Back in the 16th Century, Sir Francis Bacon (arguably) coined the now-famous Latin quip: “Scientia potentia est” (i.e., “Knowledge is power”). And while the phrase can have a very noble interpretation, it’s more often a justification for withholding information to gain an advantage over others.
For centuries, this approach was very effective against external enemies. But when this kind of “information hoarding” is used against people within a single organization or business — that is, people ostensibly on the same side— it can have far-ranging and negative repercussions for everyone involved.
Cooperation isn’t just for kindergarteners.
Restricting the free flow of information isolates people and teams, cutting off communications, fostering complacency, and destroying trust. In contrast, a recent social psychology study from Harvard found that “common knowledge” has a positive effect on organizations — it encourages cooperation and collaboration.
Researchers found that people with common knowledge made different decisions than they did otherwise. That is, when they knew others had the same information they did, they were more likely to cooperate to benefit each other and themselves.
This is an important insight because it underscores the importance of sharing information as widely as possible so it’s accessible to as many colleagues as possible, especially among decision-makers.
Information wants to be socialized.
Far too many organizations, however, still have their information siloed in people’s email clients, buried in disparate intranets, or lost among various file-sharing services. 
To make sure everyone has access to all the same “common information,” you need an Enterprise Social Networking platform. As such, tibbr was designed from the start to make sharing information across departments, offices, countries, and time-zones, easy.
It can make all your data and documents instantly accessible to anyone with the right permissions. In addition to powerful social tools, tibbr also loops in content from your business applications and cloud file-services. And with tibbr Pages, it puts rich, publishing tools at employees’ fingertips, so everyone has the power to create and share new common content.
In other words, using tibbr means everyone knows that everyone else knows what they know (say that three times fast). That common knowledge means everyone is more likely to cooperate. And that helps your company be more productive and innovative.
To learn more about how tibbr can help your organization work better together — get a free trial of the tibbr platform now.
