Managing the knowledge life cycle

Birkinshaw, Julian; Sheehan, Tony

doi:10.1109/emr.2003.24901

Cited by 92 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 0 publications

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“…Let us think back to over 30 years ago when Porter (1980, p 74) stated that "companies achieve competitive advantage through acts of innovation" and again ten years after that when (Porter 1990) said that "much innovation is mundane and incremental, depending more on an accumulation of small insights than on a single major technological breakthrough". The finding that the sum of many incremental innovations can have a very large impact on markets, value and technology is also supported by a plethora of other authors (e.g., Bessant, 1999;Birkinshaw and Sheehan, 2002). This implies that, especially when applied across the board to SMEs, formal invention actually plays a minor part in the process of value creation across mercantile society -although specialised high-tech start-ups may form an obvious exception to this broad generalisation.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 53%

The use of knowledge assets: modelling the potential effect of adding innovators to low-innovation and high-innovation SMEs

Mellor

2014

IJKBD

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SMEs rarely possess formal intellectual property (IP) in the sense of patents, etc. Broadly speaking, SMEs reap relatively short-term Schumpeterian profits by means of incremental innovation, where managing internal knowledge networks for 'mutual inspiration' can give rise to significant competitive advantages. Unfortunately estimates as to the best timing, how much benefit could be reaped and considerations of the organisations knowledge framework for future development are, at best, vague. To address this issue, a 3D quantitative fold is presented that pertains to a novel knowledge-based theory of the growth of SMEs via their knowledge assets and that contributes to a model that case studies can test. The fold allows quantitative estimations of the potential value of knowledge using Monte Carlo modelling (i.e., shooting virtual balls down the fold and analysing their final scatter distribution). Results indicate that adding middle-management innovators to low-innovation SMEs can contribute markedly to potential financial performance but adding innovators to high-innovation SMEs does not provoke an absolute increase in returns, but performance levels are reached earlier. In all cases potential financial performance was dramatically improved by laying down an innovative stratum early in SME development rather than on top of an already-established less-innovative middle management layer.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 53%

The use of knowledge assets: modelling the potential effect of adding innovators to low-innovation and high-innovation SMEs

Mellor

2014

IJKBD

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“…However, learning from feedback is not yet embedded in many processes affecting the procurement and use of buildings. 'Making knowledge sharing a common principle and remembering peoples' needs' (Birkinshaw and Sheehan, 2002) is not on the radar of nearly enough firms and individuals in the industry.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making feedback and post-occupancy evaluation routine 2: Soft landings – involving design and building teams in improving performance

Way

Bordass²

2005

Building Research & Information

122

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Once a building is physically complete, designers and builders move on to the next project. Few of them stay around to learn from what they have done and pass on their insights to the occupants. 'Soft Landings' aims to extend the scope of service so that feedback and follow-through can become natural parts of the delivery of a project. It increases designer and constructor involvement before and after handover, and points the 'supply side' to more involvement with users and a careful assessment of building performance in use. The objective is more certainty in delivering buildings that achieve a close match between the expectations of clients and users and the predictions of the design team. A Soft Landings team (designer and builder) is resident on site during the move-in period in order to deal with emerging issues more effectively. It then monitors building use and energy performance for the first three years of occupation: identifying opportunities both for fine-tuning the building and for future projects. This process also creates a coordinated route to postoccupancy evaluation. The cost of the extra work is relatively small and can be balanced against gains from the learning process, less rework and better client references. Soft Landings does not require wide-scale revision of industry-standard documentation: a licensed Scope of Service document set can stand alongside most existing procurement processes.Keywords: building performance, client satisfaction, design quality, feedback, innovation, involvement, learning, predictability, process improvement, professional services, project delivery, quality control IntroductionClients and users are united in expecting better performance from the buildings they procure and occupy. Tighter environmental regulation adds pressure for greater predictability of the end product. In practice, however, most clients and users become 'crash test dummies': they are abandoned by the project team after handover just when they are likely to need the most help.Publications on building performance evaluation, most recently Preiser and Vischer (2005), show how feedback can be integrated into every phase of delivery throughout a building's life cycle. In practice, however, most designers and contractors have traditionally shown little interest in learning from how their buildings actually perform in use; and most clients have certainly not wanted to pay them to do so. It has therefore been necessary to consider how feedback and feed-through can begin to be added onto conventional procurement processes.The post-handover period is the most neglected stage of construction, often looked upon as a nuisance and a distraction. Ironically, this is precisely when much can be fed forward into the completed project, for the benefit of the client and the occupants; and much can be learnt, recorded and fed back for reuse on future projects, to the benefit of all the stakeholders. Instead, during this crucial phase, client goodwill and profit margins often tend to be eroded, the hard-won exper...

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“…Because impersonal information is by definition codified, transfer is virtually costless [9,28]. This is particularly true with advances in electronic information technologies, which make impersonal information more searchable and transferable, than paper counterparts.…”

Section: Prior Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ambidextrous information search: linking personal and impersonal search routines with individual performance

Shin

Choi

2014

Inf Technol Manag

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Organizations invest resources to develop information capabilities, to utilize personal and impersonal information. While the utilization of knowledge is likely to improve organizational performance, it is unclear what the consequences of utilizing personal and impersonal sources of information are for individuals. This study sought to increase understanding of the performance implications of using personal and impersonal information, by examining four business units of a large financial institution. Utilizing competing theoretical models, we tested whether personal and impersonal sources of information substituted for, or complemented each other. The results indicated that individuals who utilized information from personal and impersonal sources of knowledge in a complementary fashion had superior performance. Parsing impersonal knowledge sourcing, we found that the use of specific impersonal information repositories increased performance, while the use of general impersonal information decreased performance. In general, this study shed light on the origins of individual knowledge capabilities, and indicated that individuals gain advantages, by engaging in particular knowledge-sourcing routines.

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Managing the knowledge life cycle

Cited by 92 publications

References 0 publications

The use of knowledge assets: modelling the potential effect of adding innovators to low-innovation and high-innovation SMEs

The use of knowledge assets: modelling the potential effect of adding innovators to low-innovation and high-innovation SMEs

Making feedback and post-occupancy evaluation routine 2: Soft landings – involving design and building teams in improving performance

Ambidextrous information search: linking personal and impersonal search routines with individual performance

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