The contribute stage of the KM cycle deals with getting employees to post
what they have learned to the communal knowledge base (e.g., a repository).
Only in this way can individual knowledge be made visible and available across
the entire organization, where appropriate. The last caveat is added, for the
tendency is to warehouse all knowledge, which should not be the focus of KM.
These sequences of steps are used by many authors, and they have the unfortunate effect of creating the misconception that KM is all about making public all that resides within the heads of individuals. Needless to say, the impact on
the motivation of employees plummets considerably! The point of the exercise
is not to post everything on the company intranet but to cull those experiences
from which others in the organization may also benefit. This implies that the
experience has potential to be generalized. In fact, a great deal of content to
be shared organization-wide must first be repackaged in a “generic” format in
order to be of use to a wider audience.