An article in “Knowledge Management World”:http://www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/index.cfm?action=readarticle&Article_ID=1725&Publication_ID=108 suggests a lot of what knowledge workers do is re-creating knowledge that is already available but they didn’t find.
It’s ironic (and infuriating) – particularly for a magazine all about knowledge management – that none of the catchy factoids like, “90% of the time that knowledge workers spend in creating new reports or other products is spent in recreating information that already exists” come with citations so there’s no way to check their methods (though I’m guessing they aren’t particularly rigorous).
Thanks to Lilia ‘Mathemagenic’ Efimova for the link. She notes interestingly that maybe some people prefer to re-discover things themselves because learning for yourself is more fun than researching it…
