Since epistemologists spend their lives trying to understand what it means to know something, we will not pretend to provide a definitive account ourselves. What we offer is a working definition of knowledge, a pragmatic description that helps us communicate what we mean when we talk about knowledge in organizations. Our definition expresses the characteristics that make knowledge valuable and the characteristics — often the same ones — that make it difficult to manage well:
Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms.