TABLE OF CONTENTS Patrick S. W. Fong
This chapter examines the underlying processes and their interrelationships in knowledge creation in multidisciplinary project teams. While some organizations are beginning to seek more sophisticated organizational structures, or train personnel in many managerial, creative or teamwork skills, many are still likely to have difficulty in being continuously innovative. They may be highly effective in exploiting existing knowledge in the short term, but there is likely to be relatively little long-term learning and knowledge creation, particularly if individuals and knowledge are isolated and fragmented (Dachler, 1992). Bringing the collective knowledge of members in teams to bear on serving customers or clients is practically important because knowledge is a source of competitive advantage (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990). Knowledge-creating skills in particular are important as they are required to create new products or processes, or to enhance existing ones (Leonard-Barton, 1995). Learning must be integrated with current tasks, not only to meet present goals, but also to develop and retain knowledge for future organizational needs.
Several researchers have described new product development as a knowledge-intensive activity (Iansiti and MacCormack, 1997). New product development often involves cross-functional linkages, where different participants join a team with differing viewpoints. Such teams are often characterized according to the risk and synergy resulting from their interaction with other team members (Jassawalla and Sashittal, 1998). Morrison and Kennedy (1996) suggest that this interaction brings in the need to organize, integrate, filter, condense and annotate the collaborative data...
