The slogan that claims that “knowledge increases when shared” is nice at an organizational level, but for an individual, it amounts to ‘giving up’ something. Something that was “in his head”, that he had worked for to acquire, is now easily owned by someone else who had to do very little effort to obtain the same knowledge.
But what about sharing experience ? Have you ever come across someone who says he or she doesn’t like or refuses to share experience ? On the contrary, sharing experience is seen as positive in all respects. When you share experience, you make others benefit of your years of working and personal development. You are seen as the expert, and others look up to you and want to learn from your experience. There is a notion of ownership around knowledge (“it’s mine”), but there is no such notion around experience. Experience is something that happened to you, it is not something you own. If I share my knowledge with you, you have obtained my knowledge. If I share my experience with you, you haven’t obtained my experience.
Yet, is experience so different from knowledge ? The Oxford (www.oxforddictionaries.com) definition of experience is “the knowledge or skill acquired by a period of practical experience of something (especially that gained in a particular profession)”. In other words, experience is … knowledge (!) honed over time. I would argue that for all practical (and non-academic) purpose, one can equate experience to knowledge.So my message is: let’s stop referring to the loaded notion of “knowledge sharing” but let’s encourage people to work on the much simpler and positive approach of “experience sharing” !
