Food for thought: Input, information, knowledge or wisdom?

I remember a particular exchange between myself and a professor when I was an undergraduate. Following some criticism of an essay I had written I explained that I felt I had provided the correct information. The professor dryly replied "I think that you are confusing input with information". He then outlined the following hierarchy: input, information, knowledge and wisdom and suggested that I think carefully about the boundaries between them.

In my consultancy work I have often had cause to reflect quite seriously on this categorisation of outputs. It seems to me that the following definitions apply, roughly at least:

• input: raw data from which the client (or professor!) will draw few if any implications e.g. 4m people in country x own a mobile phone.
• information: more coherent data from which some conclusions may be drawn and which may contain some degree of novelty e.g. mobile phone ownership in country x is only 20% of the average in countries of its kind.
• knowledge: a synthesis of information put together with the consultant's own experience to provide insight to the client e.g. there will be a propensity for people in country x, many of whom do not have a landline, to migrate straight to mobile phones.
• wisdom: accumulated knowledge with considerable value which a client is likely to listen to very carefully e.g. mobile phones will be a prime vehicle for social and business networking in the near future and services should be aimed in this direction.

It is a good idea to identify in which of the four modes you anticipate any communication to a client to be situated: intended and likely to be received: and as I learned to my cost, not to blur the boundaries. Most consultants would seem to me to wish to operate at and around the level of knowledge.

Wisdom, perhaps, is the province of the few, confined to gurus. But, as Peter Drucker once famously remarked, the reason there are so many gurus is because a lot of people have trouble spelling the word charlatan!

David Wornham