Although online social media have achieved spectacular success in some instances, the design of such systems remains an art. In some specialized areas, such as online deliberation systems for participatory democracy, experiences from many projects have been reported in the research literature. Designers can benefit from knowledge accumulated from these experiences. However, the knowledge is dispersed and not organized for ready access by practicing professionals. This thesis proposes a framework for structuring and codifying design knowledge from published studies to help designers make design choices that will attain design objectives.

Abstract A PROCESS TO REUSE EXPERIENCES VIA NARRATIVES AMONG SOFTWARE PROJECT MANAGERS By STACIE CLARK PETTER APRIL, 2006 Committee Chair: Dr. Vijay Vaishnavi Major Department: Computer Information Systems Software project management is a complex process requiring extensive planning, effective decision-making, and proper monitoring throughout the course of a project. Unfortunately, software project managers rarely capture and reuse the knowledge gained during a project on subsequent projects. To enable the repetition of prior successes and avoidance of previous mistakes, I propose that software project managers can improve their management abilities by reusing their own and others’ past experiences with written narratives. I use multiple methodologies – including literature review, grounded theory, design science research, and experimentation – to create a process for software project managers to reuse knowledge gained through experiences on software projects. In the literature review, I examine relevant research areas to inspire ideas on how to reuse knowledge via written narratives in software project management. Interviews with software project managers, analyzed using grounded theory, provide insight into the current challenges of reusing knowledge during a project. I leverage design science research methodology to develop a process of experience reuse that incorporates narratives and wikis to enable software project managers to share their experiences using written narratives. Experimentation evaluates whether the process developed using the design science research methodology improves the current knowledge reuse practices of software project managers.

Although there is a large body of literature exploring the topic of knowledge management, most of the focus is on its application to industry. Seldom has a research priority been placed on the use of knowledge management in a university setting. This research investigated the impact of applying a knowledge management system -- Knowledge Net -- to the students in a course about designing learning activities with interactive multimedia at the University of Waterloo. A design experiment method was employed. Eight students were engaged in the study. The purpose of the design experiment was to investigate the students' response towards Knowledge Net, their ability to absorb and apply the knowledge gained from Knowledge Net, and the incentives that encouraged them to share and retrieve knowledge from the system. The findings will be helpful for the people who want to practice knowledge management in a university setting. The study results revealed that initially students had a positive attitude towards the potential value of the information in Knowledge Net. However, at the end of their design experiment, they reported a low expectation that students could learn from and apply the information in Knowledge Net. The reasons varied. It may be that they failed to truly understand the knowledge or to trust the source of information. Many students habitually prefer face-to-face contact with their counterparts to computers. As a result, the study suggested a few ways to improve the absorption of knowledge and to enhance the behavior of knowledge sharing. These new directions include: arranging personal meetings between the providers and recipients of knowledge, playing videos of other students sharing knowledge on Knowledge Net, increasing the level of encouragement and guidance from the instructor on use of the system, and applying situated learning and case studies. In addition, grading students on their use of Knowledge Net may be a useful incentive to help students make more effective use of Knowledge Net.

Denna rapport har haft som uppgift att studera hur organisationer ska gå tillväga för att utvinna och värdera kunskap ifrån sitt befintliga informationssystem. Detta är en mycket viktig process då kunskap har blivit en av de absolut viktigaste resurserna för organisationer över hela världen. Utvinningen är viktig att effektivisera så att inte organisationer förlorar viktig kunskap när de avvecklar sitt gamla informationssystem för att bygga ett nytt och bättre system. Samtidigt är det viktigt att värdera ifall den utvunna kunskapen är relevant för organisationen. Ifall den inte är relevant så ska den inte sparas utan kasseras för att öka effektiviteten.   För att undersöka detta problem så har en kvalitativ fallstudie genomförts hos ett medelstort företag som heter Colorex Sweden AB. Resultatet ifrån denna studie blev två stycken matriser som förklarar hur en organisation ska gå till väga för att utvinna och värdera sin kunskap.

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During the practical use of Design Automation (DA) System in a company, the lack of assistance from either documentation work about the whole system or management of knowledge could bring out some obstacles when engineers reuse existing knowledge and information. The purpose of this project is to explore an approach of documentation and knowledge management in DA System. The study is mainly based on the actual case of seat heater DA system developed by JTH. Based on preset functional requirement for the potential solution, several principles and methods of documentation and knowledge management are introduced such as MOKA, CommonKADS, SysML and PVM. A number of useful applications such as DRed (Design Rationale Editor), PC PACK, Sementic MediaWiki and Product Model Manager became candidates solutions for this project. The selection of final approach was Sementic MediaWiki, and this is based on the comparison of the result from evaluation of functionality of each application. Due to specificity of documentation on the DA system, the “process based” approa­ch­ had been used for structuring system included knowledge instead of using a systematical method like either MOKA or CommonKADS completely. Setting up interconnection between different knowledge objects was one of the most important tasks in this project because it enables capturing and retrieving of knowledge. Sementic MediaWiki, a powerful text representative and web-based tool has been used as a platform of representing the whole knowledge and information. With its implementation, the performance of Sementic MediaWiki had been tested accor­ding to the preset functional requirement. After a slight refine process to the solution, the satisfactory result had been achieved, and also proved the applicability of Sementic Wiki in such kind of project.

