Suppliers / Intentional / · Learning about opportunities in emerging markets through outsourcing to other countries
· Intentionally collaborate/outsource with partners who have complementary skills/competencies
· Do not subcontract anything that bears critical knowledge (core competence viewpoint)
· Outsource repetitive and standardized components
· Market intelligence (learning from information provided by suppliers into market intelligence)
· Intentionally create a strategic alliance/partnership with the supply chain / · Subcontract elements to suppliers who can imitate your business model
· Market intelligence (divulging too much information from your company for the suppliers to imitate your business model)
· ‘Need to know’ basis for suppliers
· Bidding process
Vectors / Intentional/Unintentional / Positive / Negative
Suppliers (Continued) / Intentional (Continued) / · Intentionally putting knowledge in the public domain (e.g. through networks)
· ‘Need to know’ basis for suppliers
· Empowering the suppliers to own the problem
· Bidding process
· Full traceability / · Subcontract elements to suppliers who can imitate your business model
· Market intelligence (divulging too much information from your company for the suppliers to imitate your business model)
· ‘Need to know’ basis for suppliers
· Bidding process
Initial categories and coding from scoping interviews Page 1 of 18
Knowledge Leakage Project
Vectors / Intentional/Unintentional / Positive / NegativeSuppliers (Continued) / Unintentional / · Opportunities in emerging markets through outsourcing to other countries
· Market intelligence
· Supply chain clustering
· Bidding process / · If outsourcing is primarily driven by resource availability, as opposed to strategic decision
· Suppliers leaving (e.g. through bankruptcy)
· Unintentionally putting knowledge in the public domain (e.g. through networs)
· Knowledge leakage through change of ownership of supplier (especially if it becomes owned by a competitor)
· Bidding process
· Cultural differences that impede communication between your company and the supply chain
Initial categories and coding from scoping interviews Page 1 of 18
Knowledge Leakage Project
Vectors / Intentional/Unintentional / Positive / NegativeCustomers / Intentional / · Crafting business propositions with customers
· Market intelligence from customers
· Learning from customers
· Sample contracts and non-disclosure agreements
· Customer Relationship Management system
· Repeat business (repetitive process and re-use of leaked knowledge)
· Inquiry process to translate the clients’ requirements / · Customers leaving for a competitor (or just leaving the sector)
· Customers acting as a conduit of knowledge between competitors
Initial categories and coding from scoping interviews Page 1 of 18
Knowledge Leakage Project
Vectors / Intentional/Unintentional / Positive / NegativeCustomers (Continued) / Unintentional / · Learning from customers / · Too many middle men between customer and the service provider (Chinese whispers)
· Cultural differences that impede communication between your company and customers
Initial categories and coding from scoping interviews Page 1 of 18
Knowledge Leakage Project
Vectors / Intentional/Unintentional / Positive / NegativeCompetitors / Intentional / · Intentionally split waste material so that this does not get picked up by other companies and replicated
· Clustering of competitors
· Strategic misinformation to competitors
· Market intelligence (learning from other companies)
Unintentional / · ‘Give and take’ attitude towards other companies
· Outright theft / · ‘Give and take’ attitude towards other companies
· Market intelligence (other companies learning from you)
· Unintentional leakage of knowledge to competitors through suppliers and customers (e.g. in the bidding process)
Initial categories and coding from scoping interviews Page 1 of 18
Knowledge Leakage Project
Vectors / Intentional/Unintentional / Positive / NegativePeople / Intentional / · Training and development (attending external courses; or bringing back training ideas from outside)
· Involvement and participation strategies to make people feel they own the direction of the company strategy – knowledge sharing and culture
· Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with Universities and involvement in courses to build up future capacity
· Gain people from competitors or other organizations – people inflow
· Intentional development of multi-disciplinary team (or multi-skill team) to ensure learning between disciplines/professions/other skills sets / · Holidays and maternity leave – people outflow (temporary)
· Temporary workers – People inflow and outflow
Vectors / Intentional/Unintentional / Positive / Negative
People (Continued) / Unintentional / · Experts leaving the organization (particularly if the critical knowledge is held in a key individual) – People outflow / · Sickness – people outflow
Initial categories and coding from scoping interviews Page 1 of 18
Knowledge Leakage Project
