Purpose – Over the last 24 months the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) has been working with a consortium of industry, academia, and government (Triple Helix) based organizations to develop a capability view of how organizations can effectively manage their knowledge. This has the potential to be a broad and complex endeavour, so the research workgroup (made up of triple helix members) focused on the IT influencing / influenced capability that drives an organization’s ability to effectively manage their knowledge asset. The outcome of this research has resulted in an industry-tested assessment for organizations interested in driving knowledge asset management (KAM) as a competitive capability. This KAM assessment looks at 3 key areas: Governance, facilities & processes, and the knowledge life cycle. These are then broken down further into thirteen sub-capabilities, or capability building blocks. This paper will present in detail how the KAM assessment was developed, validated, and what value the assessment output can bring to those organizations using it.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper will present its findings in a case study format (Yin, 2002). However, the manner in which the IVI engages and conducts its research will be examined, as this is fundamental to encouraging a triple helix (academia, industry, and government) collaborative open innovation approach. IVI is mainly engaged in mode 2 research that follows an ‘engaged scholarship’ (Van de Ven, 2007) approach, with particular emphasis on a ‘design science’ (Hevner, et al, 2004) perspective. Through design science the desire to look for and encourage the development of artefacts as part of the research process is important as it provides an added incentive to industry and government partners to engage in research and any follow-on development projects.
Originality/value – This paper will outline the first capability maturity approach to assessing knowledge asset management from an organizational perspective. There are many frameworks and models that describe how organizations shape, and engage with knowledge management activities. Many of these frameworks (over 23) have been used to inform and shape the research thinking around this KAM assessment but this, the author believes, is the first framework that will help define an organizations knowledge capability – this is vital for organizations that view the understanding of capability in any form as critical to developing sustainable competitive advantage (Davenport et al, 2001).
Practical implications – This approach to developing a capability view of knowledge management is helping a number of organizations (both public and private) operating complex organizational structures drive clarity around defining the scope of their ‘knowledge’ activates, with particular focus on tacit-explicit-tacit knowledge transfer activities. By assessing their capability against specific aspects of knowledge management organizations are given a relative scale against which they can assess their progress. The KAM assessment also provides the organization with a list of potential improvements to be made that will positively influence knowledge capability maturity. This means that the assessment not only ‘quantifies’ the organizations current capability, but it also provides a set of industry-validated practices, metrics and expected outcomes. This enables the participating organization the ability to build an improvement roadmap to move the capability up the maturity curve to the desired level of performance.
Keywords – Knowledge management, dynamic, capability maturity