We begin by introducing the traditional concept of knowledge management, and extending it beyond the boundary of the firm. Next, we focus on the pre-conditions that need to be satisfied on the customers’ side to allow co-operation in knowledge creation. These conditions include the need for common language, trust and motivation for knowledge sharing. We offer prescriptions on how firms can identify the best customer knowledge assets, and how firms can motivate customers to share their knowledge. We then turn our attention to the basic capabilities that firms need after selecting and motivating customers, in order to integrate customer knowledge, disseminate it within their organizations and act on it to translate customer knowledge into new offerings. We introduce and explore the notion of firms’ absorptive, sharing and deployment capacities; and argue that if any one of these capacities is missing or if there are disconnects between these steps, the entire mechanism breaks down. We examine the potential process and linkage failures at each stage, and outline the basic reasons why organizations may fail to enact this process and the problems they have to face as a consequence. We offer guidelines for firms to overcome these failures and to improve their capacity to involve customers in their knowledge generation processes. We conclude the chapter with a set of managerial guidelines. In particular, we focus our attention on what firms need to do in the near future, from a technological, organizational, and cultural viewpoint.
Beyond Customer Knowledge Management: Customers as Knowledge Co-Creators
PRANDELLI, EMANUELA
2000
Abstract
We begin by introducing the traditional concept of knowledge management, and extending it beyond the boundary of the firm. Next, we focus on the pre-conditions that need to be satisfied on the customers’ side to allow co-operation in knowledge creation. These conditions include the need for common language, trust and motivation for knowledge sharing. We offer prescriptions on how firms can identify the best customer knowledge assets, and how firms can motivate customers to share their knowledge. We then turn our attention to the basic capabilities that firms need after selecting and motivating customers, in order to integrate customer knowledge, disseminate it within their organizations and act on it to translate customer knowledge into new offerings. We introduce and explore the notion of firms’ absorptive, sharing and deployment capacities; and argue that if any one of these capacities is missing or if there are disconnects between these steps, the entire mechanism breaks down. We examine the potential process and linkage failures at each stage, and outline the basic reasons why organizations may fail to enact this process and the problems they have to face as a consequence. We offer guidelines for firms to overcome these failures and to improve their capacity to involve customers in their knowledge generation processes. We conclude the chapter with a set of managerial guidelines. In particular, we focus our attention on what firms need to do in the near future, from a technological, organizational, and cultural viewpoint.
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