(3) Use knowledge champions to create and update directories for appropriate knowledge centers.
Knowledge champions can create and sustain directories for the knowledge centers that are relevant and meaningful to potential users and contributors. They work with innovators and opinion leaders to institutionalize and codify new knowledge in a way that will be useful and understood by organizational users. We envision knowledge champions as having wide networks within the organization, particularly communicating with other knowledge champions to introduce flexibility into the organizational memory system. By maintaining open communication with other knowledge champions and opinion leaders, they can codify or institutionalize new knowledge according to the needs of different users and create an effective central directory used by knowledge centers within the organization.
Bierly and Chakrabarti (1996) suggest that firms with critical knowledge can use related knowledge more effectively. They also contend that a "broader knowledge base" consisting of multiple knowledge centers results in increased strategic flexibility and adaptability to environmental changes. Henderson and Cockburn (1994) also demonstrated that "the ability to integrate different knowledge streams and competence in a discipline are linked to higher performance". For example, in company A, their pharmaceutical division might primarily use one knowledge center while their biotechnology division might primarily use another. However, by creating links to their different knowledge streams via a central directory, they can tap into new trends, processes, or ideas from different people and from different sources. Thus, the role of knowledge champions in managing these different knowledge centers and the directory can potentially lead to performance improvements. "Technology companies gain a competitive advantage by being first to market with new and innovative products and success is dependent on being able to rapidly implement innovative ideas" (Tom Gruber, CTO and co-founder of Intraspect. From: PR Newswire, Tuesday, April 17, 2001).
Anand et al. (1998) address the issue of managing this accumulated knowledge. They contend that in turbulent environments, more and more information and knowledge is needed to remain competitive. Furthermore, they assert that information in these turbulent environments is subject to rapid obsolescence. Thus, the role of the knowledge champion becomes critical in managing both the relevance of the incoming knowledge as well as the recency and relevance of the accumulated information and knowledge contained within the organizational memory. Appleyard (1996) further shows that knowledge managers facilitate the internalization of external information by actively gathering it from the innovators or other employees and institutionalizing/internalizing it into organizational memory. Her example was of engineers "who are notorious for their reluctance to document their work". Thus, "the internalization of externally gathered knowledge is neglected".