R&D strategies in emerging economies: Survey results - McKinsey Quarterly - Operations - and the use of knowledge management

R&D strategies in emerging economies: Survey results - McKinsey Quarterly - Operations - Product Development

The interesting piece in this article by McKinsey is the following statements

Another area that respondents agree about is the difficulty of knowledge sharing: 64 percent say their companies are no better than “somewhat effective” at it. The most commonly used collaboration tools are relatively old-fashioned, such as frequent telephone and video conferences (65 percent) and travel for face-to-face meetings (62 percent).

Respondents at companies that are high-performing innovators are somewhat more likely to use central knowledge databases and global communities of practice to share information, in addition to telephones, video, and travel.

The key challenge is that companies in this area are struggling to share knowledge effectively within the organisation to meet the challenges of the new BRIC and other markets. The aim might be to help countries to maximise what they have and look at previous KM practices without social media etc and see what worked well there. The power of story would seem to be a good way of sharing knowledge.

Looking ahead

For companies contemplating a more global R&D footprint, the perceived differences in skills between R&D managers in emerging economies and developed ones should underscore the importance of not overlooking talent and organizational development at the expense of operational best practices during expansion. In our experience, the best innovators in emerging economies excel at both.