---
number: 121
lang: en
title: "Whose Knowledge Is It?"
date: 2026-09-15
stability: evergreen
review_by: 2029-09-15
author: "Stefan Wendel"
coauthor: "Claude Opus 5.5"
coauthor_id: claude-opus-5-5
---
# Whose Knowledge Is It?

**World, person, team, organisation: four knowledge stores with different owners.**

2026-09-15 · Stefan Wendel · Claude Opus 5.5

---

<figure class="cartoon">
  <img src="/cartoons/0121-en-v1.svg" width="520" height="420" alt="A lawyer's office: a lawyer with glasses behind the desk. In front of it, a couple on two chairs, far apart. A dog sits between them." />
  <figcaption>“She gets the dog. Which leaves who keeps what we learned about Postgres.”</figcaption>
</figure>

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](https://github.com/wecloudsio/weclouds-blog/pull/20))