Introducing the Knowledge Work Maturity Model™

Collective intelligence has its roots in science — sociology,
sociobiology, political science, and anthropology. It’s typically
considered the outcome of the collaboration, collective efforts,
and competition of many individuals that typifies consensus
decision-making or crowdsourcing.

In a commercial knowledge work context, we’re defining
collective intelligence as successfully operationalizing past and
present experience, data, knowledge, best practices, and IP
by building an infrastructure and culture of collaboration that
values and rewards diverse knowledge resulting in superior
employee and customer experiences, market leadership,
growth, and organizational value.

Knowledge work organizations (KWOs)
KWOs are either a professional firm (e.g., a legal firm, financial
services firm, tax firm, accountancy firm) or specialist teams
within an organization (e.g., corporate law, corporate finance,
regulatory, tax, audit procurement, HR department) that relies
on digital documents containing intellectual property (IP) that
requires protection and governance.

The knowledge work industry (KWI)
This is the collective term we use to refer to the full dataset.

Knowledge work (in a commercial context)
Commercial knowledge work draws on a deep level of
accumulated experience and expertise combined with critical
analysis and communication skills to translate documented
processes into meaningful action. It involves processing
and interpreting information through the lens of context to
understand its relevance, applicability, and the associated
risks of using it to solve problems, deliver services, and
generate value.

Knowledge workers
Knowledge workers continuously engage in processes
that create and exploit knowledge — typically by applying
theoretical and analytical knowledge acquired through formal
training — to develop and deliver products and services.

The future of work is knowledge work, and the future of knowledge work is collective intelligence.

The prevalence and sophistication of technologies designed to support knowledge work is increasing exponentially. The knowledge management sector is predicted to grow to $1.1 trillion by 2026 (Drexel 2021)

"The more knowledge intensive the economy, the stronger the emphasis on the producing, diffusing, and applying knowledge." (Koster 2022)

Until now, there is limited consensus on the most effective way to design processes, build infrastructure and create a culture to deliver profitable knowledge work. The Knowledge Work Maturity Model™ addresses this gap.

he Knowledge Work Maturity Model™ is designed to help organizations operating in the knowledge economy reliant on digital documents containing IP that requires protection and governance.

These organizations can be businesses e.g., Legal Firms, Tax Firms, Accountancy Firms, or specialist teams within businesses e.g., corporate law, corporate finance, procurement, HR etc.

These Knowledge Work Organizations (KWOs) and we refer to them collectively as the Knowledge Work Industry.

For those of you who enjoyed statistics class at university, the full methodology is explained in the final report so feel free to geek out there.

For now, we are going to keep our explanations of the numbers at a high level.

2,000 KWOs that took our survey were scored on the ten key drivers of Knowledge Work Maturity.

These results were correlated with key knowledge work outcomes (Collective intelligence and market leadership) and each organization was awarded a score on a 0 – 200 scale.