Exploring the Relationship Between Knowledge and Fiction (Part 1: A Review of Past Experience)

 

This is the first post in a “Knowledge and Fiction Series”.

Part 1: A Review of Past Experience

Over the years, I have explored the interplay between knowledge and fiction from several angles. I am glad my blog and other unpublished notes allow me to easily revisit these themes before I dive in again with fresh insights.

Around 2008-2009, I was reading a lot of  didactic fiction and business novels: Didactic fiction involves using storytelling to convey practical lessons in a way that engages the reader and encourages critical thinking rather than following a prescriptive path. I wrote one full novel in this genre. It was called “Learning Log”, with a subtitle that read “A Knowledge Management Novel”. I wrote an accompanying White Paper, “Integrating Didactic Fiction in Structured Training."  The format was an experimental TiddlyWiki, my favorite Personal Knowledge Management tool. Here are some related blog posts showing a clear concentration around the same timeframe.

• Fiction with a Mission (2008)
• Didactic... in a Good Way (2009)
• Didactic Fiction (2009)
• The End (June 2009)

I have also explored storytelling as a method for knowledge sharing, which revolves around using narrative as a tool for organizational learning. A lot has been written about that, but my own interest in it was accelerated with Steve Denning's book, The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (2001) and later his business novel, Squirrel, Inc: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling (2004).  This second book aligned even more with my interest in didactic fiction.  Here are a couple of blog posts along those lines:

• The Springboard (2017)
• KM Chats (2011)

As an educator, I have dabbled in the use of fictional case studies for teaching. This involved crafting imaginary scenarios to deepen the reader or student’s understanding of a situation and sharpen critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Perhaps it is a subcategory of storytelling for knowledge sharing.  I mostly remember the  hand-drawn picture of a country I had named Kamala (nothing to do with politics) but I found much more in my files.  I found a small note attached to the case study itself that reads “GREATEST CRAZY IDEA” and then “Filed under Things that flopped” (see photos below). 

Now that I reread the few pages I kept, it seems it was my first ambitious effort to combine teaching or some form of knowledge transfer with fiction. And yet, I was not teaching or doing Knowledge Management work at the time. I would call that a fascinating creative flop because I still believe in what I was trying to do. I am not sure I even tried to sell it to my supervisor at the time. I was just having fun. This was, however, related to another recurring theme in my work: Technology. It was Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) then and it is Artificial Intelligence (AI) now.  There is a date on the document that accompanies the map, so I know that is where my brain was in 2006. 

Documentation of some crazy, perhaps creative, early work (2006 and 2009). The fact that I bothered to keep these paper copies in sleeves in a binder full of "important" documents suggests I was proud of those efforts and wanted to be reminded of the fun I had working on them. 

For teaching purposes, it is better to rely on case studies based on real “stories”.  I learned a lot about that in my NASA years.  Still, short fictional scenarios can be useful. In the context of my KM class at George Mason University in the Fall of 2024, I experimented with short fictional scenarios created with the help of generative AI and experienced some of the pitfalls of using AI for more creative work.

And then, on and off during my career in international development, I explored the fiction of international development, which is all about examining development themes through a narrative lens. This deserves a lot more attention because of the depth of issues that could be explored.  The theme that re-emerges today in the context of my current fiction work revolves around the telling of the story: “Whose story is it?  Whose experience?  Whose knowledge?  Who is telling the story?”  This last question is critical because as I start putting down some initial words for the novel, I need to settle on a Point of View (POV).  Here is a 2009 blog post related to the Fiction of Development.

Next, I will write about how my approach is evolving and my current and near-future focus.