Marko Arsjad – What is Knowledge Management?

Hewlett-Packard is a large, successful

company with over $38 billion in 1996

revenues. Its fast annual revenue

growth—approximately 30%—from such a large base

has astounded observers. The company competes in

many markets, including computers and peripheral

equipment, test and measurement devices, electronic

components, and medical devices. It has 112,000

employees and over 600 locations around the world.

HP is known for its relaxed, open culture. All

employees, including the CEO, work in open cubicles.

Many employees are technically-oriented engineers

who enjoy learning and sharing their knowledge. The

company is perceived as being somewhat benevolent

to its employees, and fast growth has obviated the

need for major layoffs. All employees participate in

a profit-sharing program.

The company is also known for its decentralized organizational

structure and mode of operations. Business

units that perform well have a very high degree of

autonomy. There is little organized sharing of information,

resources, or employees across units. HP

managers feel that the strong business-specific focus

brought by decentralization is a key factor in the

firm’s recent success. Although culturally open to

sharing, few business units are willing to invest time

or money in “leveraged” efforts that do not have an

obvious and immediate payback for the unit. It is common, however, for employees to move from

one business unit to another; this mobility makes

possible some degree of informal knowledge transfer

within HP.

In mid-1995 it became apparent that several

knowledge management initiatives were underway in

various HP business units. Some had been in place for

several years; others were just beginning. Noticing

this phenomenon, Bob Walker, HP’s CIO and Vice

President, and Chuck Sieloff, Manager of Information

Systems Services and Technology (ISST), decided to

attempt to facilitate knowledge management at HP

by holding a series of workshops on the topic. Their

idea was to bring together a diverse group of people

within the company who were already doing knowledge

management in some form, or who were interested

in getting started. The corporate ISST group had

previously sponsored similar workshop initiatives in

the areas of reengineering and organizational change

management. Key objectives for the workshops

included the facilitation of knowledge sharing

through informal networking, and the establishment

of common language and management frameworks

for knowledge management. Walker and Sieloff

appointed Joe Schneider, an ISST staff member who

also focused on Web-based systems, to organize

the workshops.

The first workshop was held in October of 1995. An

outside consultant facilitated the meeting, and presented

some proposed definitions and frameworks.

About 20 people attended the first session; 13 were

from corporate units, and the rest from various

business units. Joe Schneider asked participants at

the meeting if they were aware of other knowledge

management initiatives. From this discussion

Schneider compiled a list of more than 20 HP sites

where some form of proactive knowledge management

was underway. Several of the initiatives are

described below.

Trainer’s Trading Post

One knowledge management initiative involves

HP educators. Bruce Karney is a member of the

infrastructure team for the Corporate Education organization,

part of HP’s Personnel function. Karney estimates

that there are more than 2,000 educators or

trainers distributed around HP, most of whom work

within small groups and find it difficult to share

knowledge. About two years ago, in response to complaints

by the education community that “we don’t

know what’s going on,” Karney began work on

approaches to knowledge sharing for HP educators.

He hoped to make the group more of a community;

until this effort, it had no shared history, process, or

tool set.

Using Lotus Notes as the technology vehicle, Karney

established three different “knowledge bases” for

educators to use:

T “Trainer’s Trading Post,” a discussion database on

training topics;

T “Training Library,” a collection of training

documents (e.g., course binders);

T “Training Review,” a “Consumer Reports”

collection of evaluations of training resources.

Training Review never took off; educators were

reluctant to opine online about the worth of course

materials or external providers, and there was no

reward structure for participating. It was therefore

merged with Trainer’s Trading Post. Training Library

did receive many contributions, but as participants

discovered that they could attach materials to submissions

to Trainer’s Trading Post, that knowledge

base became the dominant medium for educator use,

and Karney expects that it will be the sole offering in

the future.

Karney adopted innovative tactics to get submissions

to the knowledge bases. He gave out free Notes

licenses to prospective users. When a new knowledge

base was established, he gave out 3,000 free

airline miles for the first 50 readers and another 500

miles for anyone who posted a submission. Later

promotions involved miles for contributions, for

questions, and for responses to questions. By early

1996, more than two-thirds of the identified educator community had read at least one posting, and more

than a third had submitted a posting or comment

themselves. Still, Karney was frustrated. Despite his

countless attempts with free miles and e-mail and

voice mail exhortations, he still felt the need to

continually scare up fresh contributions. “The participation

numbers are still creeping up,” he notes, “but

this would have failed without an evangelist. Even at

this advanced stage, if I got run over by a beer truck,

this database would be in trouble.”

Building a Network of Experts

Another knowledge project was initiated by the

library function within HP Laboratories, the

company’s research arm. The goal of this project is

to provide a guide to human knowledge resources

within the Labs and, eventually, to other parts of

Hewlett-Packard. If successful, the guide will help to

address a problem identified by a previous director

of the Labs: “If only HP knew what HP knows.”

The directory of HP experts, called Connex, is being

developed by Tony Carrozza, an “Information

Technical Engineer.” He has been working part-time

on the project for almost a year; the system is

scheduled to go into its pilot phase soon. It uses a

Web browser as an interface to a relational database.

The primary content of the database is a set of expert

“profiles,” or guides to the backgrounds and expertise

of individuals who are knowledgeable on particular

topics. By browsing or searching Connex, it will be

easy to find, for example, someone in HP who speaks

German, knows ISDN technology, and has a master’s or PhD in a technical field. Upon finding someone,

the searcher can quickly link to the individual’s home

page if it exists.

