Joint Knowledge Base: A Key to Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration

Knowledge sharing is a key to successful collaboration (online or in presence), and since collaboration is changing due to the increasingly emerging so-called “New Collaboration,” knowledge sharing should adjust accordingly: we call this New Knowledge Sharing. Organizations wishing to exploit the potential of New Collaboration need to understand how the new knowledge sharing and collaboration are related and, in particular, how they proceed, the very steps of their interwoven process. During our previous work, the concept of a Joint Knowledge Base (abbreviated to J.K.B.) emerged and became increasingly prominent as a key to knowledge sharing. Thus, in this paper, we will first revise and elaborate our concept of a J.K.B. in more detail. We will see how, on the one hand, when working on a shared task, each collaborator contributes to its construction and how, on the other, the J.K.B. functions as an interaction bridge, which is why it is a key to knowledge sharing. Secondly, we will describe different opportunities for partners in an interaction (team meeting, workshop, creative session, etc.) to contribute to the creation of a J.K.B. using so-called “Distributed Contribution Tools” (D.C.T.), which are standardized artifact-mediated interaction methods developed by E. Obeng. In particular, this second part will present 6 such D.C.T.s and explain how they contribute to the J.K.B. by means of a socially distributed production.