Why we need a Story-Driven Agenda for Sharing Knowledge.

                              Bret Tushaus shares his story at KA Connect 2010 

I just listened to an excellent AIA podcast called “The AIA’s Knowledge Agenda: Transforming a Profession” featuring Walter Hainsfurther and Markku Allison.

There are lots of excellent takeaways in there. Randy Deutsch did a nice job of cataloging takeaways and then building upon them in his latest Architects 2Zebras blog post.

A Story about Research

I teased out one theme for group discussion on the KA Connect LinkedIn Group. I’m paraphrasing:

"We need to move the profession from sharing knowledge through oral history to becoming research-driven."

I agree with the general premise that our industry could benefit from creating, sharing, and leveraging design solutions and practice methodology based on research.

However, I think we should keep our old friend oral history around.

In Walter and Markku’s podcast, they reference the well-published findings of Walmart’s research into the effect of daylighting on sales volume. If someone on the street asked me if I thought that natural daylight in a store makes a difference on sales volume I would say yes, and explain my answer based on Walmart’s research.

Now I’ve never actually read the formal research Walmart conducted on the impact of daylighting on sales. But I have heard the story at least a dozen times. I think the story stuck since it was a bit unexpected (Walmart, design, natural light in the same sentence) but also quantifiable and concrete.

A Story-Driven Agenda for Sharing Knowledge

So here’s what I think:

Transitioning the AEC (and AIA) to a knowledge-driven agenda will ultimately need to be anchored around sharing stories. We’ve been using stories for millennia to convey complex moral, technical, or political concepts from generation to generation. Stories are the most powerful way we have to embed knowledge and pass it from person to person or organization to organization.

Stories referencing well-executed research instead of “I did this 20 times and it works” would be a welcome change. But stories will still be the primary mode of communicating knowledge, even if they take the form of blogs posts, podcasts, videos, and online discussions.

What do you all think?

Should we keep oral history around for a while longer? Do you agree that stories will help our industry to become more knowledge-driven?

Feel free to respond in the comments below or join the discussion on LinkedIn.