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Knowledge Reuse for Innovation

Department of Information and Operations Management, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089–1421
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109–8099
Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California 91711
majchrza{at}usc.edu
lynne.p.cooper{at}jpl.nasa.gov
olivia.neece{at}earthlink.net

This study was conducted to better understand the knowledge reuse process when radical innovation (e.g., experiments to prepare for human exploration of Mars) is expected. The research involved detailing the knowledge reuse process in six case studies varying in degree of innovation. Across the six cases, a six–stage reuse–for–innovation process was identified consisting of three major actions: reconceptualize the problem and approach, including deciding to search for others' ideas to reuse; search–and–evaluate others' ideas to reuse; and develop the selected idea. Findings include (1) the need for an insurmountable gap in performance to stimulate the decision to reuse others' knowledge; (2) the critical importance of an adapter to bridge the idea source and recipient; (3) three layers of search–and–evaluate activities in which the first layer of scanning to find ideas to reuse and the last layer of detailed analysis of ideas are bridged by a layer of brief evaluations of ideas assessing the presence (or absence) of targeted information about each idea; and (4) the differential use of metaknowledge about each idea to facilitate proceeding through each search–and–evaluate layer. In addition, reusers in the more (versus less) innovative cases redefined problems at the outset in nontraditional ways using analogies and extensions, rather than accepting the preexisting problem definition; used a substantially broader search strategy with a greater variety of search methods; and worked more closely with adapters during the latter stages of the reuse process.

Key Words: knowledge management; knowledge transfer; innovation
History: Received: March 1, 2001;

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