Innovation needs and strategies differ among the cases studied, but all the study partners value knowledge, can articulate how it relates to innovation, and seek to manage it better.

Boeing Rocketdyne defines knowledge as a synthesis of information, experiences, processes, and understanding within an individual and cultural context. Boeing Rocketdyne defines KM as a systematic approach to generating process and product knowledge and organizing and retaining the process and product knowledge so that it can be effectively applied to product improvements and future products. The KM objectives are to improve quality, lower costs, and enhance new process development in support of new program and customer requirements.

Millennium, like most pharmaceutical companies, is in a race to reduce the cost and time-to-market for new drugs. Millennium is seeking to increase R&D productivity, reduce reliance on blockbusters, and increase therapeutic competitiveness. Millennium is responding via three strategies: a major focus on personalized medicine, productivity enhancement, and a growing and sustainable pipeline of breakthrough products.

For Millennium, the unmasking of the genome has provided enormous opportunities in drug discovery, but also has unleashed vast information from disparate sources such as alliance partners and scientific literature. The goal of KM at Millennium is to “enable the flow of information and knowledge across the company—aligning technologies, processes, and incentives to create an environment in which people have the information they need to make better, faster decisions.”

Both NASA and JPL missions require the use of past knowledge and experience, new approaches, and fine-tuned collaboration and knowledge sharing. NASA and JPL believe knowledge and its management are critical to capture and integrate lessons learned, in order to manage the risks associated with space exploration and human space flight, to manage the specialized knowledge of its scientists and engineers, to mitigate the loss of knowledge through retirement, and to be able to share knowledge with the public.

In the case of 3M, Chairman and CEO Jim McNerney presented the company with his 2X/3X challenge. He wants to see two times the number of ideas at the front end of the process and three times the number of winners resulting from the process. Getting these ideas will require 3M to intensify its support for idea generation, as well as the productive conversion of those ideas to successful products. This has led to a desire to take the historical focus on knowledge sharing in R&D, intensify it, and expand the concept of KM and knowledge sharing to other parts of the business, including sales.

For the World Bank, lending alone cannot reduce poverty. Knowledge sharing allows new actors into the dialogue about development and provides global access to development know-how, which could change the poverty equation. The goals for the World Bank in sharing knowledge are increased speed (faster cycle times on solutions), improved quality (better quality service), increased innovation (testing new approaches), and reduced costs (eliminate unnecessary processes).