Difference between Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom

To begin with, organizational data, information, knowledge, and wisdom, all that emerge from the social process of an organization, and are not private. In defining them,we are not trying to formulate definitions that will elucidate the nature of personal data, information, knowledge, or wisdom. Instead, to use a word that used to be more popular in discourse than it is at present, we are trying to specify inter subjective constructs and to provide metrics for them.

A datum is the value of an observable, measurable or calculable attribute. Data is more than one such attribute value. Is a datum (or is data) information? Yes, information is provided by a datum, or by data, but only because data is always specified in some conceptual context. At a minimum, the context must include the class to which the attribute belongs, the object which is a member of that class, some ideas about object operations or behavior, and relationships to other objects and classes.

Data alone and in the abstract therefore, does not provide information. Rather, information, in general terms, is data plus conceptual commitments and interpretations. Information is data extracted, filtered or formatted in some way (but keep in mind that data is always extracted filtered, or formatted in some way).

Knowledge is a subset of information. But it is a subset that has been extracted, filtered, or formatted in a very special way. More specifically, the information we call knowledge is information that has been subjected to, and passed tests of validation. Common sense knowledge is information that has been validated by common sense experience. Scientific knowledge is information (hypotheses and theories) validated by the rules and tests applied to it by some scientific community. Organizational knowledge in terms of this framework is information validated by the rules and tests of the organization seeking knowledge. The quality of its knowledge then, will be largely dependent on the tendency of its validation rules and tests to produce knowledge that improves organizational performance (the organization’s version of objective knowledge).

Wisdom, lastly, has a more active component than data, information, or knowledge. It is the application of knowledge expressed in principles to arrive at prudent, sagacious decisions about conflicting situations. From the viewpoint of the definition given of organizational knowledge, we now ask what an organization is doing when it validates information to produce knowledge, it seems reasonable to propose that the validation process is an essential aspect of the broader organizational learning process, and that validation is a form of learning.

So, though knowledge is a product and not a process derived from learning, knowledge validation (validation of information to admit it into the knowledge base) is certainly closely tied to learning, and depending on the definition of organizational learning, may be viewed as derived from it.