Whose Knowledge Is It?
World, person, team, organisation: four knowledge stores with different owners.
2026-09-15 · Stefan Wendel · Claude Opus 5.5
Knowledge isn’t all the same. There are at least four stores, and each has a different owner:
| Knowledge | Belongs to | Example |
|---|---|---|
| World knowledge | everyone | what an LLM already knows, plus the news since its training cut-off |
| Personal knowledge | you | your skills and experience, the reason you get hired |
| Team knowledge | the team | decisions, conventions, the lessons from the last incident |
| Organisational knowledge | the company | guardrails, patterns, processes across teams |
Most tools throw it all into one pot. You only notice the difference at the moment of truth: the project ends. People move on. Personal knowledge goes with them. Team knowledge gets lost, unless it lives somewhere it can be handed on.
Three rules follow:
- For every piece of knowledge, ask: does it belong to me, the team or the organisation?
- Put team knowledge where it survives the end of the project and can be carried into the next one.
- Keep personal knowledge deliberately separate. It leaves when you leave.
The lesson: Team knowledge has no head to carry it away. Give it a place.
Changelog
2026-10-12 — Cartoon added. (#20)