Despite the home-working dreams: why innovation needs direct human encounters

Despite the home-working dreams: why innovation needs direct human encounters

For decades, a widespread misconception has persisted that we can build “knowledge databases” and share knowledge directly through them.

During my doctoral research, I studied systems theory intensively. I wanted to understand how people learn in social systems and how company regulations and documentation influence learning processes. The insight was sobering:

Knowledge cannot be shared directly!

Knowledge is highly individual. It relates to personal conceptions, the likelihood of subsequent conceptions and individual mental models of reality.

Knowledge is encoded—for example as language or text—and transmitted through signals. In another person, sensory perception, the reception of signals, may initially produce information. Processing this information in the context of individual experience—knowledge—can create new knowledge through the development of new conceptions and further connections.

Only when this fundamental fact is understood can we begin to envisage how people learn and how lasting change in social systems—companies—can succeed and innovations emerge.

Despite the dreams of working from home, bring people together. Let them exchange personal conceptions through direct and ideally synchronous communication. If these interactions can also happen spontaneously and by chance, beyond agenda-driven, time-limited online meetings, the likelihood of innovation increases enormously.