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New research on knowledge management from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including strategies for capturing, organizing, and sharing the intellectual assets of an organization.
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Engineering Serendipity: The Role of Cognitive Similarity in Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Production

by Jacqueline N. Lane, Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaule, Eva C. Guinan, and Karim R. Lakhani

By creating opportunities for cross-disciplinary scientists to meet and talk as part of a natural field experiment, this study analyzes and finds evidence for a systematic relationship between knowledge sharing and knowledge production in the sciences. Findings may extend to similar types of cross-disciplinary knowledge-sharing opportunities in other settings.

Motivate Your High Performers to Share Their Knowledge

by Michael Blanding

Companies are sitting on a largely untapped resource to improve employee performance, says Christopher Stanton—the knowledge of their co-workers. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Why Do User Communities Matter for Strategy?

by Sonali K. Shah and Frank Nagle

Communities of users are shaping the industrial landscape and contributing to the innovations we use every day. The effects of user communities on firms, industries, and society will continue to grow. This article discusses the relationship between user communities and firms to shed light on avenues for future research in business strategy.

Team Learning Capabilities: A Meso Model of Sustained Innovation and Superior Firm Performance

by Jean-François Harvey, Henrik Bresman, and Amy C. Edmondson

In strategic management research, the dynamic capabilities framework enables a “helicopter view” of how firms achieve sustainable competitive advantage. This paper focuses on the critical role of work teams, arguing that managers must leverage the knowledge generated by teams to support innovation and strategic change. It matches types of team learning to innovation activities.

Unpacking Team Diversity: An Integrative Multi-Level Model of Cross-Boundary Teaming

by Amy C. Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey

In a growing number of cases, cross-boundary teams span organizational boundaries, not just functional ones. This paper explores how newly formed temporary groups may be able to develop rapidly into high-performance teams. The authors integrate research streams on team diversity and knowledge boundaries, and present a framework that considers the kinds of specific knowledge boundaries that must be spanned to achieve high-level, cross-boundary teaming.

A Normative Theory of Dynamic Capabilities: Connecting Strategy, Know-How, and Competition

by Gary P. Pisano

Gary Pisano examines how companies compete on "know how" by analyzing how they invest in different capabilities.

Knowledge Transfer: You Can't Learn Surgery By Watching

by Michael Blanding

Learning to perform a job by watching others and copying their actions is not a great technique for corporate knowledge transfer. Christopher G. Myers suggests a better approach: Coactive vicarious learning. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Consumer-centered Health Care Depends on Accessible Medical Records

by Dina Gerdeman

There is a problem with medical records—they are scattered everywhere. John Quelch discusses approaches to integrate patient data so that medical professionals and patients can make better decisions. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

How New BofA Executives Learn its ’Deep Smarts’

Bank of America's stringent onboarding process for new execs ensures they understand role expectations, quickly develop networks, and learn from other leaders what it takes to succeed. From the new book by Dorothy Leonard and colleagues, Critical Knowledge Transfer. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

How Electronic Patient Records Can Slow Doctor Productivity

by Dina Gerdeman

Electronic health records are sweeping through the medical field, but some doctors report a disturbing side effect. Instead of becoming more efficient, some practices are becoming less so. Robert Huckman's research explains why. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

The Rich Get Richer: Enabling Conditions for Knowledge Use in Organizational Work Teams

by Melissa A. Valentine, Bradley R. Staats & Amy C. Edmondson

Individuals on the periphery of organizational knowledge-sharing networks, due to inexperience, location, or lack of social capital, may struggle to access useful knowledge at work. An electronic knowledge repository (KR) offers a practical solution to the challenges of making knowledge available to people who might otherwise lack access to relevant expertise. Such a system may function as a knowledge-access equalizer. However, the presence of a knowledge repository will not solve the problem of access to knowledge for those at the periphery of the organization unless it is used. In this paper, the authors begin to theorize the social and structural conditions that support KR use by exploring whether individuals on the organizational periphery take advantage of KRs, or whether KRs function more to enrich individuals whose experience and position already provide them better access to other knowledge sources. Using extensive data on KR use at a global, outsourced provider of software services, the authors' results show that despite the seeming promise of a KR to integrate or equalize peripheral players, it instead enriches knowledge access for people who are already well positioned. Findings thus suggest that KR use is not simply an individual activity based on need, but is instead enabled by certain social conditions (such as familiarity and experience) and inhibited by others (such as status disparities and remote location). An organizational KR thus fails to serve as an equalizer absent intervention. Key concepts include: There is a cautionary note for managers: In this study, KRs supported team performance by enriching the knowledge access of central players in the organization. KRs were less effective at ensuring much-needed access for those on the periphery. If individuals cannot get the knowledge that they need, then both their performance and their careers may suffer. Although some individuals are deployed into positions seen as organizationally necessary - such as remote offices or onto teams where they all may not know each other - in these positions they are less likely to make use of available organizational resources. There is a pattern of greater use of a KR and success for teams working in more supportive conditions. Individual and team characteristics enable people to support each other, make use of available resources, and perform effectively. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

India’s Ambitious National Identification Program

by Dina Gerdeman

The Unique Identification Authority of India has been charged with implementing a nationwide program to register and assign a unique 12-digit ID to every Indian resident—some 1.2 billion people—by 2020. In a new case, Professor Tarun Khanna and HBS India Research Center Executive Director Anjali Raina discuss the complexities of this massive data management project. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

How Will the “Age of Big Data” Affect Management?

