In our Sunday newsletter, we, as editors, reflect on the past seven days. We do this on the initiative of our cartoonist Albert Jan Rasker. He chooses a subject, draws a picture, and we take it from there.
“You’ll find that out for yourself; I won’t tell you now.” You probably recognize people who react as if you are asking them for their salary when you just want to know what criteria your mail or project proposal must meet.
Knowledge hiding is a serious problem, especially in a working environment. According to Catherine Connelly, a Canadian professor who has been researching this phenomenon for years, in ten percent of cases knowledge is intentionally withheld in the workplace. Competitiveness, internal politics or mutual distrust may underlie this behavior.
In this week’s cartoon, Albert Jan aptly depicts the opposite of knowledge hiding: sharing knowledge. The name says it all: that is precisely the goal of the Knowledge Sharing Centre (KSC) in Eindhoven.
The goal of KSC is for engineers to share knowledge that usually lingers in the brain or notes with peers. Putting your expertise on the table can sometimes feel counterintuitive, but everyone benefits. Although you don’t have to put all your cards on the table, they also understand at KSC. Meeske: “By getting to know each other’s generic knowledge, without immediately throwing your intellectual property up for grabs, we can all grow. That is exactly the opportunity I see: becoming smarter together in securing and distributing knowledge physically and digitally.”
In this interview by Bart Brouwers with KSC directors John Blankendaal and Hans Meeske, you can read more about the benefits and difficulties of sharing knowledge. Forward it, especially to your knowledge-hiding colleagues—you wouldn’t want to be guilty of withholding knowledge, would you?
Here’s what else caught our eye this week:
- Must read of the week: Crops and solar energy can coexist, so agrivoltaics gains traction in the Netherlands
- ‘The Netherlands has too few funds with deep enough pockets and the right knowledge’
- Crushing range anxiety: all you need to know about EV range
- Future of the National Growth Fund became even more uncertain
- The impact of autonomous aviation
- Southern Europe is closing the gap with the North in labor cost competitiveness
- World leaders adopt a declaration to ‘fully unlock’ the potential of nuclear energy
- European MPs sound alarm over quantum computing’s encryption threat
And here you can find all the other articles we produced this week. Have a good week!
Aafke Eppinga
Editor-in-chief Innovation Origins
