Essentials of Knowledge Management

5.2. Electronic Whiteboard

Like most other firms, Custom Gene Factory (CGF) is challenged with delivering an economically viable service to its customers in a highly competitive industry while investing heavily in new product development. As a result, the research and development department (R&D) is under pressure to develop new processes and communicate these ideas to production staff so that they can quickly move the most promising developments out of the laboratory and into trials with pharmaceutical firms. As such, the knowledge workers in the R&D department spend a great deal of time in ad hoc brainstorming sessions, where everyone associated with a project, in any department, comes up with as many unusual solutions as possible to move a product or process forward. However, because CGF's campus is spread out over six buildings and some of the pharmaceutical firm partners that are part of the community of practice are located in other cities, an unacceptably high overhead is associated with bringing the stakeholders together for regular meetings.

To facilitate the brainstorming sessions in a way that fits everyone's schedules, the chief knowledge officer (CKO) attends several of the meetings as an unobtrusive observer to determine the real needs of the members. He discovers that the group relies heavily on the whiteboard, with the requisite note-taker who attempts to copy the contents of the board every few minutes. The meetings include multiple verbal exchanges, printed handouts, ...