One could compare business to a minefield where each mine could go off an infinite amount of times. There's nothing stopping a business to make the same mistakes one project after another, i.e. stepping on the same mine over and over.

However, it doesn't make sense to do that since the business should just put up a warning flag where a mine have blown. "Don't step HERE! It will cost you..." Too many business are staring at the horizon on a goal/target and carries on not really documenting where they have stepped because it's the result that counts and not how you got there.

This far I'm all with you Harold! But there's one problem with your argument. Even if something IS known, like a location of a mine, i.e. a known problem simple or complex, the problem might still be that people don't UNDERSTAND it. If you only have step-by-step guides for trouble-shooting, let's say your car, and something doesn't really fits the description - the guys doing the fixing wouldn't be able to pull through since they have been taught/told "Search the database! If it has been solved before - it is described there!"

I wouldn't want to take my car for repair to someone I knew only followed step-by-step guides and I'd REALLY not want to have them fix my multi-million hospital machine, pharmaceutical device or sterilizer.

When someone's life is at stake - you can't leave it to knowledge management and/or databases. You must have a multileveled documentation - from pdf:s to videos and "trial/error on a real machine".

Vänliga hälsningar / Best regards,

Henrik Svensson