Although there is a large body of literature exploring the topic of knowledge management, most of the focus is on its application to industry. Seldom has a research priority been placed on the use of knowledge management in a university setting. This research investigated the impact of applying a knowledge management system -- Knowledge Net -- to the students in a course about designing learning activities with interactive multimedia at the University of Waterloo. A design experiment method was employed. Eight students were engaged in the study. The purpose of the design experiment was to investigate the students' response towards Knowledge Net, their ability to absorb and apply the knowledge gained from Knowledge Net, and the incentives that encouraged them to share and retrieve knowledge from the system. The findings will be helpful for the people who want to practice knowledge management in a university setting. The study results revealed that initially students had a positive attitude towards the potential value of the information in Knowledge Net. However, at the end of their design experiment, they reported a low expectation that students could learn from and apply the information in Knowledge Net. The reasons varied. It may be that they failed to truly understand the knowledge or to trust the source of information. Many students habitually prefer face-to-face contact with their counterparts to computers. As a result, the study suggested a few ways to improve the absorption of knowledge and to enhance the behavior of knowledge sharing. These new directions include: arranging personal meetings between the providers and recipients of knowledge, playing videos of other students sharing knowledge on Knowledge Net, increasing the level of encouragement and guidance from the instructor on use of the system, and applying situated learning and case studies. In addition, grading students on their use of Knowledge Net may be a useful incentive to help students make more effective use of Knowledge Net.

In order to achieve competitive advantage, organisations have to be strategic in their knowledge management. This specifically concerns the management of tacit knowledge, which is known as the intangible type of knowledge. Without an effective strategy for this, organisations stand the risk of losing valuable knowledge and expertise when employees leave the organisation. Research on how to manage tacit knowledge is limited. Therefore, this thesis has investigated the possibility of using organisational storytelling as a tool to manage tacit knowledge. Hence, the purpose with this thesis is to investigate whether organisational storytelling can be used as a strategy to manage tacit knowledge. This has been examined through a case study at SCA Packaging Sweden, which is a rare example of an organisation, which uses storytelling to share knowledge. Qualitative interviews and organisational stories have been analysed in order to investigate how storytelling can be used to create, retain and transfer tacit knowledge. The data collected has also been used to determine if organisational storytelling is effective when managing tacit knowledge.   From our analysis we could conclude that SCA Packaging Sweden’s usage of organisational storytelling creates, retains, and transfers knowledge within the organisation. In addition, our analysis has shown that the stories are rich in tacit knowledge. We can therefore argue that organisational storytelling can be an effective strategy to manage tacit knowledge.

I dagens samhälle blir det alltmer viktigt för företag att ta tillvara på medarbetarnas kunskap och kompetens. Företagskulturen blir en viktig del i arbetet med att skapa utrymme för individernas lärande och företagets utveckling. Knowledge management är ett verktyg som underlättar arbetet med att skapa, organisera och dela medarbetarnas kunskaper. Syfte: Syftet med den här studien är att granska ett företag som arbetar med knowledge management, och se hur konceptet bidrar till kunskapsspridning och lärande. Vi vill undersöka hur Företaget har implementerat idéerna, och på vilket sätt detta påverkar de anställdas kunskap kompetens och lärande. Vidare vill vi även se vilka utmaningar som förekommer i skapandet av ett kunskapsdelande företag. Metod: Vi genomförde kvalitativa intervjuer med sex personer som alla är involverade i arbetet med knowledge management på Företaget. Därefter har vi analyserat de empiriska resultaten utifrån vald teori och tidigare forskning. Slutsats: Studiens resultat visade att Företaget delar kunskap genom att dokumentera och lagra kunskap i databaser, genom kommunikation i interaktiva communities och nätverk samt genom personligt samarbete i arbetet. Vidare kom vi fram till att de anställdas olika kompetenser stärks och att kunskap synliggörs och utvecklas tack vare knowledge management. Konceptet bidrar även till lärande genom reflektion och utvärdering av sina egna och andras kunskaper. Slutligen visade studien att knowledge management för med sig många utmaningar och att den största är att förändra företagskulturen för att kunna bli ett helt och hållet kunskapsdelande företag.

Background: The term Open Innovation describes a phenomenon where organizations are no longer solely relying on internal R&D to innovate technologies that they then would bring to market. Instead, firms are looking outside for ideas or working with other organizations to develop technologies in order to capitalize on efficiencies of existing knowledge, reduce investment risks and increase speed to market. We identified a need to analyze the existing open innovation adoption frameworks in order to track similarities and differences so that we could create a new framework which is more comprehensive. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to create a framework for the analysis of the open innovation adoption process which is based on organizational change and other relevant streams of research. In order to do this we were to find answers to the following research questions: 1) How can organizational change theory be used to analyze the movement from a closed to open innovation strategy? 2) In addition to organizational change theory, which research streams should be considered when analyzing the open innovation adoption process? 3) To what extent does our new framework provide an adequate foundation for analyzing the open innovation adoption process at SCA Hygiene Products? Results: Our new framework is meant for the analysis of open innovation adoption process. The framework helps researchers to analyze how different organizations have adopted open innovation based on the four research streams that we have analyzed. Our framework includes aspects of organizational change theory, knowledge management, networks and managerial roles. Key Words: open innovation adoption, organizational change, knowledge management, networks, SCA