The key question then becomes—what should we do in this sort of situation? Or in other words—what in our situation corresponds to ‘the flat tire’? We give the answer (or more precisely—our quest for an answer) the name knowledge federation, and we describe it tentatively as follows: It has been said that none of us can be as knowledgeable (or intelligent or creative) as all of us together. While this seems perfectly reasonable, it is, however, true only when the systemic organization of our knowledge work is completely meaningful.

When it is not, the situation may well be opposite — we may be collectively as little knowledgeable (or intelligent or creative) as the very last among us, or even as those who are deliberately destructive among us (see Knowledge work has a flat tire.) It will turn out that our knowledge work has historically evolved based on assumptions that we are (1) ‘filling in the reality puzzle‘ by ‘true facts,’ and that (2) when something is published it is automatically ‘known’. Both assumptions are, however, now both obviously false and ‘known’ to be false. Hence we let knowledge federation be a common name for all those various processes that are needed to bring us from an ocean of disparate documents and ‘facts’ or disparate and sometimes contradicting claims and opinions, often separated from one another and from us by the domains of interests and terminologies of disciplines)—to shared key insights. Such as the ones we pointed at above.

We let the word gestalt stand for the insight into the nature of a situation that leads to correct action; we let ‘our car has a flat tire’ serve as a textbook example of gestalt; and we let the concept knowledge federation include federation of correct gestalts as operational goal (the one that determines what we must be able to achieve to be ‘successful’ in knowledge-work practice—i.e. to inform the public). Hence it becomes obvious that we need to have knowledge federation in place, as a functioning faculty of our ‘collective mind,’ before we can be able to develop collective insights of the kind that enable us or empower us to take care of systemic issues named in #1—and meaningfully begin the practice systemic innovation, as described in #3.