Challenges of Knowledge and Information Management during New Product Introduction: Experiences from a Finnish Multinational Company

Eeva Järvenpää, Miia-Johanna Kopra, Minna Lanz

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    1 Citation (Scopus)
    61 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Efficient knowledge and information management is essential for companies to prosper in the rapidly changing global environment. This article presents challenges of a large Finnish multinational company relating to their current knowledge and information management practices and systems. The focus is on New Product Introduction (NPI) process. The study is based on interviews and facilitated workshops in the Research and Development (R&D) and Production departments. Furthermore, the identified challenges are reflected to the findings presented in knowledge and information management literature. The results gained from the company case study were well in line with the findings in the literature. Three main topics, which can be generalized to cause challenges for knowledge and information management in most companies, were recognized: 1) Issues related to human behavior, individual characteristics and capabilities, different backgrounds, and professional vocabulary; 2) Codifying tacit knowledge into explicit information, which can be saved to company information system; 3) Lack of interoperability between different information systems. The study provides the management of the case company, and other similar organizations, focus points while seeking for better knowledge and information management. From a scientific perspective, the main contribution of this article is to give practical examples of how the theoretical findings presented in literature manifest themselves in real industrial practices.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)285
    Number of pages308
    JournalInterdisciplinary Journal of Information, Knowledge, and Management
    Volume11
    Publication statusPublished - 2016
    Publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Keywords

    • Knowledge management
    • Information management
    • Knowledge creation
    • Knowledge sharing
    • Information sharing
    • Information flows
    • Case study

    Publication forum classification

    • Publication forum level 1

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