4.5.2 Managing creation of knowledge

In the management of product development Madhaven and Grover (1998) recommended the following:

     Selection of team members with specific knowledge and skills but also
        an appreciation of other areas of product development from education
        and experience, and with a shared vision of product development and
        its procedures. This can be difficult to recognise.

     Selection of the product development manager with
        multidisciplinary knowledge from education and experience.

     Using a product development process that is used in all similar projects,
        but could have variations for different levels of innovations and types
        of products. The decisions and outcomes for each project set out for
        each stage as well as the project overall.

     Ensuring that the members of the team are familiar with their
        intended activities, both through experienced team members and
        well-organised information sources.

     Education of team members on knowledge creation and storage. Also
        on how to share knowledge and create knowledge by team
        knowledge sharing and cross-functional development.

Development of people, values and culture in the product development team is very important. Investments in developing knowledge and skills, for technologies, marketing, consumer research and financial analysis, as well as the overall discipline of product development, can be made by employing suitable staff and by educating present staff. As Rouse (1992) said:

    Such investments make sense if the people involved have the aptitudes
    and abilities to gain the knowledge and skills, and if they will have
    opportunities to utilise the newly gained knowledge and skill. Without
    these prerequisites, well-intended investments in developing people can
    result in much frustration and not much else.

It is unfortunately fairly common in the food industry for this to happen, and a great deal of talent is lost because people are not allowed to use their knowledge but are tied to a bench doing routine work and not allowed any decision making. Product development is a risk-taking area and people must be allowed to engage together in setting the major decisions and outcomes, and then allowed to make the minor decisions themselves. Again they need to be involved in the discussion and choice of the major activities, and select their own activities and the techniques to be used in them. Techniques especially depend on the knowledge and skills of the people doing the work and if they do not have the major say in choosing the techniques within the constraints of the outcomes needed and the resource constraints, they will have less commitment. This is the way for people to develop their skills and problem-solving abilities. It means that managers have to take risks, because people may fail with poor outcomes or going over the time for the activity. But there are always failures and successes and managers have to increase their own knowledge to reduce chances of failure without reducing people to automatons. Although there are inevitably penalties for shortcomings and failures, it is very important that they be commensurate and not too severe. Managers need to recognise that they need by education to increase their professional knowledge regularly as well as their management skills. A manager needs knowledge across a number of technological areas to lead a product development team successfully.

There is also a need for everyone to recognise the culture and values in the team. If the values are human-centred both in the team and their development of products, then it matters little if a team is laid-back and casual, or conservatively dressed and formal. Different societal cultures outside the team, and indeed the company, affect this aspect of the team. Some cultures encourage communication at the personal level, others do not; and the problem is to give the team itself the values that encourage the sharing of knowledge and the working together. Values have to be realistic reflections of the general society, but they must also encourage effective and efficient product development. The company's values do come down from the Board and the top management, and it may in some cases be difficult to reconcile these with the values of product development. Apart from encouraging people to go to another company with values that are more consistent with product development, what can be done? Company values do change as was seen in the acceptance of total quality management - quality control was thought as only for technicians, until quality assurance and then quality management was developed and sold to management, mostly by outside public relations and sometimes even by government regulation. Product development has to be presented as a discipline and as a system that can produce dividends for the company, and all benefit if both management and the team see it this way.

Technical, organisational and commercial skills and knowledge required for improving product development are shown in Table 4.9.


Table 4.9 Skill and knowledge requirements for improving development performance

Skill/ knowledge requirements Development participants Technical Organisational Commercial Senior corporate managers Understand key technical changes Recognise importance of creating a rapid learning organisation, lead and provide vision and values Identify strategic business opportunities Business unit general managers Understand depth and breadth of technology Select and educate leaders, champion cross-functional teams, have career pathing for staff Target key customer segments, architect product families and generations Team leaders Provide breadth of capabilities Comprehend depth requirements Select, train and lead development team, recognise importance of attitudes and secure functional support Champion concept definition, competitive positioning Team members Use new techniques, apply technologies, develop new technologies3.6 Integrate cross-functional problem solving, create improved development procedures Operationalise customer-driven concept development, refine concept based on market feedback

Source: Reprinted with permission of the Free Press, a Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc., from Managing New Product and Process Development by Kim B. Clark and Steven C. Wheelwright. Copyright © 1993 by Kim B. Clark and Steven C. Wheelwright.


Three groups of abilities are essential for creating product development capability: technical, to achieve product and process integration; organisational, to create the capability of the team; and commercial, to develop effective product concepts and link customer requirements and unmet customer needs to the details of product planning and design (Clark and Wheelwright, 1993).

Some important knowledge seeking and knowledge communication areas in innovative companies (Souder, 1987) are as follows:

     Ability to sense threats and opportunities in a timely fashion,
        using environmental scanning, technological forecasting and
        competitive analysis.

     Study of risky opportunities, and accurate assessment of the degree of
        risk in a project.

     Well-developed project selection systems which effectively
        communicate the company's needs to the idea generators and
        foster decisiveness in goal-setting.

     Interdepartmental debate focused on confronting and resolving conflicts
        to produce new ideas and a cooperative climate.

     Individuals who play reciprocal roles - persons who generate ideas,
        who champion these ideas and who link these ideas to the
        existing organisational goals.

     Organisational structures and climates that foster the development
        of collaborative roles.

     Long-term commitment to foster technology.

These qualities combined with a willingness of the company to accept change are fundamental to successful new product innovations.

Think Break Technological knowledge is organised and structured in ways that reflect application in product development. The product development team constructs its knowledge around the subsystems in the stages of the product development process. In this way its accumulated tacit and explicit knowledge is organised in the most effective manner for systematic product development and for the activities in each stage (Gawith, 1999). 1. Describe how your company has identified subsystems in your product     development processes, and built up knowledge in these subsystems. 2. How do the product development team identify a problem, relate it to     past problems and their solutions? Then decide on their method(s) for     solving the present problem. 3. How does the team collect together its tacit and explicit knowledge to     select the activities and techniques for solving the problem? 4. How does the company management ensure that the whole knowledge     system is capable of producing efficient and effective product     development?

Overall it is hard to overemphasise the central importance to product development of knowledge and its availability to the individuals and to the team who develop the new products. Some of this knowledge is explicitly written down and codified, but a great deal still lies with the particular people who do the creative work and collectively with their groups. From the viewpoint of the company's continued operation and success, and avoidance of risk from shifting employees, efforts are being made to maximise codification of knowledge. Modern information technology can do much to help with the machinery. Transfer to the record is also helped by the increasing understanding of the knowledge scene and of the philosophical issues on which it rests. But in the long run the knowledge, acquired skills, and powers of analysis and synthesis lying in the individual will always be the key resource. Without it, creativity will stumble, if not founder; with it, will come new products and commercial success relating strongly to the overall skill of the product developers.