Knowledge - to share or not to share ? That is the question Professor John Edwards

1. Knowledge - to share or not to share?That is the questionProfessor John Edwards

2. Overview • Collaboration and competition • Knowledge Management (KM) basics • Co-opetition, strategy and KM strategy • Making and implementing decisions about sharing knowledge • Facing the future

3. Collaboration and competition • Types of collaboration • Strategic alliances • Joint ventures • Licensing • Standardisation • Trade associations, Chambers of Commerce (KvK) etc. • My view of collaborative competition (co-opetition) is drawn from the literature on learning and knowledge • People at Aston first wrote about this ten years ago (Edwards and Kidd, 2001), following the work of Inkpen (1996) and Larsson et al (1998) – we’ll see if my views have changed since then!

4. Learning strategies in alliances (Larsson et al, 1998)

5. Learning strategies in alliances (Larsson et al, 1998)

6. Knowledge Management Basics • Life cycle of knowledge • Knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer • Knowledge management strategy

7. The knowledge life cycle (organisation’s viewpoint) CREATE STORE FORGET ACQUIRE REFINE USE

8. The knowledge life cycle (showing sharing opportunities) CREATE STORE FORGET ACQUIRE REFINE USE

9. Knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer • Do these two terms have the same meaning? • For me, sharing should be reciprocal (two way); transfer is one way • Others have different definitions • From here on I will treat knowledge transfer as a weak form of knowledge sharing • Sharing is clearly the more relevant to collaboration

10. Knowledge sharing concepts • Sticky knowledge (Szulanski, 1996) • Some knowledge is by its very nature harder to share • Absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990) • Some organisations have a better climate for absorbing new knowledge • Boundary spanners (Daft, 1989) • A key role in any collaboration – someone who understands enough of two knowledge domains to be able to act as the go-between or translator • This person does not have to be an expert in either domain – boundary spanning expertise is not the same as domain expertise

11. Knowledge management strategy • The seminal work on KM strategy is by Hansen et al (1999) • Their paper introduced the two fundamental strategies for managing knowledge • Personalisation • People-centred • Suits customised products or services • Codification • Technology-centred • Suits more standardised products or services

12. A new development? • De Toni et al (2011, to appear) see the personalisation and codification strategies as specifically relating to knowledge sharing • They actually regard them both as policies rather than strategies, with there being three knowledge management strategies, namely knowledge sharing, knowledge development and knowledge exploitation

13. Co-opetition, strategyandKMstrategy • Strategy • Strategy for co-opetition • KM strategy

14. Generic strategies (Porter, 1980)

15. Why collaborate? • May collaborate to: • Reduce cost • Develop new product/service • Jointly market • Obtain access to expertise your organisation does not possess • Concentrate on “core business” • Fundamental strategies are still the same for a collaboration as for a single organisation – differentiation, cost leadership, focus/niche

16. Making and implementing decisions about sharing knowledge • Why are we doing this? (Strategic reasons/goals) • Why are they doing this? • Alignment of knowledge management strategies (do they need to be the same, or just consistent with each other?) • Sharing knowledge, and using the shared knowledge - How do we make it happen?

17. Making decisions: know your strategy • A joint venture (say in China) is very different from the Philips/Sony agreement that brought us the CD (Compact Disk) • The business objectives must be understood by the organisation's leaders • This can be difficult for public sector or third sector organisations who may not be able to see their strategy in Porter’s terms • Share what you need to achieve the strategic collaboration objective and no more • If necessary, carry out a knowledge audit first on what your organisation knows, and where that knowledge is located

18. Implementing decisions: know your KM strategy Product/service No need to share? (More) Codification (More) Personalisation e.g. Colocation e.g. Extranets

19. People, processes and technology in a KM system (Edwards, 2009)

20. Facing the future • Hurdles • Silo mentality • Superficial commitment • Lack of boundary spanners

21. Conclusions • What to share (and what not to) • Depends on the nature of the collaboration and where it fits into your organisation’s strategic aims • Share knowledge of your core processes with extreme caution, and only if you need it to make them better! • How to share • Depends on the nature of your strategy (how your organisation competes) and consequently your knowledge management strategy • ICT alone is never the answer, though it is often part of the answer

22. References • Cohen WM and LevinthalD (1990) Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly 35(1), 128-152. • Daft RL (1989) Organization Theory and Design. West, New York:. • De Toni AF, NoninoF and PivettaM (2011, to appear) A model for assessing the coherence of companies’ knowledge strategy. Knowledge Management Research & Practice 9(4). • Edwards JS (2009) Business processes and knowledge management. In Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology (Khosrow-Pour M, Ed), Second ed, pp 471-476. IGI Global, Hershey, PA. • Edwards JS and Kidd JB (2001) Knowledge management when "the times they are a-changin'". In Proceedings of Second European Conference on Knowledge Management (Remenyi D, Ed), pp 171-183. MCIL, Reading, UK, Bled, Slovenia. • Hansen MT, NohriaN and Tierney T (1999) What's your strategy for managing knowledge? Harvard Business Review 77(2), 106-116. • InkpenA (1996) Creating knowledge through collaboration. California Management Review 39(1), 123-140. • InkpenAC and DinurA (1998) Knowledge management processes and international joint ventures. Organization Science 9(4), 454-468. • Larsson R, BengtssonL, HenrickssonK and Sparks J (1998) The interorganizational learning dilemma: Collective knowledge development in strategic alliances. Organizational Science 9(3), 285-306. • Porter ME (1980) Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. Free Press, New York. • SzulanskiG (1996) Exploring internal stickiness: Impediments to the transfer of best practice within the firm. Strategic Management Journal 17(Winter Special Issue), 27-43.