WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE

Theoretically, knowledge may be defined as information that is now, or may in the future, be useful in a specific context. Knowledge may also be abstract, with no immediate use or application, in which case it may serve as a foundation for an ultimate use. For example, when the laser was discovered in the AT&T labs a few decades ago, it was merely a scientific phenomenon, with no apparent practical use. The uses emerged and were developed much later.

In a business context, knowledge is information that can be applied for a specific and useful business purpose. For example, the demographics of a particular market area is raw data. Analyzing that data in terms of the ability to make decisions about serving that area is information. Knowing how to apply that information to make those decisions is knowledge. Knowing how to deliver knowledge to those who can use it most effectively to meet a specific objective is knowledge management.

Knowledge—cognition, in this context—has specific properties that must be understood if the subject is to have any practical value.

• Knowledge is dynamic. Its value and quality change constantly. An illustration of dynamic information is an address in space. For example, if someone asks where you live, the answer can be defined as a fixed position, say the corner of X and Y. That is a constant static point that was there yesterday, is here today, and is most likely to be here tomorrow.

But if you ask for the address of a body in outer space, the answer is, in relation to what? Objects in space are in constant motion, and are located in relation to other objects in motion. This is dynamic motion. Knowledge is, in the same way, dynamic. Even with the common language needed for communication, we know that this dynamic must be recognized if knowledge is to be useful. Knowledge is subject to

° Changing sources of input

° Changing input from the same sources

° Changes precipitated by the use of knowledge

° Changing needs for the same information or data

• Knowledge is cumulative. Nothing is often known by just one person— nor is it ever known in entirety. For example, what bits of knowledge did the Wright brothers bring together to make an airplane? Or Edison, Bell, or Morse, for their inventions?

The same knowledge can serve different purposes. For example, an area’s demographics may help the marketing department define the nature of a product. That same demographic information may help the finance department determine the cost of serving that market.

• People process information differently. This, of course, is the crux of the stock market—the auction market in which different people give different values to the same information. Each person receives information through a screen of personal experience and prior knowledge.

Give two people the same information about a company and its investment potential, for example, and one will choose to buy the stock and the other to sell it.

• Another form of knowledge is tacit knowledge—what we know only intuitively, but can’t test pragmatically. For example, Freud’s view of infant perception and psychology could only be surmised, but not tested. But if we build a system predicated on that intuition, and the system works, then we may assume that the intuition may be valid.

• Merely accessing knowledge can change the nature and value of that knowledge. For example, accessing information about a company’s stock can change the value of that information, both in the way it’s perceived and in the way it’s acted upon.

The practical application of these concepts is a function of context. Knowledge of itself is one thing to a philosopher, another to a scientist, another to an artist or writer or journalist, and another to a functioning business person or professional. Knowledge, and the effective communication of it, is crucial in investor relations.

This new communications environment certainly broadens the base of investors to whom the latest information about a company is crucial, and therefore adds its own urgency to timely disclosure. The breadth of the investor base may be greater than the depth of knowledge about how to make an investment decision, but the growth of the discount, no-frills, no research broker indicates that more and more investors are making their own investment decisions. Does this not increase the responsibility of the corporation to disclose all material information as widely as possible? And with greater timeliness?

From the point of view of investor relations, the new communications structure offers the opportunity to reach more investors and potential investors than ever before. From a marketing point of view, it affords the company the opportunity to broadcast its message to investors faster, more broadly, more accurately than was possible in the days when the printed word was the prime vehicle. It generates more informed, and therefore better, investors. If the new media are used wisely, the corporation benefits.