Knowledge Transfer by Osmosis

In my PhD research with R&D medical scientists, I explored how the scientists conceptualised the knowledge they worked with. A fascinating and unexpected aspect was not so much that the scientists intuitively understood that much of their knowledge was tacit (and unable to be articulated) but that they thought it could be transferred without being made explicit.

That is, they thought that when a novice scientist worked with an expert, the knowledge ‘sort of fell off the expert to the beginner, almost by osmosis’ (you can tell they were scientists!). Of course, the process by which this happened was shadowing, mentoring, observation – but the net effect was that tacit knowledge was seen to be transferred, without having been articulated.

If Important, it Gets Transferred

If it is important, it will get transferred. The most important knowledge gets transferred. In our institution we have a practice of creating a “collection of artifacts for the next teacher.”

Experts Are Boring!

We had briefing sessions by our experienced staff but I find they were not helpful. The presenter was not articulate and the flow was not very good. So you have people leaving the room. When you get them to share, you don’t get the results you want. This experienced person knows certain areas are lacking and puts them in his slides, but he is not engaging. Formal sessions are not so suitable. Informal sessions are better with coffee or tea.

Project Turnover and Knowledge Gaps

When a project drags on for too long ie many years, team members get tired of being in the same project for a long time - especially the newer staff who aspire to get more exposure and variety.

The seniors are often pulled out of projects because their knowledge is needed elsewhere. This leaves gaps, because they might have been with the project since the start.

This turnover creates a knowledge vacuum, so we are trying to figure out how we can speed up the knowledge transfer process.