Knowledge Portfolios Research Articles

The role of design engineers: Evidence from intra-firm knowledge and collaboration networks.

Successful new product development requires the integration of design and engineering, bridging the gap between technological feasibility and user-centric considerations. However, direct collaboration between designers and engineers with heterogeneous knowledge presents challenges. In this context, the role of design engineers-professionals skilled in both design and engineering-becomes pivotal. This study categorizes inventors into three primary groups: engineers, designers, and design engineers based on the type of patent applications they hold and investigates their differences in knowledge portfolios and collaboration patterns. The study relies on patent data for 4,665 US publicly-traded firms from 1980 to 2015 from the PATSTAT database, and constructs two networks for each firm period: a social network of inventors and a knowledge network of knowledge elements. Findings show that design engineers are highly connected within the social network but have disconnected knowledge in the knowledge network in comparison to engineers. While design engineers may not be the primary drivers of firms' technological innovations, they facilitate interdisciplinary communication and decision-making, fostering a design-technology integrated new product development environment. This research has practical implications for firms seeking to optimize their innovation processes by creating interdisciplinary teams that harness the complementary strengths of engineers and design engineers.

The impact of geographical distance on learning through collaboration

There is little question that new communication and transportation technologies have effectively “shrunk the world” for a great many activities. At the same time, the “death of distance” has been greatly exaggerated, especially in fields such as academic scholarship and knowledge development where the positive benefits of knowledge spillovers remain highly distance dependent. We analyze 17.6 million publications authored by 1.7 million scholars to examine how knowledge spillovers between scholars collaborating at different geographical distances impacts their future knowledge portfolios. Our results show that in 1975, scholars collaborating locally were 57 % more likely to learn from knowledge spillovers than similar scholars collaborating non-locally. We identify four factors that structure these findings. Individuals deriving the greatest learning premiums from local collaboration tend to be (1) in earlier stages of their career; (2) associated with lower-ranked institutions; (3) working with fewer collaborators; and (4) in STEM fields. The probability of learning drops with geographical distance and correspond to the number of institutional boundaries crossed during collaboration. We conclude that even in the 21st century, geographical distance still negatively impacts knowledge spillovers through collaboration. These findings have implications for debates in innovation and management studies concerning knowledge spillovers, the spatial organization of (knowledge-intensive) economic activity, regional innovation policies, structuring team-work and working-from-home vs. returning to office.

Peeking Inside the Black Box: Inventor Turnover and Patent Termination

This study examines the consequences of inventor turnover for the termination of the patents they produced beforehand. The proponents of the knowledge-based view consider firms repositories of knowledge and inventors carriers of knowledge who create new inventions through recombination. I argue that because the knowledge about inventions resides with inventors, turnover among them may adversely affect the future use of their inventions due to the loss of tacit knowledge. As a result, firms are more likely to terminate the patents of inventors who have left than of inventors who remain. Further, the patterns of collaboration between departed inventors and others influence the aforementioned relationship. Analyses of the termination of patents, in the form of nonpayment of renewal fees, by pharmaceutical firms support the claims in the article. The findings have implications for how firms manage their knowledge portfolios in the face of inevitable inventor turnover and the resulting loss of tacit knowledge.

Knowledge Portfolios as Intermediaries Between Human Capital Experiences and Performance

In the modern gig economy with ad hoc project teams that get disbanded soon after project completion, firms have to rely on experienced human capital to build their knowledge portfolios which they ...

Managing knowledge portfolios: The creation and combination of ideas

While theory suggests that processes that undergird knowledge creation differ from those that result in knowledge combination, little empirical research has investigated the mediating micro-foundat...

