Today I thought I would share with you part of my PhD thesis and in particular the ‘Knowledge Cryptex’. “The What?” I hear you say. Dan Brown, in his novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’, coined the neologism ‘cryptex’ by combining the words cryptology and codex. The cryptex was a portable cylindrical vault with rotating keys, which when aligned in a particular way opened to reveal the hidden contents. I’ve conceived the knowledge cryptex as consisting of rotating disks, each of which can be opened independently, but when aligned reveal business knowledge. The disks are ‘know-how, know-what, know-why, know-who, know-where, know-when, and know-how-much’ knowledge. The cryptex looks something like the figure below.

On the 1st of March 1971 a significant government department report, which took two years to develop, was submitted to the Minister of the day. I've just found a copy and read it from cover to cover. By today's standards it probably wouldn't pass muster - its only 74 pages and it just doesn't look pretty. It is devoid of colour, pictures, and diagrams, but it does have tables and numbers, and more importantly the principle recommendation is in the first paragraph clearly flagged in bold type. The other recommendations are easy to find and follow.

The report is remarkable for its clarity and succinctness. Its also remarkable for its predictions and its recommendations, some of which were enacted just last year, but quite independently of this report! I doubt today's policy and decision makers even know of its existence, yet it could easily have been rebadged and resubmitted. Even more astounding is the report references recommendations made and approved in 1922, but never enacted. Similar recommendations were again made in 1955 and were not enacted. And of course the 1971 report was referenced in 1997, and you guessed it the recommendations were not enacted (I've also found and read the 1997 report). A new report was commissioned in January 2008 and its recommendations approved in July 2008. The recommendations in the 2008 report could have been plagiarised from the 1971 report, and presumably the 1955 and 1922 reports, yet they were arrived at independently and in ignorance of the existence of the other reports.