Objectives

• Understand how new combinations of existing technologies

can be sources of innovation

• Understand who can be a “knowledge broker”

• Understand how knowledge brokers facilitate new

combinations of existing technologies

Complementary Innovation Approaches• Two kinds of R&D – “breakthrough” and technology fusion*

• Technology fusion combines rather than replaces technology

Optoelectronics, mechatronics

Look at distribution of R&D budget for clues

• Fusion is market driven (demand articulation)

• Fusion relies on intelligence gathering capability – monitor visible and “invisible” competitors

• Fusion is enabled by cross-function, cross-division, cross-industry,

cross-supply chain R&D collaboration

* See Fumio Kodama, “Technology Fusion and the New R&D”, HBR, 1992

Sharp Corporation – Seeds and Needs

Knowledge BrokersEngineering Design Firms

• IDEO Product development

• Design Continuum

Management Consulting Firms

• Anderson Consulting (Accenture)

• McKinsey & Company

Within Multi-Divisional Firms

•Hewlett-Packard: SPaM

•Boeing Company: Operations Technology Center

Historic Studies of Engineering Firms

•Edison & Co.’s Menlo Park Laboratory

•Elmer Sperry

Knowledge Broker Activities • Access - enlarge the pool of diverse ideas with rotation, liaison roles • Learning (store) - observe, simulate, benchmark, inventory problems• Linking (retrieve) – analogic thinking (can see problems with “non-obvious similarities”). Keep loose boundaries (meanings) between categories. Coding and classification systems have marginal value• Implementation - build, test, and revise prototypes as proposed solutions to problem context (i.e., learning-by- doing, turn tacit into explicit and then tacit again)

Culture

Structure• Redundant knowledge bases• Multiple gatekeepers

Values• Wisdom• Not seeking help signifies arrogance or insecurity

Rewards• For sharing information• For helping others to perform