Student Developed Knowledge Portfolios from a Soil Fertility Course

Core Ideas Portfolios are useful for students to organize and reflect upon course content. Portfolios can serve as a knowledge toolbox that students can use in future work. The portfolio assignment used in a soil fertility course is described. Students who have completed the Soil Nutrient Relationships course at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln often contact instructors once they have begun full‐time work, seeking reminders of specific concepts. These students either did not take or keep detailed notes during the course. To assist students, instructors have developed a portfolio requirement for the course. One important learning objective from each recitation exercise was summarized as deliverable knowledge in the student's portfolio. Feedback was then provided on portfolio components each week with resubmission encouraged, so that students leave with accurate information in their own words. The objective of this article is to summarize the details of the portfolio assignment used in Soil Nutrient Relationships to assist other instructors in developing student assignments and assessments. Following completion of the knowledge portfolio, students were surveyed with more than 75% response rate in both the 2016 and 2017 semesters. More than 44% of respondents agreed that they thought they would use the portfolio in their future work, and more than 15% of respondents agreed that the portfolio would be the most important component of class toward their future work.

AN EXAMINATION OF CLUSTER AND NON-CLUSTER FIRMS’ KNOWLEDGE-BASED ACTIVITIES

This study puts forth the following research questions: (i) Are there any differences between remotes’ and co-locates’ knowledge portfolios, and (ii) if so, are these differences significant? We contend that significant differences occur in how remotes configure their knowledge activities. To search for possible differences, we examined three sources of knowledge-based activities that are associated with remotes and co-locates: university collaborations and innovative activities such as patenting and scanning. Using survey data from a study of 197 U.S. biotechnology firms, this study found that remotes and co-locates have similar portfolio diversity, but remotes sponsor more faculty research, have a lower patent efficiency rate, and do not scan as frequently as co-located firms.

Analytical Framework for Performance Evaluation of Research Organizations

Performance evaluation is an important measure of the total quality management, which can be used to assess the performance of an individual or an organization with respect to set goals and targets. The metrics/parameters used for evaluating the performance and the way in which these are measured by using appropriate tools and techniques play a major role in the evaluation process. Performance evaluation is even more challenging in the case of R and D organizations, where the outcome/output may not be tangible/measurable and varies from one organization to another, depending on the nature, vision, charter and character. A methodology is proposed to arrive at a framework that can help in objectively assessing or evaluating the performance of each of the laboratories of CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research) based on four knowledge portfolios which are appropriately given weightages according to the impact they have on the four goods viz-Public, Private, Social and Strategic Appropriate parameters have been identified which can help in objectively evaluating the performance of the laboratory. The proposed analytical framework will facilitate quantification of performance of an R and D organization to enable resource allocation in a rational manner.

Creating Successful New Products: Challenges for Indian Industry

In the increasingly competitive environment in India, the development and launch of new products have become an important competitive tool. In a crowded marketplace, there is greater need for differentiation; in markets that tend to be stagnant there is pressure to create excitement. The development and launch of new products helps in both situations.In certain industries like the two wheeler industry, new product development has become critical to survival. Stringent new emission standards and multi-point competition are pushing two wheeler companies to broaden their product lines and introduce new technologies such as four stroke scooters and mopeds. Today, the Indian two wheeler industry has more than fifty models/variants with one or two new launch announcements every month. Such developments are happening in other industries as well, though perhaps not as visibly as in the two wheeler industry.This paper is prompted by our belief that there are unique problems faced by Indian companies in rapidly developing a new product development capability. While the new product development challenges faced by large, established firms in developed markets have received considerable attention in recent years since the publication of the epochal The machine that changed the world (Womack, Jones and Roos, 1990), the problems faced by 'emerging market companies' are different and have not received enough attention.Emerging markets like India are different from developed markets. Emerging markets are often characterised by specific local needs, limited purchasing power and high price sensitivity (Prahalad and Lieberthal, 1998). Khanna and Palepu (1997) have suggested that in emerging economies, to make up for the absence of well-developed markets for labor and capital, firms may have to create their own infrastructure. There are thus contextual factors which can potentially influence an important strategic activity like new product development in the emerging market context and make the challenges before companies in these markets different from those in established economies.Specifically, unlike established companies in developed markets, Indian companies are facing the challenge of structuring, ab initio, the new product development process in an environment of limited design skills and experience, few qualified vendors and inappropriate engineering resources. At the same time, they are constrained by limited financial and human resources, a lack of a market orientation, strong centralized control by business family heads, functional chimneys without deep functional expertise, and pressures to change on numerous fronts all at once to cope with the competitive environment. Further, over the last eight years, the complexity of strategy formulation and implementation has increased manifold - from merely obtaining an industrial license and preventing others from doing so, to managing growth, cost-competitiveness, knowledge, innovation, and business portfolios simultaneously in a globally competitive environment.In this paper, our focus will be on the challenges in new product development faced by companies in India, an important emerging economy. Our ideas are based on discussions we have had with managers involved in new product development in about twenty Indian companies, reports in the business press and some projects undertaken by our students. At the end, we identify questions that remain either partly or fully unanswered in the hope that these can be the subject of research for Indian companies, consultants advising them, and researchers.Most of the issues discussed in this paper have their origins in the problems faced by Indian companies manufacturing discrete, engineered goods for either consumer or industrial markets. However, we will also discuss some of the challenges faced by Indian companies manufacturing fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), and by Indian firms involved in information technology/software product development.

