Sharing is important. It’s one of the first things we learn (or should’ve learned) while we toddled around in our most formative ages. You can even take the altruistic nature of sharing out of it. Anthropologically, sharing helps society to function. We share the road, for example. If we didn’t, we’d play a continual and mutually destructive game of chicken on the highway. And when it comes to really important knowledge — like scientific data for cancer treatments or documented changes in our natural environment — a knowledge silo is like a mutually destructive game of chicken.
Although we’re in a highly interconnected world, where organizations can thrive on innovation, collaboration, and knowledge sharing, many institutions feel bound to keep a white-knuckled grip on their research and data. It’s a silo mentality, and we’re not naive. For every Nikola Tesla, there will be 1,000 Thomas Edisons. For balance, this isn’t a totally bad thing.
If you take incentivization out of innovation, most people will simply not innovate. Carrots and sticks to induce work ethic aside, incentives can serve as smaller motivators, even when there’s a higher goal — a “supreme” incentive if you will — in mind. For many people in science, knowledge is this supreme incentive — and that’s where the insidious problem of knowledge silos lies.
What Exactly Is a Knowledge Silo
A knowledge silo occurs whenever information is isolated within specific industries, companies, different departments, or even teams, making it difficult or impossible for others to access and utilize pertinent information for the betterment of the whole. We typically speak of these silos within the context of businesses.
Knowledge silos can devastate companies, as this fragmentation can lead to wasted time, inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and significant barriers to organizational growth. While it’s understandable that Ben and Jerry may not share quarterly ice cream sales reports with a 16-year-old groove scooper, Ben and Jerry should probably share that info between at least Ben and Jerry.
But out of the context of business (and ice cream), knowledge silos in science are a bit different. And to clarify, let’s set aside intellectual property and patent consideration for a second. As stated, incentivizing innovation is important, but within a science field, sharing is indeed caring, as sharing valuable knowledge could be wildly beneficial for both researchers and, well, society.
For many scientists in their respective fields, discovering valuable knowledge is the “supreme” incentive. Unfortunately, despite advancements in technology and communication, knowledge silos continue to be a widespread issue. This isn’t only due to commercialization and its inherent principle of protectionism; it’s also due to a lack of imagination.
Key Problems with Knowledge Silos in Science
If science is the quest for knowledge, then silos serve as detours, speedbumps, and asteroid fields (depending on travel mode) on this quest. It’s just impossible to know what you don’t know if you’re traveling in your own galaxy while being irrespective of others’. There are three key reasons knowledge silos can be, at best, limiting, and at worst, very destructive.
Reduced Collaboration and Innovation
Knowledge exchange is typically a cornerstone for innovation. However, confined information within specific groups limits the opportunity for the cross-pollination of ideas. Even Einstein was part of a scientific discourse. Also, while there are different fields of scientific study, researchers continually find that the world is more connected than they could’ve ever imagined.
For instance, we recently interviewed data scientist Stanley Bishop. His analytical data work to predict sepsis among hospital patients proved applicable to the health of the oceans. The same chemical processes of our bodies are found in the sea. Do you think a marine biologist typically considers speaking with a medical physician about ocean health? In this instance, data science and collaboration across seemingly disparate fields — breaking data silos — proved incredibly valuable.
Inefficiency and Duplication of Efforts
While the above example referred to information sharing across different fields of study, knowledge silos certainly exist within the same fields. Fragmented knowledge often leads to the duplication of related efforts. This may also be a good time to speak on IP and patents. The thing is, researchers can still maintain IP and patents while also sharing information with other researchers. The different teams may be studying something completely unrelated, but the existing research may still prove mutually valuable.
Often and unfortunately, commercial interest is the root cause of hoarding knowledge. However, history — time after time — has shown that freely sharing ideas begets new ideas that spur other nuanced ideas. You can’t brainstorm without a collection of clouds, and no one controls the weather. Also, if everyone thought about this logically (and a bit selfishly), all stakeholders would save on human capital, time, and money in a decentralized, data-sharing environment.
Lack of Agility and Adaptability
Industries and scientific fields stuck in or relying on information silos to stake their claims often struggle to advance. Within a rapidly changing technological environment, researchers may require assistance from data scientists, other researchers, and even competing entities to survive. Or, to be clearer, in a rapidly changing world, we may need scientists to adapt and collaborate on critical information so that we survive.
When critical knowledge is trapped in silos, research (and society) lacks the full context and/or expertise needed to make fast, informed decisions in an ever-changing landscape. Without collaboration, an organization may fail to recognize emerging data, adapt, and implement necessary changes effectively due to knowledge gaps. Of course, there will always be bad actors who could care less. However, the “supreme” incentivized scientist will, and you should, too.
DeSci Can Break Down Knowledge Silos
The first step in breaking down knowledge silos is addressing their existence. Check. After that, DeSci’s inherent principles, methodologies, and ethos are all poised to push back on information silos and profiteering protectionism. Here are some of the ways that DeSci’s best practices are fostering better knowledge-sharing and collaboration:
- Promote a Knowledge-Sharing Culture: DeSci is a culture of openness and collaboration where sharing knowledge is valued and rewarded. In the DeSci ecosystem, this reward may come in the form of tokenization, project promotion, facilitating cross-pollinating fields of study, and providing a roadmap for researchers, from funding to peer review and publishing. DeSci helps with knowledge management.
- Implement Integrated Systems and Tools: By utilizing blockchain, AI, and other open-sourced technologies, researchers can benefit from the tools of Web3 and DeSci organizations. Although we’ve focused on knowledge silos, breaking down technological silos can be a crucial component of data sharing, communication, and collaboration.
- Break Down Barriers: Since DeSci is decentralized, without governing bodies to dictate processes, there are no societal barriers that create or exacerbate knowledge silos. Also, by leveraging virtual collaboration tools in a digital infrastructure, knowledge silos can’t be created by simple geographic or geopolitical barriers.
While knowledge silos can be a significant obstacle to humanity’s advancement and well-being, we can begin to break them down. DeSci can help us unlock a fuller potential of ourselves and reframe the big picture — our supreme incentive.
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