Global leader for communications and electronics was losing its leadership position due to an engineering-dominated culture and the inability to understand consumer markets. The Internet and rapid consumer adoption of wireless electronics had blindsided the company, which found itself unable to bring to market products that excited the consumer market.
Played key role in adding market-oriented e-business thread to KM engagement with internal focus: introduced to the team the link between e-business and knowledge, adding dynamism to the engagement. Identified engineering culture disconnect with company's sudden position in consumer limelight, and illustrated the necessity to adopt a consumer-focused initiative around knowledge. Advanced the idea that the company had to develop a new kind of knowledge to enable it to rapidly develop consumer knowledge with which to infuse engineering and marketing teams. Designed rapidly deployable KM dashboard prototype to deliver knowledge to client management via user-configurable interface. Created iterative, three-stage life cycle plan: 1) pilot launch with small highly motivated user community to provide real-time user research and to develop client champions; 2) a rapid scale-up and promotion, largely driven by client champions, that featured configured "knowledge templates" designed for targeted "bowling pin" user groups; 3) launch spin-off communities in which client could create original content.
