Conceptual Influence

My interest in knowledge management developed at the Department of Navy's Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California in 1996 on what was then thin traces of the emerging field. This is where my collaboration with Bala Ramesh—with whom I later co-authored several research papers—began. In essence, he was the one who introduced me to this then barely-emerging line of research and later mentored me during the formative years of my doctoral research. [Trivia: this was where the concept of the computer operating system was created by Gary Kendall who served on its faculty and went on to found Digital Equipment Corporation (now part of Hewlett Packard). Literally next door are the streets where the dot com bubble grew and burst.] I did my doctoral research with Eph McLean, who taught me to see the forest in the trees. I collaborate with a very small but delightful group of individuals such as Eph McLean, Bala Ramesh, Ashley Bush, Anandhi Bharadwaj, Mark Keil, V. Sambamurthy, Benn Konsynski, Rob Fichman, and Arun Rai who have influenced my thinking.

                 The most profound influence on my research has been from the pioneering work of Professor Ikujiro Nonaka. Professor Nonaka (in the middle in the picture below) was one of the first people who developed the contemporary idea of knowledge management. With me and professor Nonaka in the picture below in Professor Nonaka's downtown Tokyo office is Professor Akito Sakurai from Kieo University.  

 

 

The second most profound influence on my recent research has been the work of professors Mike Jensen and late Bill Meckling. Although they are best known for their contributions to Agency Theory, I have been extending a little recognized insight about decision rights distribution (in their seminal paper on Agency Theory, which is most notably associated with their Nobel Prize) using a knowledge management lens.

 

Contextual Influence

Besides this conceptual influence, my research and thinking have also been influenced by other contextual influences, most notably my colleagues at Emory—my first faculty appointment—who continue to be active collaborators and great sounding boards for the craziest of my ideas. Then again, a picture is worth a thousand words. The following are ten thousand words on some other recent contextual influences.

 

 

 

THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF TEN MISSING PICTURES

 

Sources of Influence

Industry Influence

My research tends to be closely aligned with the industry and almost all of it is field based i.e., it is done in corporate settings. My research thus both heavily draws on industry collaborations and influences industry practice.

 

Corporate Knowledge Management

My ideas on knowledge management have been extensively applied in industry practice, worldwide. My work on knowledge management has been used by corporations in various industries for their internal knowledge management initiatives. Notable among these are Hewlett-Packard, UPS Corporation, the US Department of Defense’s knowledge management initiative, the Italian banking industry, Taiwan’s SIS Systems and United Microelectronics Corporation, and the Big-5 Japanese consumer electronics firms. Many of these ideas have also been widely adopted in the consulting industry, where knowledge management tends to have a profound impact on firm-level competitiveness. My emerging work on knowledge networks with Ashley Bush and Hiroshi Tsuji is currently being applied in leading Japanese consumer electronics firms such as Fujitsu and Hitachi as well as organizations in the US pharmaceutical industry.  

 

Knowledge Management in Inter-firm Networks

With Arun Rai (Georgia State) and Ashley Bush (Florida State) , I developed a thought leadership whitepaper for SAP Corporation defining the next generation of adaptive inter-firm networks. (A copy of this can be obtained on request.) My ongoing research with Professor Benn Konsynski on “smart business networks” (now @ Emory, previously Harvard Business School preceded by U. of Arizona) is developing KM-driven extensions to the concept of IS* (inter-organizational systems) that he pioneered in the 1980s (see the original Harvard Business Review article and his pioneering 1982 MISQ paper).

 

Knowledge Management in Global Software Development

My research on knowledge management in globally-distributed software development in 2002-2003 has been used extensively by the three largest consortia of software firms in Russia, India, and Ireland. This work involved over 200 US companies and their offshore partners. Some of the key findings of this work are summarized in my 2004 IEEE Software paper (Japanese translation). Following widespread media coverage of my One Minute Risk Assessment Tool with Mark Keil, it has been widely adopted in industry practice (see a Web-based tool.) I’m currently extending this work to understand: (1) how design modularization allows knowledge coordination under domain ignorance across interfirm boundaries, and (2) performance-adaptiveness tradeoffs that arise from balancing decoupling and integration, and (3) optimal patterns of decision rights partitioning in software/technology development alliances. My research on knowledge management in global outsourcing of technology is being used to guide practice in leading technology firms such as Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, and IBM. An ongoing follow-up study sponsored by Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, IBM, International Information Science Foundation (Japan), and  Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association is currently in progress.  

 

Corporate & Industry Research Partnerships

United Parcel Service (UPS), SAP Corporation, Hitachi, Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu, Eli-Lilly, IBM Japan, NEC Japan, Mitsubishi, US Department of Defense (Office of Naval Research, Naval Postgraduate School, and Air Force Research Laboratory), Istituto Superiore Universitario di Formazione Interdisciplinare (Italy), US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), KPMG, Sony, Erricsson, and international industry consortia such as Japan’s Strategic Software Research consortium, Russia’s National Software Development Alliance, Ireland’s Investment and Development Agency, International Information Science Foundation (Japan), Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association, and India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies have funded and/or provided research sites for my research.

 

Industry Leadership

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recent Press Coverage of Research

· Microsoft Interview  on “Why Knowledge Management Still Matters,” Oct. 2005.

· Front-page coverage of my Communications of the ACM paper with Mark Keil on Slashdot.org (elicited 500 responses), Jan 2005.

· An interview featuring my research in Nikkei Business, Japan, Oct 2001.