The concept of “organizational knowledge creation” has gained a lot of traction with the advancement of enterprise wide information systems. Simply put, the idea is concerned with how organizations can optimize the availability and transfer of information to efficiently enhance their human capital. If this idea sounds somewhat cold and dehumanizing, that’s because in many ways it is. Key distinctions around information, implied knowledge, and creative insight have become increasingly blurred. Combined with the ongoing expansion of IT, this can create some confusion as to what constitutes true knowledge creation.

Whether we’re hoping to create value for internal or external constituents, it’s important to clearly articulate these distinctions. Back in 1994, Ikujiro Nonaka, of The Institute of Business Research, at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, wrote a paper called A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation, where he provides some useful definitions. “In short,” he writes, “information is a flow of messages, while knowledge is created and organized by the very flow of information, anchored on the commitment and beliefs of its holder.”

In other words, if information is to be translated into knowledge, it has to be integrated into an individual’s mode of understanding the world. It has to be internalized. Nonaka further draws a line between what’s known as explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge, he explains, has a “digital” quality in that it can be codified into language and numbers. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand, has an “analogue” quality, as it is action-oriented, inferred and continuous. As Nonaka explains, “knowledge that can be expressed in words and numbers is only the tip of the iceberg of the entire body of possible knowledge.”

As our world becomes increasingly digitized, it’s not surprising that the value of “analogue” knowledge is often neglected. But as revealed in this fascinating overview of writer and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist’s book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, this may be a trend that extends even further back. McGilchrist, offers a look at the interaction between the brain’s hemispheres. He explains that, contrary to the common, over-simplified concept of a “creativity vs. mechanical” divide, the hemispheres of the brain work together in ways that are immeasurably more complex. The general distinction, however, between the two hemispheres is not entirely misguided. The left brain, he says, tends to be concerned with rational, narrowly focused tasks, while the right brain is more concerned with generalized and intuitive thought.

McGilchrist argues that society increasingly neglects the importance of the right brain, and he characterizes its modalities of thought as a “gift”, for which the left brain functions as a “servant.” He believes that society has become fixated on the rational or mechanical, as a kind of end in itself. In one of the presentation’s most striking insights, he posits that rationality is in fact based on intuition. We intuit that it works for us prior to gaining confirmatory evidence. 

From an organizational perspective, all of this seems to indicate that this blurring of distinctions is dangerous because, rather than generating knowledge and value, there is a risk of creating distraction and fragility, at the expense of real knowledge. Information, like anything of substance thins as it is spread around. True knowledge on the other hand, both explicit and tacit, makes an organization more robust as it is dispersed and shared.

From a marketing point of view, the danger is in mistaking the “servant”, for the “gift.” Digital communications have drastically enhanced the tools and tactics available to marketers, but if we are consumed entirely by the methods and tools, it will be at the expense of creating more fertile, holistic connections. We would do well to acknowledge that the more we are flooded with digital servants, the more precious our analogue gifts become.