One of my professional interests is knowledge management. From base level items that may technically be information management (in the areas of customer service -- pushing the right information closer to the customer) to the concepts of a knowing organization and strategically leveraging knowledge to develop innovative products and services. While preparing for a project to address innovation within health care, I was reading HBR's book on Innovation. One of the chapters, by Hargadon & Sutton ("Building an Innovation Factory") is an interesting overview of the process of knowledge brokering (rooted in the work of Thomas Edison). The authors highlight a four-part process for knowledge brokering, which is a great pragmatic approach to starting to try and repeat a process, rather than saying "then the magic happens...and we're really not sure how."
The Knowledge Brokering Cycle:
1. Capture Good Ideas
2. Keep Ideas Alive
3. Imagining New Uses for Old Ideas
4. Putting Promising Concepts to the Test
Within these steps, some other knowledge management basics are touched upon such as: (1) if you want more ideas, get smart and creative people to interact -- give them the space, technology and resources to do so; (2) leverage the concept of parallax -- look at items from multiple perspectives, industries, products and services; and (3) try to cultivate (and save) good organizational knowledge -- don't let your good ideas leave the company when a particular person leaves the company (unless directed by a judge).
The downer when reading these things or working on other knowledge projects is that I'm reminded of a "Ground Hog Day" / Sisyphus (not surprisingly, Murray is more accessible than Camus) nature of a lot of our problem solving works. It seems like we're continuing to work on the same problems. Elements change, but at times it seems like the same rock and the same mountain. However, as an old boss said, he'd rather we use our brains for thinking rather than remembering. If we can increase the organizational remembering, maybe we can think through more innovations.
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