Summing up: How do we avoid losing useful knowledge in a seemingly endless flood of data? Jim Heskett's readers offer some wise suggestions. What do you think? Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

How Should Management Deal With “Anonymous”?

by James L. Heskett

Summing Up When it comes to the leaky Web, Jim Heskett's readers say assume the worst and act accordingly. (New forum on February 3.) Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Using What We Know: Turning Organizational Knowledge into Team Performance

by Bradley R. Staats, Melissa A. Valentine & Amy C. Edmondson

An organization's captured (and codified) knowledge--white papers, case studies, documented processes--should help project teams perform better, but does it? Existing research has not answered the question, even as U.S. companies alone spend billions annually on knowledge management programs. Looking at large-scale, objective data from Indian software developer Wipro, researchers Bradley R. Staats, Melissa A. Valentine, and Amy C. Edmondson found that team use of an organization's captured knowledge enhanced productivity, especially for teams that were geographically diverse, relatively low in experience, or performing complex work. The study did not find effects of knowledge use on the quality of the team's work, except for dispersed teams. Key concepts include: Using captured knowledge had a positive effect on the team's project efficiency (delivering on budget) but not on project quality (number of defects in the code). When use of knowledge was concentrated in a small number of team members, efficiency improved but quality declined. Knowledge use improved project efficiency but not quality for teams with less experience. For more dispersed teams, knowledge use was related to improved quality but not efficiency. Team knowledge use was related to improved efficiency and quality for teams completing more complex work. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers

by Julia Hanna

To improve patient safety, hospitals hope their staff will use error-reporting systems. Question is, how can managers encourage employees to take the next step and ensure their constructive use? New research by Julia Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer, and HBS professor Michael W. Toffel. Key concepts include: Patient-safety information campaigns can help hospital staff do more than just report problems when they occur. Thanks to information campaigns, frontline workers increased the rate of suggesting constructive solutions to problems by 74 percent. The frequency increased even more when unit managers joined in problem solving. By serving as role models, managers who actively engage in problem solving can lead their frontline workers to create and share solutions. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Performance Pressure as a Double-Edged Sword: Enhancing Team Motivation While Undermining the Use of Team Knowledge

by Heidi K. Gardner

Why do teams often fail to use their knowledge resources effectively even after they have correctly identified the experts among them? Project teams are a prominent feature of the knowledge-based economy, and member expertise has long been recognized as an important resource that can greatly affect team performance, but only to the extent that it is accurately recognized and used to accomplish the objective. The step between recognizing others' expertise and then actually applying it to achieve a collective outcome, however, is highly problematic: Even when individuals know who holds relevant task expertise, they are often unwilling or unable to give the experts appropriate influence over the group process and outcomes. HBS professor Heidi K. Gardner takes a multidisciplinary approach to develop theory explaining how interpersonal dynamics in teams affect members' use of each other's distinct knowledge, ultimately leading to differential performance outcomes. Key concepts include: Teams facing significant performance pressures tend to default to high-status members at the expense of using team members with deep knowledge of the client, with detrimental effects on team performance. The more important the project, the less effective the team: Excessive performance pressure results in the team reverting to less effective ways of divvying up influence over its end product, in turn leading to lower performance ratings for the whole team. Team process is important in enabling organizations to harness knowledge resources for the benefit of maintaining strong relations with their clients. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Remembering Alfred Chandler

by Sean Silverthorne

Alfred D. Chandler Jr., who died in May, defined the field of business history and shaped the way we think about the modern corporation. Harvard Business School colleagues share their thoughts on his legacy as well as their personal reminiscences. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Confronting the Reality of Web Services

by Sara Grant

Web services have made huge strides, but two hurdles remain, one technical, the other organizational, says HBS professor Andrew P. McAfee. "It is in fact getting easier to integrate applications, but it's never going to be easy." Closed for comment; 0 Comments.

Can an Organization’s “Deep Smarts” Be Preserved?

by James Heskett

When employees leave, they take more than their coat and hat. How can companies better preserve the accumulated knowledge of individuals? Isn’t that what separates average companies from truly great ones? Closed for comment; 0 Comments.