Transcript Document

Knowledge Management
Ernst & Young
1
What is Knowledge Management?
• KM: Set of inter-linked business processes to capture and provide
access to an organization’s collective knowledge (Knowledge
Management: Philosophy, Processes and Pitfalls, Soo, Devinney,
Midgley & Deering, CMR 2002).
– Organizational learning
– Knowledge storage/creation
– Knowledge distribution
• Knowledge Management System: the infrastructure
– IT (databases, networks, yellow pages..)
– Organizational infrastructure
• processes,
• contracts,
• incentives,
• corporate culture, etc.
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Services Marketing – Professor V. Padmanabhan
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A Production Analogy
• Professional Services
– knowledge is the “core product”
• Knowledge Management
– the production technology of a firm
– same role as machines/factories for an automaker
• Questions: How to
– improve output?
– improve quality?
– generate competitive advantage?
• Critical distinctions
– knowledge is a credence good
– knowledge can be re-used
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Disentangling the Issues
• Break-up into two related conceptual categories
– Knowledge Exchange
– how an organization goes about enabling exchange of the existing
knowledge within an organization
• What’s your strategy for managing knowledge? (Hansen at al,
HBR ’99)
• Codification, or
• Personalization
– Challenges
• improve efficiency
– easier location
– adaptation of earlier solutions
• improve contribution (incentives, culture, etc.)
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Disentangling the Issues (contd.)
• The other complementary issue
– Knowledge Creation
• leveraging the diverse experience of agents to create
– conceptual knowledge
– frameworks
– proprietary intellectual property
• Challenges
– how do you manage the talent?
– Aligning the Stars, Lorsch & Tierney 2002, HBS
Press
– The Dean’s Lament
» I Lead, But I have no Control!
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What to Emphasize at the Margin – Exchange or Creation?
• Knowledge Exchange
– Supply-side scale economies
• lower a firm’s marginal costs of production through easier
location, access, usability, etc.
• Knowledge Creation
– Demand-side economies
• network externalities
– the larger the pool of assignments, the more diverse the set
of engagements, the higher is the quality of a firm’s
intellectual database
– increases a firm’s differentiation, consumer’s willingness to
pay, and hence a firm’s competitive position
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Optimal Choice of KM System Emphasis as a Function of
Competition Intensity and KM-technology Performance
Ability to Leverage the Customer Base
Low
High
Intensity of Competition
Low:
Highly Differentiated Firms
Knowledge Exchange
Knowledge Exchange
High:
Undifferentiated Firms
Knowledge Exchange
Knowledge Creation
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Services Marketing – Professor V. Padmanabhan
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Appendix:
INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE MARKETS:
Can knowledge be sold as a product?
Can new talk about an emerging industry?
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