ECTEL 2010, Barcelona, September 30, 2010

1. Andreas Kaschig, Ronald Maier, Alexander Sandow, MariangelaLazoi, Sally-Anne Barnes, Jenny Bimrose, Claire Bradley, Alan Brown, Christine Kunzmann, Athanasios Mazarakis, Andreas Schmidt Knowledge Maturing Activities and Practices Fostering Organisational Learning: Results of an Empirical Study ECTEL 2010September 30, 2010 Barcelona http://mature-ip.eu

2. Outline Background Knowledgematuring Elicitationofknowledgematuringactivities Goals ofthestudy Results General overview Importance, support, andsuccess Clustering Narratives Conclusions

3. Whatisknowledgematuring?

4. Background KnowledgeMaturingActivities activities of individuals or groups that contribute to the development of knowledge within the organisation. Basis: Prior work on knowledgeactivities Ethnographicallyinformedstudies in thefirstyearof MATURE Usecasedefinitionprocessof MATURE First validation in a small-scalestudywithintheassociatepartnernetworkof MATURE

6. Create and co-develop digital resources

7. Share and release digital resources

8. Restrict access and protect digital resources

9. Find people with particular knowledgeorexpertise

10. Communicatewithpeople

11. Assess, verify and rate informationFind relevant digital resources Embed information at individual or organisational level Keep up-to-datewithorganisationrelatedknowledge Familiariseoneselfwithnewinformation Reorganise information at individual or organisational level

12. Study Design Goals (extract): Whichknowledgematuringactivitiesshouldbesupported in a prioritizedway? Whichbarriersandproblemsassociatedwiththoseactivities do exist? Method: Combined quantitative and qualitative study Interviews withcompanies (mainly) in Europe Closedquestionswith 7-point Likertscale, e.g., Perceivedimportance, support, andsuccess in thecompany Associated and additional open questions, collecting narratives fromtheinterviewees In total interviewslastedbetween 30 and 120 minutes Presentationcoversonlythepart on knowledgematuringactivities

13. Resultsofthe Study

14. How many companies

15. Background Information

16. How interviewees assessed KM activities

17. What is important: Portfolio analysis 7. Create and co-develop digital resources 8. Share and release digital resources 9. Restrict access and protect digital resources 10. Find people with particular knowledge or expertise 11. Communicate with people 12. Assess, verify and rate information 1. Find relevant digital resources 2. Embed information at individual or organisational level 3. Keep up-to-date with organisation-related knowledge 4. Familiarise oneself with new information 5. Reorganise information at individual or organisational level 6. Reflect on and refine work practices or processes

19. Restrict & protectaccess: organizational Some have very few restrictions (related to an open organisational culture), whilst others are giving high priority to restricting access: legal requirements channel the knowledge through the correct users and to avoid dissipating it protecting their own competitive advantage Important is the nature of their competetive advantage:people, marketing, process knowledge

20. Restrict & protectaccess: individual Trust as a prerequisite. “There are individuals who will share only in a limited way if they can trust that not everyone can see it.” “So if you restrict access, it is also good for knowledge exchange, not for those who don't have access, but for those who have access. Otherwise you wouldn't share anything if you couldn't restrict it to certain persons”. Information channelling/avoidance of overload. “Knowledge is not something that has to be always distributed. With this activity the knowledge is channelled to therightusers.”

21. Restrict & protectaccess: individual (II) Obstructing people’s access to knowledge which they view as a prerequisite for knowledge maturing to happen. “nonsense” “The access rights are pretty strict, my drive cannot be seen by my colleagues, I find that unbelievable.” “We are destroying knowledge in this area”

22. Further narratives collected E.g., medical engineering company Market leader due to its production process knowledge Need toprotectitscompetetiveadvantage Anonymizationofcustomers, accessprotection But: still foster an open innovationclimate Creatingawarenessofprotectionandinnovationneeds Difficulttoimplementprocessinnovations Long cycles due tocertification High budgetfor an experimentationteam

23. Conclusions

24. Conclusions Most importantfor Professional TEL tofocus on: Reflect on andrefineworkpractices Find people with particular knowledge orexpertise Success in sharingofresourcesandcommunicationismaindifferentiatingfactorof „bestperformers“ cluster A differentiatedperspectiveisneeded on Restrict & protectaccess Nosignificant national culturaldifferences slightdifferenceswithrespectto professional culture considerableimpactoforganizationalculture

25. Outlook & Contact Open forassociate partners! MATURE IP – http://mature-ip.eu Identifyingandovercomingbarrierstoknowledgematuring in organizations Summaryofrepresentativestudy: http://mature-ip.eu/results/representative-study Andreas Schmidt Department Manager Scientific CoordinatorMATURE FZI Research Center for Information Technologies andreas.schmidt@fzi.de http://andreas.schmidt.name