Vectors / Intentional/Unintentional / Positive / NegativeInternal/ external / Intentional / · Adequacy of diffusing knowledge from external source to different parts of the organisation
· Intentional top-down communication of organisational strategy / · Dependency on electronic systems (in particular when systems fail completely and knowledge is lost completely)
Unintentional / · Use of electronic systems
· Lack of managing employees’ knowledge or inadequacy of ‘knowledge manager’
Initial categories and coding from scoping interviews Page 1 of 18
Knowledge Leakage Project
Vectors / Intentional/Unintentional / Positive / NegativeIPRs/Trust / Intentional / · Lack of assessing nature of knowledge formally (choice to protect knowledge based on gut feeling) –could be positive and negative (unknown)
· Published papers and specialist materials / · Lack of assessing nature of knowledge formally (choice to protect knowledge based on gut feeling) –could be positive and negative (unknown)
Unintentional / · Published papers and specialist materials
Initial categories and coding from scoping interviews Page 1 of 18
Knowledge Leakage Project
Appendix A: Preventive measures against negative knowledge leakage
· Succession planning/handover planning
· Quality management system
· Capture knowledge before people retire
· Standardisation of practices
· Project team organisations
· Traceability of suppliers
· Hard copies documentation of drawings
· Putting knowledge capture procedures in place
· No external access to system – no CD Drive
· Library of past projects
· Legal firewall from commercial activities
· Emails
· Minutes
· Knowledge-based engineering systems (KBE)
· 3-tier computer system ( 1 on lab; 1 copy tad stream copy and 1 copy hard copy)
· Collaborative teams reduce company cost of research and development
· Protection via patents, copyright (legal stuff)
· Patent critical knowledge
· Making sure IPR ownership is agreed with customer
Initial categories and coding from scoping interviews Page 18 of 18
Knowledge Leakage Project
Appendix B: Deeper explanation of codes
Suppliers
1. Intentionally learn about opportunities in emerging market
2. Intentionally collaborate/outsource with partners who have complementary skills/competencies
a. Suppliers only collaborate with complementary but not competitive disciplines
b. Suppliers have complementary skills – compliance (Poland, China, Egypt); outsource not because of cost advantage but to ensure equally high value-added
c. Unintentionally if resourcing is the key driver for outsourcing
3. Do not subcontract anything that bears critical knowledge (core competence viewpoint)
a. Do not subcontract anything critical
b. Do not outsource to UK contractors for fear of competition
4. Outsource repetitive and standardized components
a. Off the shelf versus bespoke
b. Outsourcing production information that is repetitive and standardized components to India
5. Market intelligence (learning from information provided by suppliers into market intelligence)
a. Not releasing information because they want to remain commercial
b. Suppliers using intelligence to enhance standing with other clients
c. Market intelligence (institutional)
6. Intentionally create a strategic alliance/partnership with the supply chain
a. Changing culture from arms’ length to partnership
b. Outsourcing as more of a partnership (or strategic alliance)
7. Suppliers leaving (e.g. through bankruptcy)
a. Suppliers leaving, going bankrupt
b. Viability of suppliers
8. Supply chain clustering
a. Knowledge leakage within and across suppliers, major suppliers already in partnership
9. Intentionally putting knowledge in the public domain (e.g. through networks)
10. ‘Need to know’ basis for suppliers
a. Giving too much information to suppliers (too many changes)
b. ‘Need to know’ basis
c. Intentionally withholding knowledge
11. Empowering the suppliers to own the problem
12. Knowledge leakage through change of ownership of supplier (especially if it becomes owned by a competitor)
13. Bidding process
a. Bidding process
b. Supplier driven innovation (new blueberries)
14. Full traceability
15. Cultural differences that impede communication between your company and the supply chain
a. Personality clash
b. Language barriers
c. Miscommunication or discontinuity
Customers
1. Crafting business propositions with customers
a. Educate client and manage their expectations
b. Shaping of briefs to the mutual satisfaction
2. Customers leaving for a competitor (or just leaving the sector)
a. Biggest risk is customers walking away due to non-aligning of thinking
b. Surgeon to bankrupt (unable to buy)
3. Too many middle men between customer and the service provider (Chinese whispers)
4. Market intelligence from customers
5. Learning from customers
a. Intensive information sharing from customers (technical, product and scientific) – ‘need to know’ basis
b. Learning from customers at the beginning; not as much as time goes on as expertise grows
c. Learning from clients on their business
d. Learning from customers on procedural knowledge
