lessons from cows. But I wonder if it takes the complete lesson or stops midway. If you’re wondering what kind of crazy cud I am chewing, here’s the full post for you to digest. :)

Cows grab grass not with the intention of digesting it immediately but storing it in specific areas in their alimentary canals meant for this purpose – the esophagus, to be precise. Apparently this is the case because some microbes help in easy digestion by processing the food while the latter ‘rests’ in the esophagus. The microbe-processed grass is then transferred back to the cow’s mouth when required and subjected to some heavy chewing and then actually digested.

Good knowledge repositories ought to be designed on these lines. Not as a place where unwanted artifacts are blindly stored and not reused at all or are stored and reused later without any value addition whatsoever. It ought to be a place where the artifacts are stored and brought to the right people’s notice so they keep it dynamic and add value to it by commenting on it, simplifying it, appending to it some additional resources etc. So, when it is actually picked up by someone for application, it becomes easier to ‘digest’ and is a lot more ‘tastier’ than it was. Is your knowledge repository akin to a cud-chewing system? If not, it may be time to Moo(ve) it. :D

Meanwhile, here are some hilarious cartoons that I discovered on ‘chewing the cud’.

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