Yet Another Myth: The DIKW Pyramid Scheme
Originally published on November 6, 2015
I had a wonderful time at KMWorld 2015 this week. On the last day of the conference, I presented 16 KM Myths Debunked (see the excellent notes by Mary Abraham).
When I returned, I read an article in the latest issue of KMWorld by David Weinberger, What’s greater than knowledge?, in which David states:
I’ve long been irked by the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom pyramid that is so often casually embraced as if its truth were obvious. I disagree with its implication that knowledge is a filtering down of information. I disagree even more that wisdom is a filtering of knowledge. But perhaps most irksome to me is its leaving understanding out of the picture entirely.
David previously wrote about The Problem with the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom Hierarchy:
But knowledge is not a result merely of filtering or algorithms. It results from a far more complex process that is social, goal-driven, contextual, and culturally-bound. We get to knowledge — especially ‘actionable’ knowledge — by having desires and curiosity, through plotting and play, by being wrong more often than right, by talking with others and forming social bonds, by applying methods and then backing away from them, by calculation and serendipity, by rationality and intuition, by institutional processes and social roles. Most important in this regard, where the decisions are tough and knowledge is hard to come by, knowledge is not determined by information, for it is the knowing process that first decides which information is relevant, and how it is to be used.
The real problem with the DIKW pyramid is that it’s a pyramid. The image that knowledge (much less wisdom) results from applying finer-grained filters at each level, paints the wrong picture. That view is natural to the Information Age which has been all about filtering noise, reducing the flow to what is clean, clear and manageable. Knowledge is more creative, messier, harder won, and far more discontinuous.
I should add a 17th myth to my list: The DIKW Pyramid. This ubiquitous diagram has even been expanded to include “measurement” and “facts” (in the image above), and inverted with a top level of “enlightenment” (in the image below):
I see no need for creating pyramids, hierarchies, or other similar, meaningless representations. I define knowledge as information in action. The article got me thinking about constructs beyond knowledge, including:
- Understanding: David Weinberger — To Know, but Not Understand
- Insights: Gary Klein — Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights (notes by Mary Abraham)
- Expertise: Richard McDermott — How to think like an expert
- Sense-making: Dave Snowden — What is Sense-making? — How we make sense of the world so we can act in it
- Decision and Action: Nick Milton — Data — Information — Knowledge — Understanding — Decision — Action
Others have written quite eloquently about the annoying pyramid and related topics:
- David Williams - Models, Metaphors and Symbols for Information and Knowledge Systems
- Martin Frické - The Knowledge Pyramid: A Critique of the DIKW Hierarchy
- Mark Baker - The other thing wrong with the DIKW pyramid
- Dave Snowden - The endless cycle of idea and action and Sense-making & Path-finding and Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement and It’s information to data we need, not DIKW
- Richard Veryard - Co-Production of Data and Knowledge
- Ewen Le Borgne - Settling the eternal semantic debate: what is knowledge, what is information…
- Tom Graves - Rethinking the DIKW hierarchy
- Patrick Lambe - From Data, with Love and Blowing up the Pyramid
- John Tropea - Knowledge as Interpreter — ASPE and Knowledge Management…NOT!
- Gordon Vala-Webb - The DIKW pyramid must die: KM as modern alchemy (notes by Mary Abraham)
- Liam Fahey and Laurence Prusak - The eleven deadliest sins of knowledge management (and my blog post 11 Deadliest Sins Of KM Revisited)
- Kaye Vivian - Why Data is not Information is not Knowledge
- Graham Durant-Law - Is the Pyramid to Wisdom Model Useful?
- David Gurteen — The DIKW model
To these fine articles, I would just add this. If you are thinking about using the DIKW, MFDIKW, DIKWE, or any other similar pyramid in a presentation or document, step away from the keyboard. Leave it out, and find a more relevant way to make your point.