6. Sample contracts and non-disclosure agreements
7. Customer Relationship Management system (CRM)
8. Repeat business (repetitive process and re-use of leaked knowledge)
9. Customers acting as a conduit of knowledge between competitors
a. Customers act as a conduit of knowledge between competitors (bidding process)
b. Development work where product is not commissioned but does get made by other suppliers (i.e. competitors)
c. Withholding information from customers to maintain competitiveness
10. Inquiry process to translate the clients’ requirements
11. Cultural differences that impede communication between your company and customers
a. Misinterpretation of customer requirements, cultural and language differences
b. Customers in Europe and the US – cultural difference
Competitors
1. ‘Give and take’ attitude towards other companies
2. Intentionally split waste material so that this does not get picked up by other companies and replicated
3. Clustering of competitors
a. Leaking to agree strategy, direction, standards to an extent (contextual; perhaps very relevant to oligopolistic situations)
b. Partnering into clusters – free-riders
4. Strategic misinformation to competitors
5. Market intelligence (learning from other companies)
6. Unintentional leakage of knowledge to competitors through suppliers and customers (e.g. in the bidding process)
a. Knowledge lost through joint suppliers
b. Suppliers sharing knowledge with direct competitor
c. Supplier may leak information to competitor
d. Client may leak information to competitor
e. Leakage through suppliers in bidding process
7. Outright theft
a. Outright theft
b. Hacking into computer systems
People
1. Experts leaving the organization (particularly if the critical knowledge is held in a key individual) – People outflow
a. Dependency on past experience hampered by outflow of people
b. Loss of experts to maintain old technical systems
c. CEO leaving
d. Know-how may be leaked to another organization
e. Loss of people know-ho
f. Loss of 33 years experience through retirement
g. External contractors (IT consultant0 leaving knowledge hole where people are paid to fill
h. Lose people to competitors and other organizations who take knowledge with them and leak knowledge to others
i. People leaving employment through retirement
j. Personnel leaving for competitors
k. Key personnel with unique knowledge that cannot be turned to organizational knowledge
l. Loss of employees’ contacts (via which they can access additional knowledge)
m. Dependency on key employees
n. Criticality dependent on who leaves
o. Dependency on individual’s contacts
2. Gain people from competitors or other organizations – people inflow
a. Recruitment from customers
b. Recruitment from competitors, suppliers and customers for their knowledge assets
c. Gain people from competitors and other organisations with know-how
d. Inflow of knowledge employees coming in from direct competitor
e. New people from competitors, suppliers and customers
3. Holidays and maternity leave – people outflow (temporary)
a. Holidays
b. Maternity and failure to capture knowledge in time lead to reinvention of the wheel
4. Sickness – people outflow
a. Unexpected nature
5. Training and development (attending external courses; or bringing back training ideas from outside)
a. Apprentices – taking people’s place
b. Training courses from external and training and development
6. Involvement and participation strategies to make people feel they own the direction of the company strategy – knowledge sharing mechanisms and culture
a. Involvement and participation strategies let people own the company
b. Resistance to new knowledge (culture)
c. Not wanting to share knowledge (culture indispensability)
d. Sharing knowledge – good finishing product
e. Cultural difference in working practices
f. Human difficulties getting people to input into knowledge databases and to use them
g. Hindrance of old employees not keeping up to date
h. Separate business units need constant realigning
i. Trust when people leave to build networks
j. Social interactions
7. Temporary workers – People inflow and outflow
a. Access to computer systems by temporary workers
b. IT consultants
c. IT consultants (subcontractors and temporary staff)
8. Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with Universities and involvement in academic courses to build up future capacity
a. Leaking knowledge to academia to foster new talent of employee inflow
b. Work with research and development (universities’ know-how)
9. Intentional development of multi-disciplinary team (or multi-skill team) to ensure learning between disciplines/professions/other skills sets
Internal/External
1. Lack of managing employees’ knowledge or inadequacy of ‘knowledge manager’
2. Adequacy of diffusing knowledge from external source to different parts of the organisation
3. Intentional top-down communication of organisational strategy
4. Dependency on electronic systems (in particular when systems fail completely and knowledge is lost completely)