We are living in a knowledge-based society, and indeed many people are now classified as “knowledge workers”.

There are many definitions of knowledge. One straightforward definition is “the facts and information acquired by a person through experience or education”. Another definition is “the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject”.

So knowledge is evidently a good and necessary thing in today’s world.

Skill is also regarded as a good thing. A person who’s regarded as a “skilled” operative or a “skillful” player is obviously the kind of person you’d like to have on your team.

There are many kinds of skills – academic and technical skills, communication abilities, sports prowess. The common denominator among those who possess these skills is their ability to influence and change the world around them. The politician who is a skillful communicator can win people’s votes. The inspirational football coach can motivate a team to win time after time. The skillful software developer can analyze a problem and quickly develop a solution.

But what’s the relationship between knowledge and skill?

Knowledge is like a description of the world - it’s somewhat intangible. Skill is more directly connected to the world - it enables you to change the world in a real and meaningful way.

If knowledge is a map that shows the landscape around you, then skill enables you to read the map and your surroundings, and then navigate to where you want to go.

Another difference between knowledge and skill is that while you can simply study to acquire knowledge, the only way to acquire a skill is to practice, practice, practice.

Of course the two things are not incompatible - in fact, they’re closely related. Knowledge is what you’re aware of, your understanding of how things work. In contrast, skill is your ability to use what you know to effect a real change in the outside world. Being skillful does imply a certain amount of knowledge. But the converse is not true. You can be knowledgeable about something without being skillful in that area.

I can give a personal example of this seeming paradox. I have a good knowledge of C# - I’ve read a couple of Jesse Liberty’s C# books, and sampled numerous articles and web sites devoted to C#.

But what about my C# programming skills? Well, let’s just say that I won’t be joining the InnerWorkings developer team anytime soon! My skills are those of a technical writer, and are quite different from the skills needed to program in C# or VB. I need a certain knowledge of these languages to do my job properly, but I don’t actually need the skill to program - I leave that to our very competent developers.

This confusion between knowledge and skill brings us to a basic problem in much of the technically oriented learning that’s available today - instructor-led training (ILT), e-learning, self-learning through books and videos, and so on.

In many cases, it is knowledge that’s being imparted, not skill. Much of this knowledge is good stuff – highly technical, accurate, well structured and presented. But the end result of engaging in this type of learning is simply a transfer of knowledge to the learner, without a corresponding increase in the learner’s skill level.

And it is skills that are vitally needed in today’s workplace, not simply knowledge.

Right from the beginning, InnerWorkings determined that the best way to develop real programming skills is to get people to write real code, in a realistic working environment.

Our practical coding challenges point you to relevant knowledge sources that are available on the web.

But they then provide you with an opportunity to turn that knowledge into skill by writing the code needed to solve the programming challenge.

It’s a pretty unique approach.

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