Benjamin Franklin reportedly said: “If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays best interest.” This particular quote emphasizes the importance for an individual to acquire knowledge at any price. In some ways it is analogous to Christ’s teaching from the sermon on the mount:
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew 6: 19-21, KJV)
Both were teaching that there are things that are more valuable than material wealth. Whereas Christ was teaching the supremacy of spiritual things, Franklin raised the flag of intellectualism. However, it seems both teachings were lost on much of American culture for the first 150 years of this country’s existence. The predominant, driving force in the United States from 1776 until 1929 was materialism, the accumulation of wealth and material things.
Beginning in the 1930s, American society in general started transitioning from an industrial society to a new type of culture where value was based on technology, information and the use of information. Fritz Machlup was the first economist to popularize the term information society. Following in his foot steps, Peter Drucker was credited by BusinessWeek with the invention of the science of management. In 1966, he was the first author to give currency to the terms knowledge economy and knowledge worker. A knowledge economy is an economy in which growth is dependent on the quantity, quality and accessibility of available information, rather than the means of production.
By the year 2000, the concept of the knowledge worker had permeated all levels of all industries. Drucker can easily be seen as a disciple of Franklin…put your money in knowledge. In 2004, in Handbook of Business Strategy, Vol. 5 Iss: 1, George Elliott wrote: “Cognitive excellence: our people are our most important asset.” A year later, Baruch Lev, director of the Intangibles Research Project at New York University Stern School of Business, stated that “people are the most important asset of most companies.” Not only their knowledge, but the people themselves had become assets. This set off a firestorm of arguments. Are people to be treated like material resources?
However, in the 21st century, people are not the only intangible assets. In Lev’s earlier work, he demonstrated that in 1980, the total value of many international corporations was fully accounted for by their tangible assets. Today, he estimates that 80 percent of their value is tied up in intangible assets — brands, patents and trademarks. Note, that he didn’t mention people or intellectual property. Franklin seems to be right. Investing in knowledge, both by individuals investing in their own knowledge and by corporations investing in their employees’ knowledge, pays off most handsomely.
I can’t argue with the main premise of Franklin’s maxim. However, I do think that today we take, and even Franklin in his day took too narrow a definition of knowledge. Franklin was placing his emphasis on “head” or content knowledge. I want to broaden the scope of knowledge to everything that can be an answer to the question, “What can I know?” How many different ways do we fill in the blank in the phrase, “I know ________.”
How many times have we said:
- “I know something.” This is the content knowledge of a subject matter. This is what many of our school teachers asked us to learn.
- “I know how to do something.” This is a skill that we learned or could do instinctively.
- “I know what I like.” These are the values that I hold dear.
- “I know myself.” This is personal knowledge that we generally believe that we don’t learn, but just know.
- “I know that person.” This is social or relational knowledge.” Sometimes this knowledge is very deep and intense. Other times this knowledge is superficial at best, and is said to be a “nodding acquaintance.”
- “I know God.” This is very personal and is on a different level from the material or physical world. This is spiritual or supernatural knowledge.
These six types of knowledge constitute whole or real knowledge. In another post I will more fully examine the six types of knowledge and how one can obtain such knowledge. In the meantime, like the television advertisement suggests, now is the time to start investing more in your future.
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