HBS Working Knowledge: Innovation: The Best Practices of Technology Brokers
In this excellent HBS article, an extract from from How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate. Harvard Business School Press, Copyright 2003 Andrew Hargadon; it talks about the role of technology brokers, who carry out a role of understanding technology from different industries, knowing a wide variety of people and taking those ideas and people and applying them to 'other problems.
An interesting quote here:
Gian Zaccai, the CEO of Design Continuum, recognized the power of bringing people together face to face:
You pick two people, with different experiences and maybe even different training, and put them together and you've got that kind of a synergy, an exchange of ideas. Because whatever this person says will provoke a hundred different ideas in this other one and a hundred different memories.
It brought a smile to my face as I remembered the number of events I attended where technology was the answer to KM and innovation. This finally seals the point for me; its the people who hold knowledge.
This is well worth a read especially for Dennis Boyd of IDEO's knowledge management system (or collections of junk).
Posted by Paul Goodison at August 4, 2003 09:49 PM | TrackBack