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Jane Jacobs’ “Knowledge Spillovers”

January 25, 2012 By Guy St. Clair

We speak a lot about KD/KS. If you’re curious about how knowledge development and knowledge sharing link together in ways we might not usually think about, take a look at Jonah Lehrer’s “GroupThink: The brainstorming myth” in the current (January 30) issue of The New Yorker.

While I’m not sure I agree with Lehrer’s basic premise that brainstorming doesn’t work (isn’t brainstorming a pretty basic tool in the KD/KS toolbox?), I do agree with his ideas about the value of chance encounters in knowledge sharing. His examples are terrific, and he makes it clear that when a space/building/environment is open and its structure suggests a more free-form version of knowledge exchange, good things happen. My favorite is his description of M.I.T.’s famous Building 20, which is almost a textbook example of what can happen when people wandering about run into each other and talk about what they’re doing.

Lehrer also gives due credit to a Jane Jacobs’ “knowledge spillovers,” the idea that what Lehrer calls “incidental conversations” produce more innovation than brainstorming sessions planned in advance.

Eleven years ago, Gerald A. Carlino wrote a useful and very readable article citing Jacobs’ 1969 theory (among others). Called Knowledge Spillovers: Cities’ Role in the New Economy, the article was published in The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Business Review (that’s the bank’s quarterly aimed at readers with a general interest in economics). Carlino’s April 2001 article also offers strong evidence of the success of knowledge spillovers in facilitating idea exchange, creative, and innovation.

Two good essays, and both Lehrer and Carlino provide a useful connection for those of us focusing on KD/KS.  It’s a new and slightly different slant for us as we manage the KD/KS process.

About Guy St. Clair

Guy St. Clair is the Series Editor for Knowledge Services, from Verlag Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin, the scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. The series subject is knowledge services, the approach to managing intellectual capital that merges information management, knowledge management (KM), and strategic learning, presenting and discussing new and innovative approaches to knowledge sharing in all fields of work.

With Barrie Levy, Guy  is the author of The Knowledge Services Handbook: A Guide for the Knowledge Strategist (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). He is also the author of Knowledge Services: A Strategic Framework for the 21st Century Organization (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). [Note: Go here for the free PDF version of this book: https://bit.ly/3msI27V. ]

Guy is also the author of Knowledge Services: Five Free Webinars from Guy St. Clair, available to anyone who wants to learn more about knowledge services. The webinars are offered at no charge.

Guy’s other professional writings are listed in SMR International’s corporate website, at SMRShare. 

Comments

  1. Md Santo says

    January 26, 2012 at 3:01 am

    PICTURES OF KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS

    1. Picture 1 : Knowledge considered as “flow” or “thing” in the form of Codified, Recorded, Administered, Repositoried of all kind of created / captured/ collected Tacit, Explicit and Implicit Knowledge respectively. The medium needed behaving as Dependent to Space Time (DST)

    2. Picture 2 : Knowledge considered as “consciousness” in the form of emergent property generated from 9 types of Knowledge evolvement through Knowledge Interfaces (KI) mechanism – http://bit.ly/s9ZNqR (“Basic structure of Human System Biology-based Knowledge Management (HSBKM) model framework”). The medium needed behaving as Independent to SpaceTime (IST) via “quantum entanglement consciousness transferring phenomenon” – http://bit.ly/wQj0qE (“Brief Guide to Physics of the Universe : Knowledge Management Generated”)

    Md Santo – http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com

    Reply
  2. Hemangi R Vyas says

    January 26, 2012 at 5:28 pm

    While I have not read Lehrer’s article but picking up from what is mentioned here about the example of people wandering into each other reminds me of the floor walking exercises we conducted as part of KM initiatives in the Library. It turned out the information we received as a result of this non-formal, one to one casual interaction produced more feedback as compared to ‘ meet the members’ session.Perhaps because of being more informal and personal as compared to sessions where some would perhaps feel the fear of speaking up amongst many.

    Reply
  3. Philippe Leliaert says

    January 31, 2012 at 11:55 pm

    Some quick pointers that should interest you:
    Charles Landry makes some very lucid and poignant observations about the way we design and build our cities (http://www.charleslandry.com/). And I remember a conversation with Bryan Davis of the Kaietur Institute for Knowledge Management (http://www.kikm.org/) in which he pointed out that the average ‘speed’ of an industrial city is around 45km/h, while that of a knowledge city is … 5km/h, i.e. walking pace !
    Will come back to this later.

    Reply

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