Fostering knowledge mode conversion in new product development environment

Abstract

The creation of new knowledge that comes from Knowledge Mode Conversion (KMC) activities improves New Product Development (NPD) activities. However, there is still limited understanding of "how" a Knowledge Mode Conversion activity varies using collaborative and conversational technologies to improve product development performance. The main contribution of this research is to establish a set of indicators that can be used as guides to help identify effective Knowledge Mode Conversion activities that can be useful for organizations whose performance rely upon effective new product development activities. These indicators are obtained evaluating and comparing documents stored in a Product Data Management System (PDM) for differing levels of semantic significance, applying Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). This provides a linkage between New Knowledge creation and the development of Capabilities for KMC, and a better understanding of "how" design teams improve their performance. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.