Suppose you have just completed some work. Now suppose that every result of this work disappeared, except your memory of it (including episodic, procedural memory, etc). How much would it now cost to redo the work a second time, as a percentage of what it cost to do the first time? Let's call this the Redo Cost Ratio (RCR). Let's also the define the Knowledge Cost Ratio (KCR) as 100% minus the RCR. A KCR of 0% means that there is no knowledge element to the result of the work, a KCR of 100% means that the only valuable result of the work is knowledge.
Some examples:
1) You make a soup. You have made this soup a hundred times before, so you always do it in exactly 90 minutes. When you are on your way to serve the soup, you stumble and the soup spills all over the floor. Redoing the soup would take 90 minutes, so the RCR is 100%, and therefore the KCR is 0%.
2) You find a bug in your software. You debug for 20 minutes, and finally find the cause. You implement a fix, which takes 5 minutes, but the source code for the fix is lost when you forget to save. Luckily, you still remember the cause of the bug, so you only have to rewrite the 5 minute fix. The KCR is 80%.
3) You publish your first app to the App Store. You try 10 different advertising tactics, before one succeeds, and the app finally takes off. All of a sudden, your app is banned from the App Store due to an algorithmic mistake, with no ability to appeal. You have to republish the app under a new name and logo. The second time, it only takes a combination of 3 advertising strategies before the app takes off. The KCR is 70%.
4) You represent a large company that releases one of your products in a new country. You spend $1 billion setting up: recruiting marketing and salespeople, renovating office space, etc. They then spend $1 billion per year for 9 years building and maintaining your brand using TV and magazine ads. Suddenly, an unfounded rumor causes your brand to become permanently socially undesirable in that particular country. You still have the people and the real estate, but you have to spend another $9 billion over 9 years to build the brand of one of your other products. The KCR is 10%. You have not performed knowledge work, but signalling work. Edit: depending on how you define it, KCR can also be 0. Every result of the work should be erased except the memory, and that includes the hires and real estate.
5) You inspect a toy for safety hazards. The toy passes all your tests, but you lose the quality assurance documentation files on the computer. Your knowledge that the toy passed the tests are worth nothing if you couldn't present the files to the meta-inspector. The KCR is 0%. You have not performed knowledge work, but bureaucratic work.
6) You are a junior engineer working for a company that produces doohickeys. In evaluating a new prototype doohickey, a senior colleague asks you to check whether the prototype manifests "overextended flimming". You take the prototype out for a spin, but forget to press 'record session'. The flimming is perfectly normal, however, and you tell the senior engineer as much. When you admit that you forgot to record the session, your colleague answers "That's OK, at least we know that we don't have to prioritize the flimming". The KCR is 100%.
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