As an example, faced with the growth of media contents available online for free and the resulting decreasing sales, incumbent media firms can work to evolve and create an improved product (such as high-definition (HD) or 3D movies). But they can also try to revolutionize their industry, completely change their business model and aggressively move online through for example video-on-demand offer, social networks or file-sharing services. In this second case higher long-term profits might be at stake but also higher uncertainty.
In contrast to “problematic” search, “slack” search behaviors may emerge when the level of organizational stress is not too high (see Chapter 4) and when sufficient resources (time, money and management attention) are available to be invested in new solutions to improve performance. As it is not directly issue driven, such an approach may induce actions in areas that do not directly affect performance – for example, by mobilizing the tacit knowledge of the organization (see the next section). Slack search behaviors can also be stimulated through the use of creativity techniques, such as brainstorming, using metaphors and word associations, or adverse thinking.
The third type of search behavior, “institutional” search, is the type carried out by specific organizational units such as corporate R&D (see the previous section) or marketing research departments. For these departments, the core activity is to identify new opportunities. They are often not tightly linked to business performance, either in terms of purpose or timing.
Institutional search can also happen through dedicated opportunity aggregation processes such as open idea portals or business plan competitions. In this case, the organization puts in place dedicated processes allowing any employee (or some specific subgroups) to develop and submit innovative ideas. While these tools have been implemented in many organizations and regions, they require careful design and implementation in terms of submission gathering, coaching and feedback as well as project ownerships.
It must be stressed that such opportunity aggregation processes often have to rely on effective facilitators who act as contact points, gatekeepers or mediators. Those are people within the organization who can, formally or informally, act as repositories of knowledge, know who else possesses useful knowledge, have the skills required to make connections, and can therefore act as legitimate go-between for different parts of an organization. They can, for example, foster the creation of communities of practice across and outside organizational boundaries.
Successfully implementing such an approach therefore goes far beyond setting up the underlying web systems and processes involved. In particular, understanding what is not relevant as an opportunity and what is very new but still relevant as firm is often not obvious to most employees. They risk therefore either clogging the process with irrelevant submissions, or on the contrary suggest only marginal improvements.
Similarly, being able to synthesize, submit and present a new idea (a short business plan) in a meaningful way is not an innate skill: it requires training and support. As a consequence, these opportunity aggregation processes tend to have a limited direct effect on corporate performance. They can, however, have strong positive indirect effects on the internal atmosphere, boosting entrepreneurship, networking and external reputation.
Having reviewed the three types of approach that firms can implement in their search for new knowledge, in the next section we shall discuss the issue of managing that knowledge effectively.
Managing new knowledge
organizational learning is fostered in organizations where individuals not only have the capacity (as individuals or as a community) to invent new behaviors, but also have the ability to move around, and where there is an established process for the transmission of a skill from the individual to the