It has a nice saying about the importance of collaborating, sharing knowledge, encouraging participation. These things I have listed are not synonyms: let's take a step back and look better with this issue.

Suppose you create a group on Lotusnotes, or on Teamsite Sharepoit, or a project team on yoo +, or even a closed group on Google Groups. Have you created a space for collaboration for a small group of people within the organization. Now multiply this by 10, 100, 1000 groups: you have got a fragmented organization in clusters of interest, or in working groups.

But at the same time, you have also created functional silos, (although informal) that do not allow knowledge to flow smoothly between different groups.

But this knowledge can really flow?

This is an interesting subject (one of the most interesting in recent times about this, indeed, that is: how much collaboration is a barrier to sharing?

In other words: what is necessary in an environment to enable an understanding to move? It 'obvious that a document or information which have their own history, tied to a context of trade between a group outside of this context are particularly relevant. If you then take a document drawn up within a TeamSite and take him outside, available to all, information becomes insufficient and insignificant.

In short, while within groups occurs largely conscenza tacit, difficult to transport, open spaces (such as a space for the forms or manuals) are sharing explicit knowledge, readily de-contextualization, but do not have a history of collaboration behind (at least in visible form). It therefore appears that the degree of cooperation is inversely proportional to the degree of sharing possible: if the information was a history and context, this story becomes a dense set and not easily explainable.

What are the solutions to this problem? The debate is open, and I can only give my point of view.

Groups which develop tacit knowledge have always existed, and the creation of closed groups only serves to take note of this situation, providing a suitable environment for collaboration. But at the same time, there are practices of boundary are those that enable groups to learn in their internal knowledge to carry out. There is always the figure that connects, which passes from one group to another, the innovator, who attended the "boundaries" of communities. These are figures that form the cognitive bridge to knowledge produced locally (Mario arrives in his group in the office and says, hey, the ones downstairs are doing something fichissima. It may be useful. When I go to my friend who works there and I do explain ....).

In an intranet-respecting should live these different practices related to knowledge: closed groups that produce collaboration and tacit knowledge and contextual, open groups that allow the explicit knowl-ring (think of a forum on domestic issues in Excel, in which case the conoscneza is less contentuale), and finally, a practice of "work on the borders" allowing participation in different figures to different device groups closed, so you can be a bridge cognition.

Moreover, it is said that the tacit knowledge and context derived from the collaboration can not, at some point, be transformed into explicit knowledge: some end-products may be available to everyone because they have reached a level of explicitness that can be shared. In this case the collaboraizone becomes a sort of incubator listing for sharing.

All this (or almost) is discussed in this article, published by StepTwo.

Happy reading (and good riflesisone).