Managing meta‐learning in offshore software development environments

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the current glocal (global and local) environment to answer the following research questions: How does the glocal environment influence software exporting industries in India? How is the evolving “sticky” knowledge from individuals and teams assimilated into organizational knowledge repositories? What management practices have been learnt and applied for advancement of knowledge portfolios in the offshore software business market?Design/methodology/approachAn interpretivist research design is used to gain insights into organizational learning processes adopted by offshore software vendors for assimilating evolving knowledge into knowledge repositories.FindingsThis paper describes the influence of the current glocal environment on software exporting industries in India and presents a model for organizational learning to assimilate knowledge and build effective representations of emerging knowledge artifacts. The authors employ the concept of meta‐learning (or “learning about learning”) to analyze the recursive nature of organizational learning processes.Practical ImplicationsThe proposed model of meta‐learning explains how software organizations build on individual and team competencies to build core competencies. The model helps us to understand how organizations advance their learning processes and upgrade their knowledge repositories.Originality/valueThe paper offers new perspectives on how organizations reflexively monitor their knowledge processes to advance their knowledge portfolios. It identifies adhocratic and bureaucratic management processes for assimilating the evolving “sticky” knowledge from individuals into organizational knowledge repositories. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature that emphasizes ongoing learning from individual to collective level in the knowledge industry sector.

Knowledge Portfolios and The Organization of Innovation Networks

Properties of strategic alliance networks, such as small world structures, skewed link distributions, and patterns of repeated tie occurrences, are often explained in terms of social capital theories. A simple model shows how merely assuming that firms must have a certain degree of commonality in their knowledge to have a successful alliance is enough to produce the above features, without recourse to social capital at all.

Knowledge Creation and Diffusion in Geographic Clusters

Knowledge Creation and Diffusion in Geographic Clusters

The Management of Intellectual Assets: Delivering Value to the Business

At The Dow Chemical Company, Intellectual Assets are regarded as knowledge with a value and are a key factor in creating wealth for the company. These Intellectual Assets include patents, trade secrets, trademarks and know‐how. The company has devised a six‐step Intellectual Asset model which involves strategy setting; identification and classification of existing Intellectual Assets; valuing these assets; deciding whether to invest in new knowledge through the development or purchase of technology and skills; and assembling the Intellectual Assets into Knowledge Portfolios for each global Dow business. This process is repeated on a regular basis. This paper discusses how the methodology has been developed and implemented at Dow, including the company’s approach to creating a Global Intellectual Asset Technology Centre and multi‐functional and multi‐geographic Intellectual Asset teams. Tools and techniques developed for measuring the company’s Intellectual Assets are generic and may be appropriately applied to any organization.