The Linear Lie

Knowledge doesn’t move in straight lines.

Every major enterprise software category was built around the problems that could be productized. The messier problems — whether understanding actually moved through organizations in ways that improved human judgment — couldn’t be scoped, sold, or measured. So they weren’t the problem.

The industry defined the problems it could solve and called them the problems worth solving. Knowledge management meant storage and retrieval because storage and retrieval could be built, sold, and measured. Collaboration meant shared workspaces. Information flow meant faster access. The actual question — whether anyone understood anything better as a result — never made it into the specification.

For thirty years, an entire industry solved the wrong problem with considerable competence and complete confidence. The analysts validated the framing. The conferences amplified it. The buyers followed the experts. The experts followed each other. The loop closed

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