EM - Lessons Learned from Knowledge Engineering

Experience Management 2002
German Workshop on Experience Management - Berlin, March 7-8, 2002

Experience Management - Lessons Learned from Knowledge Engineering

Marco C. Bettoni und Sibylle Schneider
Basel University of Applied Sciences (FHBB)

Es ist not, dass wir all lernen
und das getreulich unseren Nochkummen
mitteilen. - Albrecht Dürer, 1528

Abstract

Experiential knowledge has been recognized as a critical success factor since the beginning of Knowledge Management, but practical work in the KM-field has shown that dealing with experiential knowledge is still not easy. Since the 80^ies Knowledge Engineering has been faced with the same kind of challange and can contribute by teaching us some important lessons, that we propose should be used as a foundation or kernel in conceiving Experience Management solutions and systems. Among these lessons, the fundamental one is, that in order to improve experience sharing we first should understand experiential knowledge in a way that promotes the appreciation of human factors. This can be reached by understanding the following five aspects of experiential knowledge from a constructivist point of view: the Function, the Mechanism, the 2 States, the Organisation and the Handling of Experiential Knowledge. Based on the proposed understanding, five consequences are deduced that we suggest should serve as leading principles for conceiving and using Experience Management solutions and systems.