About 8-9 years ago (around 2011) when I was studying knowledge management, a question pop up in my mind. In the past, we used to learn from the past, which I call it knowledge of the past, and majority of people were just doing that. The way it worked was someone like the teachers and professors, or the professionals, they learned the knowledge, and create a course or training classes, and pass on the knowledge to the others, to classes of students, or to the next generation. People in the past decades had been surviving like that. Go to the college, acquired the necessary professional knowledge from universities with a certificate, and started working in the industries. No matter whether they can really use the knowledge they learned, it was a start.
But at that time, we already knew that there would be a lot of new technologies coming up. We already saw business organizations started to face a lot of challenges in the market. Basically there was a shift of paradyne, particularly the digital evolution which changed everything the market, the consumers and the business do.
In just a few years, a lot of new game-changing technologies evolved in the market, such as e-commerce, e-business, IoT, blockchain, artificial intelligence, ... etc. We all knew they are important, but at that time were not sure how these technologies are going to affect us. We all knew rules in the market will change, and will affect our business and survival, but we did not know how we could prepare for it. We all knew there were a lot of new things to learn, but we did not know how, and not sure whether we are capable of learning these new technologies which might not be fitting to our background.
It came to a simple scenario. A lot of new technologies and new findings have evolved, which were something we were not familiar. Unlike the knowledge of the past, these new knowledge just evolved so fast, and the traditional learning channel through schools and universities just cannot catch up. But we all knew that, if we don't catch up with these new technologies, we are pretty sure we shall fall behind. Eventually we shall lose our values, and our jobs. It is just a matter of time.
Starting from that time, I have been thinking about how we can acquire this knowledge of the future, and then it is already a matter of survivals. After practice for the past 8-9 years, I came to a little conclusion from my experience. I believe this is important for the knowledge workers on:
How to acquire the knowledge of the future, for development and sustainability ?
How to acquire the knowledge of the future, while these knowledge are still evolving and not yet solid. How to acquire them at the right time without falling behind.
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