Kristo Lehtonen 7.12.2005

1
Kristo Lehtonen 7.12.2005

• Enhancing information-sharing culture in New
  Product Development

• Supervisor Raimo Kantola
• Industrial coordinator Jorma Hietala

2
Problem Statement

• How to enhance knowledge-sharing culture in New
  Product Development (NPD) in a way that creates
  competitive advantage?

3
Thesis Objectives

• What is current state?
• Definitions
• Interviews

• How to reach the target state?
• Organizational culture survey
• Concrete recommendations based on own synthesis
  model

• What is target state?
• KM vision
• Measurement scheme proposal

4
Organizational Culture

• Academic review conclusions
• A large-scale intentional culture change is
  impractical if not completely impossible.
• However, culture does change as a consequence of
  individual behavior, albeit unplanned.
• Commercial review conclusions
• Understanding organizational culture is
  important not in order to change it but in order
  to avoid conflicting with it too much.
• Any change initiatives should concentrate on
  practical structural changes, not on the abstract
  notion of culture.
• Change initiatives aligned with existing
  organizational culture and concentrating on
  practical structural changes result in culture
  change, too.

5
Software developers daily work scenario
Actual coding using e.g. Emacs
6
Three knowledge scenarios
Functional sub-optimization. Implicit beliefs
hindering effective use of IT. Stakeholders as
competitors.
Re-inventing the wheel. Only resorting to
explicit knowledge. Codifying problems.
Where do I find the knowledge? Ineffective IT
solutions. Dependence on individuals.
7
Von Kroghs concept of  care 

• Five dimensions
• Mutual trust, Active empathy, Access to help,
  Lenience in judgment, Courage

8
Nonakas knowledge-spiral
9
Sveibys Intangible Assets framework
10
Organizational micro-level model of
knowledge-sharing
11
Recommendations for 1. scenario
12
Three-layers of portal features
13
Recommendations for 2. scenario
14
Recommendations for 3. scenario
15
A Measurement Proposal
16
KM vision for Nokia

• People feel as if they have the necessary
  information across Nokia at their reach they
  know exactly where and how to look for that
  information. People have passion for sharing
  knowledge and experiences as well as leveraging
  other peoples knowledge. At the heart of KM at
  Nokia is interchanging of tacit knowledge between
  individuals in other words, connecting people.

17
End-user Wow!!! in writing

• -        Pekka comes to work at 8 AM and logs on
  to his Connecting People portal. He is happy
  knowing that is the only time he has to log-in
  today.
• -        The first thing Pekka sees is a
  personalized UI with a personalized taxonomy on
  the left side of the screen. The taxonomy has all
  the right concept categories based on his work
  role. All the most widely used programs are
  readily available.
• -        With one click Pekka can see his
  assignments on the portal UI. Also any action
  points from are visible.
• -        He has personalized his UI to include
  www-links to his most widely used standard pages,
  such as ITU-T. With a few clicks Pekka can access
  both the code specification document and the
  corresponding software file. If the information
  is not found in those files he can use the very
  effective search functionality on his portal.
  After all, every document he ever produces he
  adds the meta-data himself. The quality of the
  meta-data is even double-checked by the
  librarian appointed for this task in his unit.
• -        Pekka proceeds to coding. The coding
  environment is available with one click. So are
  also the other programs Pekka needs while coding
  (programs for code parsing, memory leak
  detection, and testing).
• -        Pekka runs into a conflict with an
  interfacing software module. With one click he
  gets the specification document for that module
  and he is directly able to see the name of the
  person who had been writing that module.
• -        By clicking on the name he is directed
  to the corporate yellow page where he sees
  directly the persons contact information, his
  e-mail address, and the department hes working
  in.
• -        Pekka sends an electrical invitation to
  this person suggesting a face-to-face meeting.
  After a few seconds they are transmitted to a
  videoconferencing session. The other person
  proceeds to explaining the difficulties he had in
  his own work and why he chose some of the
  solutions for the problems he encountered. From
  the persons facial expression Pekka immediately
  notices that one problem was especially
  difficult. No he knows to pay special attention
  to it in his own work, as well.
• -        Pekka continues his work. As he
  encounters an error he can with a few clicks
  start writing the error report which is already
  pre-filled. After he has finished the report he
  can get back to his work knowing that the
  workflow functionality will transmit the report
  further to the right person.
• -        By using the BPM systems, which is based
  on the underlying product creation process
  Pekkas manager notices that this one software
  modules has been causing several error reports
  from more than on business units. Based on this
  information he knows to appoint more resources to
  writing this module.

