Workplace, Teams, & Culture

Andrew McAfee's new book looks at Enterprise 2.0 tools as a way to span organizational networks.

What role does reputation play in a R&;D worker's decision whether or not to share knowledge with a colleague? To study this question, the authors surveyed more than 200 scientists in 63 different pharmaceutical companies. The authors' findings suggest that, even among R&;D workers in the same company, information is not always shared freely. Instead, a potential knowledge source's assessment of a knowledge seeker's reputation affected whether or not information was offered. The authors found that a variety of factors affect scientists' assessment of a colleague's reputation. Not surprisingly, the duration of two parties' past interaction was positively related to the likelihood of current knowledge sharing occurring between them. Also, proximity influenced how positively reputations were perceived. But, if the person seeking information was already indebted to the potential knowledge source, knowledge sharing was less likely to occur. In addition, the study found that scientists are more likely to share information with a colleague in the same company if the know-how is unique and vital to accomplishing a task.

GM and Toyota launched their joint auto plant where GM's work force had been at its worst. Here's what happened next.

Despite the importance of innovation to a business's success, only recently have companies not only established internal environments conducive to innovation but also begun identifying, cultivating and taking advantage of a wide variety of external sources for innovation. Among such sources, suppliers are recognized as having especially large innovation potential because they know what the companies that is, their customers--are doing and need and also because mechanisms for knowledge transfer from supplier to customer are typically in place. However, while it is one thing for a mechanism to be available by which suppliers may transfer innovation to customers, it is quite another for the suppliers actually to do the transferring. The customer, the prime mover in building and maintaining the relationship, can move in two different ways to encourage the supplier to innovate to the customer's benefit. First, it should reduce or eliminate three kinds of problems: (1) conflicting objectives among the customer's functional areas, (2) excessive and often late engineering or specification changes and (3) price-reduction pressures on suppliers that consider only the customer's financial needs. Second and most importantly, the customer should initiate directly positive and trust-building activities.

The current economic recession has provided managers with a tempting environment for acquiring "star" employees on the cheap. But the track record of such acquisitions of human capital has been mixed, with many companies failing to integrate their new talent. Apparently, an organization can't just hire star employees and then expect those individuals to automatically shine in their new environment. But how, then, can companies ensure that they get the most out of the talent they hire? The authors have found that, to build a top-notch organization of star employees, companies can't simply hire the best and brightest and then turn those individuals loose into a Darwinian competition. Instead, organizations need to provide and maintain the right environment for those employees to flourish. And that means avoiding a number of common pitfalls, such as falling for the "lone-star myth" (companies often mistakenly believe that one individual can single-handedly turn around an entire department or organization), overestimating the importance of pay (businesses frequently overpay for hiring top talent), allowing stars to go solo (high achievers are over-scheduled almost by definition, so managers should never assume that collaboration will "just happen"), focusing too narrowly on a single department or group (stars need top colleagues throughout the organization in order to do their best work) and neglecting homegrown talent.

This article presents frameworks for companies considering a shift to global product development.

While the protection of intellectual property, or IP, seems to be at odds with a company's pursuit of open innovation, or OI--the selective use of research carried out elsewhere--businesses in the know can align these two approaches. An appropriate IP strategy can actually be an enabler of OI activities. In fact, an increasing number of companies, such as International Business Machines Corp., are involved in interconnected "ecosystems"--critically dependent on cooperating with other parties to generate innovations and profits. The authors' research has found that the enabling function of IP depends on the specific circumstances under which companies engage in OI. Two variables in particular have emerged as critical determinants: the technological environment in which the business is active, and the knowledge distribution among potential collaborators. Each variable is presented as having two possible values. The technological environment, for instance, is either calm or turbulent. Concerning the nature of innovative knowledge distribution, external knowledge can be thought of as residing either with the few (in puddles) or with the many (in oceans). By combining these two dimension sets, and thus creating four possible scenarios, we provide a better sense of a firm's most appropriate IP/IO strategy. Depending on the category into which the company falls, IP plays a different role as an enabler of OI.

Recent research explores the interdependencies between various approaches to innovation.

Should external innovators be organized in collaborative communities or competitive markets? The answer depends on three crucial issues.

With appropriate processes, virtual teams can even outperform their colocated counterparts.