Are you a Buyer, Seller or Broker of Information

Barb McPherson from River Murray Training has been working on a very innovative Individual Learnscope Project in SA called “Leveraging Enterprise Knowledge and Know-how”.

Barb has been an e-learning innovator with the Australian Flexible Learning Framework for a number of years - and her company, River Murray Training, are leaders is responsive training solutions in the VET Sector.

Here is part of Barb's Final Posting for 2007 LearnScope Teams & Individuals

"One very interesting concept I learned about was that in any organisation there are buyers, sellers and brokers of knowledge. Let's say you now have the "know-how" on some new e-learning thing. But you got the idea and a few starting points from someone else. Let's say the Learnscope team put you in touch with that someone else. You are a buyer of knowledge, the "someone else" is a seller; and the Learnscope team is the broker. Why would the seller have been happy to share their know-how with you? Maybe they were altruistic; maybe they felt indebted to the brokers for soomething they had done. Maybe you have something that the seller could use now or in the future. You are the buyer - what will you offer in return?

In organisations people don't just give away their know-how. If the culture is such that sharing knowledge is not supported and encouraged then it won't happen. If people are promoted on what they know then it doesn't encourage them to share does it. If they are promoted because they share their knowledge freely, then it is likely to encourage more open and sharing teams. What sort of organisation do you work in? If you are a manager, what messages do you send your staff. If you are a facilitator - what messages are you sending your students?"


Barb has highlighted some very interesting points:

- are you a buyer, seller or broker of knowledge - or do we change roles depending on the need/ concept/ process/ idea we are working on?

- are you a sharer or hoarder of knowledge?

- and how do we 'manage' knowledge?

River Murray Training's Industry Engagement Project "Engineering Employers Association Group Training Scheme" used the tool itensil to project manage this project. Itensil is a "a wiki and workflow software in one"