One concern Carrozza has is how to create a manageable

list of knowledge categories in the database that

will be widely understood and will accurately reflect

the Labs’ broad universe of knowledge. Carrozza

plans to rely on the experts themselves to furnish

their original knowledge profiles and to maintain

them over time. He expects that this will be a

challenge, and speculated that experts might be given

incentives—for example, Carrozza suggested, “a Dove

Bar for each profile”—to submit and maintain profiles.

As a back-up, a “nag” feature is built into the system

to remind people to update their profiles. Carrozza

also anticipates that there may be problems with the

term “expert”; he is trying to identify less politically

laden terms.

Connex will be implemented initially for the Labs,

but Carrozza hopes that the expert network will eventually

expand throughout all of HP. He knows that

other parts of the company will be developing their

own databases, but he hopes that they will use the

Connex structure. He is already working with the

Corporate Education group described above to create

a network of educators using Connex. He adds, “I

know other people are building expert databases.

I just don’t know who they are.”

Knowledge Management on Product Processes

HP’s Product Processes Organization (PPO) is a corporate

group with the mission of advancing product

development and introduction. It includes such

diverse functions as Corporate Quality, Procurement,

Product Marketing, Safety and Environmental, and

Organizational Change. The Product Generation

Information Systems (PGIS) group serves each of

these functions. Bill Kay, the PPO director, put PGIS

at the center of the PPO organization chart because

he felt that information management needed to

become a core competence of PPO.

As part of that competence, Kay asked Garry Gray,

the manager of PGIS, and Judy Lewis, another PGIS

manager, to begin a knowledge management

initiative. As a “proof of concept” the PPO knowledge

management group developed Knowledge Links, a

Web-based collection of product development knowledge

from the various PPO functions. Consistent with

the philosophy of the knowledge management group,

Knowledge Links contained knowledge contributed

by “knowledge reporters and editors,” who obtained

it through interviews with experts. The system

prototype has been used many times to demonstrate

the concept of knowledge management with PPO

“customers,” but the goal of summarizing knowledge

across PPO proved overly ambitious, and the system

was never built.

The PPO knowledge management group is currently

working on three projects. One involves competitor

information for HP’s Components group. The goal

of the second project is to create a Web-based

interface to primary and secondary research

information. The third system manages international

marketing intelligence. Each of these projects is

being developed in a collaboration between PGIS

and other PPO groups, e.g., Product Marketing and

Change Management. The goal is not for PGIS to manage

knowledge by itself, but rather to facilitate the

process of structuring and disseminating knowledge

through the use of information technology.

Managing Knowledge for the Computer

Dealer Channel

Perhaps one of the earliest initiatives to explicitly

manage knowledge at HP was an effort to capture and

leverage HP product knowledge for the Computer

Products Organization (CPO) dealer channel. It began

in 1985. Technical support for the dealer channel had

previously involved answering phone calls; the business

unit was growing at 40% annually, and calls from

dealers were growing at the same rate. Eventually,

answering all the phone calls would require all the

people in Northern California. HP workers began to

put frequently-asked questions on a dial-up database,

and the number of dealer support calls began to

decline. According to David Akers, who managed the

project, the development group views each support

call as an error.

The system came to be called HP Network News.

It was converted to Lotus Notes and has been

remarkably successful in reducing the number of

calls. One key reason for the system’s effectiveness is

the developers’ close attention to the actual problems

faced by dealers—not their own ideas about what

knowledge is important. Another important factor is

the constant effort by developers to add value to the

knowledge. For example, lists are constantly made of

the most frequently asked questions, frequently

encountered problems, and most popular products.

These lists are publicized and dealers are encouraged

to download the information from the Notes database.

Less valuable information is pruned away. HP

Network News is still going after 10 years, and it has

been a significant factor in the high support ratings

HP receives from its dealers.

Summary

Chuck Sieloff and Joe Schneider are committed to

advancing the state of knowledge management, but in

a decentralized company like Hewlett-Packard, it is

not clear what steps should be taken. They discuss

whether there are actions they could take beyond

facilitating the Knowledge Management Workshop.

They feel that knowledge is already exchanged well

within work groups and even business units, but

there is little support in the culture for sharing across

units. However, for ISST to try to change the culture

just for the purpose of knowledge management seems

like the tail wagging the dog.

Schneider and Sieloff also wonder just how different

managing “knowledge” is from managing information.

Many of the HP initiatives are arguably a mixture of

knowledge and information, and drawing the line

between the two is difficult. Sieloff feels that the

same fact could be either data, information, or

knowledge for different people. Of course, the

various information systems groups at HP have a

great deal of experience at managing data and information.

How relevant is the experience gained in

these areas to problems of knowledge management?

Schneider believes that facilitating knowledge

management at HP can be viewed as a knowledge

management problem. The company has both

internal expertise and external sources of knowledge

on knowledge management. At the corporate level,

Schneider is using the workshops as one mechanism

to understand who needs this knowledge and how

best to transfer it. He also wants to get the workshop

participants involved in an ongoing knowledge

management network that shares best practices and

transfers emerging knowledge.

However, neither Chuck Sieloff nor Joe Schneider has

knowledge management as the only component (or in

Sieloff’s case, even a major component) of his job.

They know that other firms are establishing permanent,

full-time positions overseeing knowledge management

issues at the corporate level—a “Chief

Knowledge Officer,” for example. When Sieloff and

Schneider discuss the concept with regard to HP, they

question whether a corporate knowledge executive

would make sense in such a decentralized company.

The current HP approach, which emphasizes awareness-

building and the development of common

vocabulary and frameworks through workshops,

is a subtle one. The two managers feel it is

appropriate for HP’s culture, but they are always

looking for other techniques and methods that

might be introduced.