The focus on knowledge management is central to Millennium’s strategy, and the purpose of the KM group is to build and maintain a knowledge management platform and to create a vision and plan for developing Millennium’s most critical knowledge bases. Some of these knowledge bases include: biological pathways; biomarkers and their correlates; disease understanding and treatment; small molecules; operations; and patients, providers, and payers. Millennium builds competencies at the interface between people and platform by defining views or “lenses,” improving the usability of systems, driving changes in work practices and behavior, and enabling the full lifecycle of Millennium-specific information content.

Millennium defines a knowledge base as all related, accumulated knowledge and organizational experience, or the sum total of what is available to the organization for decision making. Millennium feels that its knowledge base currently exists in its people, systems, and processes. Millennium admits that, like all companies, its knowledge base has gaps, is fragmented in places, and could be more fully leveraged.

From its existing knowledge, Millennium has built a unique way to make the different knowledge bases cross functional, and has come up with a guide and set of questions to help people narrow their search for information. For example, personnel in biology might consult the operations knowledge base to find out what therapeutic areas have previously worked on a particular gene target. Millennium’s commercial organization may consult the biology knowledge base to find out if there are any recent articles written about the properties of a new drug. And personnel in the drug group might consult the disease knowledge base to find the trial results for drugs similar to one currently under optimization. By looking at how different groups will need to draw upon and contribute to each knowledge base, Millennium is building a blueprint for knowledge management development.