18
Information-sharing climate survey

• Knowledge access scenario related questions
• I get the information I need on time for daily
  work.
• I know where to find information.
• It is easy to locate the right people, the
  experts, who possess the information you need.
• How would you evaluate the amount of work in
  storing data to the systems?

19
Information-sharing climate survey

• Experience transfer scenario related questions
• How well are lessons learned and past experiences
  transferred to others?
• How well are lessons learned used in your
  organization?
• I can usually trust the information coming from
  other people.
• The information I pass on can be trusted, as
  well.
• What is the level of mutual trust in the
  organization in terms of knowledge-sharing in
  general?
• People are actively seeking to understand other
  people, their situation, problems, and needs, in
  terms of sharing knowledge.
• Do people I report to keep me informed?

20
Information-sharing climate survey

• Reluctant expert scenario related questions
• Sharing of knowledge is encouraged in my
  organization both in action and in words.
• My peers react well to errors made by me. It
  doesnt discourage me from future
  experimentation.
• My managers react well to errors made by me. It
  doesnt discourage me from future
  experimentation.
• People are willing to voice their opinions even
  when they are unpopular.
• People are willing to voice their opinions even
  when they contradict the management.
• People are willing to voice their opinions even
  when they contradict their peers?

21
Information-sharing climate survey

• Reluctant expert scenario related questions
• I feel that knowledge is power. (Here an inverse
  scale is used 5-gt1 and 1-gt5.)
• I feel that knowledge shared is knowledge
  doubled.
• Sharing knowledge even outside your own business
  unit usually has good results.
• Most of my expertise has developed as a
  consequence of working together with my
  colleagues and sharing and receiving knowledge
  with them.
• There is much I could learn from my colleagues.
• We help each other to learn the skills we need.
• We keep all members of our team/organization with
  current issues.

22
Information-sharing climate survey

• Reluctant expert scenario related questions
• How would you evaluate culture of
  information-sharing in your organization?
• What would you like to change in terms of
  information-sharing in this organization? (Open
  question.)

23
Conclusions

• Very wide and challengin topic.
• A large scope organizational sciences, KM,
  Change Management, performance measurement,
  information systems, etc.
• A great learning experience
• Both to the world of Knowledge Management as well
  as
• to the actual situation at Nokia.

24
Appendix
25
Thesis Objectives

• What is current state in information-sharing?
• Define the concepts used.
• Conduct interviews to detect the current
  information-sharing culture.

• How to reach the target state?
• Investigate suitable KM methodologies.
• Detect the optimal KM tools for Nokia.

• What is target state in information-sharing?
• Create a KM vision for Nokia.
• Create a measurement scheme to track progress
  towards the vision.

26
Organizational Culture

• Academic example definition Brown 1998
• organizational culture refers to the pattern of
  beliefs, values, and learned ways of coping with
  experience that have developed during the course
  of an organizations history, and which tend to
  be manifested in its material arrangements and in
  the behaviors of its members.
• Commercial example definition Rumizen 2002
• the way we do things around here.

27
Is culture change feasible?
Culture change cant be entirely planned but an
open process of change can be initiated.
Culture change cannot be planned.
Culture change can be planned.
Degree to which culture-change can be planned
Culturalists
Intermediates
Cultural Engineers
28
KM Spetrum
Human oriented KM
Technology oriented KM

• Focus on the agent of knowledge, i.e. the person
  who possesses it.

• Knowledge as an object that is transferred

E.g. portals, artificial intelligence, groupware.
E.g. organizational knowledge, the learning
organization,
29
Tacit vs. Explicit

• Tacit knowledge
• is highly personal, hard to formalize and,
  therefore, difficult to communicate to others
• Explicit knowledge
• is formal and systematic and can be easily
  communicated and shared

30
Sharing of knowledge
Knowledge base
Directs the attention
Restructuring
Sensors
31
Data, information, and knowledge
32
Definition example
Quantity Q

• Information and knowledge are context dependent
  and everyone provides his or her own context my
  information can be your knowledge and vice versa.

33
KM Definition

• KM is activity that concentrates on how
  organizations create, capture, share, and
  leverage knowledge in order to attain competitive
  advantage.

