Knowledge - to share or not to share?That is the question

Professor John Edwards

Overview

Collaboration and competition

Knowledge Management (KM) basics

Co-opetition, strategy and KM strategy

Making and implementing decisions about sharing knowledge

Facing the future

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!

Learning strategies in alliances (Larsson et al, 1998)

Avoidance Accommodation Compromise Competition Collaboration

Collaboration

Competition

Compromise

Accommodation

Avoidance

Learning strategies in alliances (Larsson et al, 1998)

Avoidance Accommodation Compromise Competition Collaboration

Collaboration

Competition

CO-OPETITION

Compromise

Accommodation

Avoidance

Knowledge Management Basics

> Life cycle of knowledge

> Knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer

> Knowledge management strategy

The knowledge life cycle (organisation’s viewpoint)

STORE FORGET

ACQUIRE

CREATE

REFINE USE

The knowledge life cycle (showing sharing opportunities)

STORE FORGET

ACQUIRE

CREATE

REFINE USE

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

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

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

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

Co-opetition, strategy and KM strategy

Strategy

Strategy for co-opetition

KM strategy

Generic strategies (Porter, 1980)

Overall

Cost Leadership

Differentiation

Focus

STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE

ST

RA

TE

GIC

TA

RG

ET

Uniqueness Perceived by the

Customer

Industrywide

Particular Segment Only

Low Cost Position

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

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?

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

Overall

Cost Leadership

Differentiation

Focus

STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE

ST

RA

TE

GIC

TA

RG

ET

Uniqueness Perceived by the

Customer

Industrywide

Particular Segment Only

Low Cost Position

Overall

Cost Leadership

Differentiation

Focus

STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE

ST

RA

TE

GIC

TA

RG

ET

Uniqueness Perceived by the

Customer

Industrywide

Particular Segment Only

Low Cost Position

Implementing decisions: know your KM strategy

Standardisation Distribution

Customisation Assembly

Customisation Fabrication

Customisation Full

Customisation

(More) Personalisation

(More) Codification

No need to share?

Product/service

e.g. Extranets e.g. Colocation

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

TECHNOLOGY

PEOPLE

PROCESSES

Help design and then operate

Define the roles of, and knowledge

needed by

Determine the need for

Help design and then use

Provides support for

Makes possible new

kinds of

Facing the future

Hurdles

> Silo mentality

> Superficial commitment

> Lack of boundary spanners

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

References

COHEN WM and LEVINTHAL D (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, NONINO F and PIVETTA M (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, NOHRIA N and TIERNEY T (1999) What's your strategy for managing knowledge? Harvard Business Review 77(2), 106-116.

INKPEN A (1996) Creating knowledge through collaboration. California Management Review 39(1), 123-140.

INKPEN AC and DINUR A (1998) Knowledge management processes and international joint ventures. Organization Science 9(4), 454-468.

LARSSON R, BENGTSSON L, HENRICKSSON K 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.

SZULANSKI G (1996) Exploring internal stickiness: Impediments to the transfer of best practice within the firm. Strategic Management Journal 17(Winter Special Issue), 27-43.