Knowledge Integration And Innovation

Technology-based firms continue to compete primarily on innovation, and one continuously required to present new solutions to an exacting market. As technological complexity and specialization intensifies, firms increasingly need to integrate and co-ordinate knowledge by means of project groups, diversified organizations, inter-organizational partnerships, and strategic alliances.

Innovation processes have progressively become interdisciplinary, collaborative, inter-organizational, and international, and a firm's ability to synthesize knowledge across disciplines, organizations, and geographical locations has a major influence on its viability and success. This book demonstrates how knowledge integration is crucial in facilitating innovation within modern firms.

This book provides original, detailed empirical studies of prerequisites, mechanisms, and outcomes of knowledge integration processes on several organizational levels, from key individuals, projects, and internal organizations, to collaboration between firms. It stresses the need to understand knowledge integration as a multi-level phenomenon, which requires a broad repertoire of organizational and technical means.

It further clarifies the need for strong internal capabilities for exploiting external knowledge, reveals how costs of knowledge integration affect outcomes and strategic decisions, and discusses the managerial implications of fostering knowledge integration, providing practical guidance and support for managers of knowledge integration in high technology enterprises.

Review: Well written and easily readable ... Managers will profit from the recommendations, if only in the sense to widen their perspectives, and researchers with interests in knowledge management and interface management gain access to a particular stream of knowledge integration research together with some interesting proposals for further study.

Klaus Brockhoff, RD Management This book is an impressive achievement and tribute to the power of multidisciplinary longitudinal research. Through penetrating case studies and systematic literature reviews, the KITE researchers make an outstanding contribution to knowledge integration and innovation in businesses and industries Andrew Van de Ven, University of Minnesota