An approach to filling firms' knowledge gaps based on organisational knowledge structure
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this paper is to propose a practical and operable method to identify and fill organisational knowledge gaps during new product development.
Design/methodology/approach
From a microscopic view, this paper introduces the tree-shaped organisational knowledge structure to formalise the knowledge gaps and their internal hierarchical relationships. Based on the organisational knowledge structure, organisational knowledge gaps are identified through tree matching algorithm. The tree-edit-distance method is introduced to calculate the similarity between two organisational knowledge structures for filling knowledge gap.
Findings
The proposed tree-shaped organisational knowledge structure can represent organisations' knowledge and their hierarchy relationships in a structured format, which is useful for identifying and filling organisational knowledge gaps.
Originality/value
The proposed concept of organisational knowledge structure can quantify organisational knowledge. The approach is valuable for strategic decisions regarding new product development. The organisational knowledge gaps identified with this method can provide real-time and accurate guidance for the product development path. More importantly, this method can accelerate the organisational knowledge gap filling process and promote organisational innovation.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research was sponsored by CHINA S&T Project (No. 2011401041) and by DALIAN CHINA S&T Project (No. 2011D12ZC142). Received 21 May 2013 Revised 12 September 2013 15 October 2013 Accepted 16 October 2013
Citation
Qiu, J., Wang, Z. and Nian, C. (2014), "An approach to filling firms' knowledge gaps based on organisational knowledge structure", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-05-2013-0191
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited