Can you take a piece of knowledge out of its context?
Can you actually take a piece of knowledge or experience from one area, and apply it somewhere else, in what might be a completely different context?
The answer is “yes,” provided you understand the full business context in which that knowledge was created. Much of what you learn will only be relevant in the local context, but there may be 10% or 20% of the knowledge which has wider use. There are two main ways of moving knowledge from one context to another.
- A Peer Assist is a process where people are called in by a business unit, to apply their experience to a local problem. The participants directly apply their own tacit knowledge in the local context.
- The process of codifying a knowledge asset allows the generic knowledge to be extracted from the local context.
Above all, do not assume that nobody is interested in what you know. There are almost certainly people around the world who are facing problems you have already solved!