Judge Business SchoolJudge Business School

Developing Networks and a Market for Knowledge Brokerage

Arnoud De Meyer

Director

Professor of Management Studies

April 18, 2007

The World of Management and Organisations is moving to a new Paradigm

• Offshoring: from subcontracting to outsourcing to partnering

• Knowledge Content of all our products and services is increasing rapidly

• New forms of globalisation in organisations are emerging

• The creation of a vast group of lower middle class in emerging countries with their own needs and ambitions

• Stepchanges in the ICT capabilities and user friendliness (Web2.0, $1 terminal, ubiquity)

This leads to profound changes

• Offshoring: from subcontracting to outsourcing to partnering• Suppliers become partners in value creation and product

design• Knowledge Content of all our products and services is increasing

rapidly• Knowledge workers become dominant

• New forms of globalisation in organisations are emerging• From a ‘triangular’ network towards a network of peers

• The creation of a vast group of lower middle class in emerging countries with their own needs and ambitions• Ideas for innovation can come from anywhere

• Stepchanges in the ICT capabilities and user friendliness• Growing irrelevance of geographical and organisational

boundaries

The world moves towards:

• Networks, networks, networks• Knowledge trading as a major source of economic activities

Some of the Issues

1.Protection of intangible goods will be a growing issue

2.Need for new methods of decision analysis and decision making in a world of information overload

3.The technology works, but how do you learn from a far away site?

4.Building the knowledge organisation

What is a firm or an organisation

• Creating economies of scale for capital attraction and retention

• A structure to organise differentiation and integration

• Minimising transactions costs associated with markets

• Or… a structure in which we have developed the capability to combine and recombine information in order to transform it into knowledge (or even wisdom?)

Knowledge has value

• An organisation exists because it has knowledge others don’t have

• Information assymetry is the raison d’être of any organisation

• Thus:• How do you protect your proprietary

knowledge?• How do you mine your intellectual property?

Exploiting Intellectual Property

• Protection is key, but difficult and costly• Methods of IP protection:

Patents & trade secretsCopyrights, trade marks, brandsSpeedMonopoly/captivity on markets or resources

• Rather than focusing on one aspect of this, we need to carefully manage the portfolio of protecting mechanisms

• IP protection does not come naturally to people; some cultures do not appreciate the value of intangibles; Adjust your policy to the local environment

• And after all that effort… what do we do with it ?

I.P. mining

• Tap patents for new revenues• Audit your IP assets to optimise portfolio

management:Reduce maintenance costs on unneeded

patents• Enhance entrepreneurship through seed funds

(and improve your corporate value)• IPR as competitive weapon: Constrain your competitorSteer the R&D portfolio

Learning from far away: how to smoothen the information flows?

• Create credibility• Clear and dynamic charter• Quick wins

• Stimulate diversity• In culture• And systems and processes

• Invest in elaborate and diversified communication systems

• Understand all the networks, including the ones that operate around you.

Building the Knowledge organisations: why is it a challenge?

Information overload does not lead to knowledge creation: every ten years we double the quantity of data/information

What are the incentives to move from being a reader to become a writer

Knowledge is power (though culture may be a moderating factor): why would I give it up?

We are at the beginning of a new paradigm in terms of search and decision strategies: from convergent to divergent thinking

Technology is an important tool, but not the unique component of the solution!

From Readers to Writers• Motivation for sharing

– reward people who share

– incent people to share

– “Ideally a situation would occur where the people who were getting ahead in the firm were those sharing knowledge”

• Inhibitors for sharing– time/priorities

– attitudes and beliefs

– culture/fear

– confusion over “knowledge”

• Pervasive appreciation of importance of knowledge management

– getting top management to show appropriate leadership

• Appropriate knowledge management infrastructure

Some suggestions, based on our research

Knowledge has become a resource similar to capital and human resources: manage it with the same attention:

• Architect your organisational knowledge• Build a K-corps:

• Strategy• Infrastructure• Processes• Organisation• Products and services

• Consider knowledge as the organisational glue: companies as knowledge switchboards.

Architecting your knowledge

• Is everybody plugged in into the organisation’s knowledge network?

• Do you have a conscious design of your global knowledge base?

• What are the incentives to keep building the knowledge base

• How do you do the quality control?

• How do you structure knowledge in order to avoid confusion through overload

• Who leads the knowledge conversion processes?