Case 2: a pharmaceutical company
An American-owned global pharmaceutical company which
specialized in high margin “lifestyle” drugs aimed to accelerate its internal drug
development processes through overt knowledge management initiatives.
The management committed a substantial amount of political and financial
resources to implement three forms of KM projects, namely: “lessons learned”,
“warehouse” and “electronic café”.
“Lessons” was a highly structured debriefing exercise conducted
by each workgroup at the end of a major drug development process. It was
intended as a method to archive corporate lessons and to prevent the loss of
operational knowledge in the drug development process. “Warehouse” was an
organization-wide groupware populated with content based on the “lessons
learned” debriefings. Its objective was to capture not only problems and
solutions but the details of administrative and decision-making processes.
It had features such as common repositories and discussion forums that
supported coordination and collaboration across workgroups. “Café” was a set
of linked web sites based on the anecdotes of individuals involved in the drug
development programs. It was intended as a platform for self-reflection and
sharing of personal experiences among a small group who had been identified
as organizational innovators. Within “café”, individuals were liberated to digress
from reality and to discuss hypothetical issues or explore radical alternatives.