34
Process Thinking
35
Process vs. functional approach
Functional organization Process organization
Who does what? How is the result created?
Functional incentives. Monitoring and managing end-to-end processes.
What does my functional boss want? What does the customer want?
A vertical organization type. A horizontal organization type.
36
Introduction to Nokias RD
Enterprise Solutions
Networks
Multimedia
37
Organizational complexity
38
Key roles

• Engineer (Could be further divided to HW
  Engineer, SW Engineer, etc.) Works as an engineer
  in product or technology program. Designs,
  implements, integrates and tests a products.
• Test Engineer Tests a product release based on
  requirements.
• Project Manager Plans, controls and coordinates
  all aspects of a project.
• RD Manager Allocates resources to projects
  according to business needs and directs his/her
  business unit based on the strategy.
• Portfolio Manager Maintains business strategy
  based product portfolio.
• Requirements Manager Transforms needs into
  product features and defines release content.
• Error Manager Analyzes errors and change
  requests, and plans change implementations.
• Architect Creates and maintains architecture
  structure, interfaces and design rules.
• Roadmapper Maintain and manage product roadmap.
• System Engineer Develops and manages product
  system concepts.
• FC Controller Analyzes financial results on a
  periodic basis.

39
Definition of portal

• A gateway to information employees need in their
  daily work,
• providing a single point of access in a
  personalized way, independent of the technology
  used to provide such information.

40
Three different portals

• 1) Public portal (Yahoo, Google, Bitpipe, etc.)
• 2) Corporate portal
• Often called enterprise portal or enterprise
  information portal.
• Structured around roles that are found inside the
  organization (e.g. software developer, test
  engineer, manager, etc.)
• 3) Extranet portal
• expands the corporate portal to include
  customers, vendors, and other roles outside the
  organization.
• Other concepts
• Role-based portal, collaboration portal, business
  intelligence portal, horizontal portal, business
  area portal, enterprise knowledge portal, mega
  portals, e-commerce portals, etc.

41
Portal system architecture
42
SOA BPM portal
Source data layer
43
Software developers current workday

• Input to work from RM system (e.g. RM-RIM)
  Build a new functionality in to software code
  module X.
• Looks at standards (e.g. from ITU-T) by using
  www-links.
• Familiarizes himself with code specifications
  from interfacing code modules (via CM system,
  e.g. Synergy).
• Looks at corresponding software files via
  different UI.
• Then begins actual coding (e.g. using Emacs).
• Reports detected errors to EM system (e.g. PCP
  Errors database).
• Additionally, the engineer uses
• Flexelint to parse a code
• Prolint to detect memory leaks
• McCabe in testing the code.

44
Process Capabilities and roles

• Portfolio Management
• Portfolio Manager
• Information RD Personnel
• Collaborators Roadmapper, Line Managers, Project
  Manager, FC Controller and Management team
• Authority Business Manager

• Requirements and Release Engineering
• Requirements Manager
• Information Roadmapper and Chief Architect
• Collaborators Systems Engineer and Engineer
• Authority RD Manager

• Project Management
• Project Manager
• Information Stakeholders
• Collaborators Project team members
• Authority Steering Group

• Architecture Management
• Chief Architect
• Information System Engineer and Engineer
• Authority RD Manager

• Resource Management
• Line Manager
• Information FC Controller
• Collaborators Resource Manager and Project
  Manager
• Authority Business Manager

• Engineering
• Engineer
• Information Requirements Manager, Chief
  Architect and Error Manager
• Collaborators Other Engineers
• Authority Project Manager

• Error and Change Management
• Error Manager
• Information Release Manager
• Collaborators Engineer and Test Engineer
• Authority Project Manager

• Testing
• Test Engineer
• Information Project Manager
• Collaborators Requirements Manager, System
  Engineer and Error Manager
• Authority Test Manager

45
Interviewee statements

• Finding information
• Usually the best way or even the only way to
  find information you need is to ask someone who
  knows
• I usually dont bother using the intranet to
  find information since information is best found
  from other people.
• In some cases we are very dependent on certain
  individuals who have some unique knowledge on a
  specific code-module

46
Interviewee statements

• Re-using past experiences
• Lessons learned are laborious to produce and
  difficult to use. Material does exist but usage
  is low.
• When handling errors reported to the error
  database, it might take only about half an hour
  to write the actual code but the rest of the day
  to write the report and store it in the
  appropriate systems. That can sometimes be
  frustrating, since the report writing is away
  from the real work.
• If there has been one person responsible for one
  particular code-module the amount of tacit
  knowledge that the person possesses is such that
  it is impossible to write it down all at once

47
Interviewee statements

• Sharing knowledge with associates
• You just simply react differently to request by
  people you have met.
• People in Technology Platforms dont listen much
  before we have a written contract with them.
  Before that they dont e.g. test their software
  in our product program specific HW.
• If I get a good idea for a, say, script, I would
  send it via e-mail to members of my own team, but
  not to other Nokia sites in Finland or abroad.
  I mean if I would always distribute the best
  ideas, I would not advance get promoted, get
  bonuses, etc.. In that sense information is
  power.

48
Portal system architecture