Managing the Knowledge Landscape of an MNC: Knowledge Networking at Ericsson, by Mats G. Magnusson.

Managing the Knowledge Landscape of an MNC: Knowledge Networking at Ericsson, by Mats G. Magnusson.

There are 7 different strategy knowledge networking initiatives in Ericsson

1. Knowledge networking for network design/ network process improvement (KStool):
- Provides support and a contact network through three basic services included in the
program: human networking, library service, and net-based group activity.
- Let users can access experience reports and notes from other users, make more easily
finding solutions to problems they encounter.
- Organized in three communities: radio access network, core network and transmission.
Interaction mainly takes place virtually, but sometimes the different user communities are
brought together to strengthen the relationships between the users.
- The users are network planners and service technicians at Ericsson worldwide.

2. Ericsson System Architecture Program (ESAP)
- Brings some of Ericsson’s most skilled system architects together on regular basis and lets
them share knowledge with each other in order to facilitate inter-project learning, avoid
redundant development work, and induce innovation.
- The programme consists of four parts: technical training and development of interpersonal
skills, networking, mentoring and job rotation.
- The technical training sessions usually take place at well-known universities and include
presentations by leading authorities in relevant scientific and technical fields.
- Each participant in ESAP is supposed to stay with the programme for 5 years. Almost all
interaction takes place face-to-face.
- The users are system architects at Ericsson worldwide

3. Competence Groups
- A total of 14 Competence Groups, each with one participant from every flow control centre,
have been formed around the different functions involved in the order fulfilment process.
- Facilitated the implementation of a global change programme.
- To assure each flow control centre had the capability to implement suggested
improvements and additionally to create commonality between flow control centres
around the world by sharing process knowledge.
- Kept after the change programme and are today a part of the regular business activities.
- The users are Personnel at Ericsson Flow Control centres.

4. ePartnership (this is not the official name, but is used for confidentiality reasons)
- A joint e-business platform for Ericsson and one of its main customers.
- The shared portal include the interaction between marketing and sales, planning and
engineering, supply and project management, implementation, operations and
maintenance, and management.
- The most used features in ePartnership are product manuals, joint collaboration spaces
and online ordering. By using a joint collaboration space, inter-company teams working
with tasks that demand intense interaction and shared documentation can create an arena
to which only project members have access.
- The users are sales and purchasing personnel, and designers within Ericsson and one key
customer.

5. Experience Engine
- A call-centre function to which all employees at Ericsson Software Technology can turn
with any kind of job-related questions.
- The requests are received by one of five experienced knowledge brokers, whose task is to
answer the question directly, when possible, or make sure that the person with the inquiry
gets in contact with someone in the brokers’ personal contact network who can provide an
answer.
- The knowledge brokers help people to tap into existing networks of specialists and
communities in order to get a very quick answer to their questions.
- The users are all employee categories at Ericsson Software Technology.

6. Knowledge management system at Intracom (KMS)
- IT tool for software designers and system architects working at the engineering
department at Intracom.
- System is based on Autonomy’s ‘Portal-in-a-box’, a ready-to-use package for the
Autonomy search engine.
- Aims to provide easy access to technical knowledge by
1) a search function using active agents that alert the user when new documents within a
chosen area are added to chosen sources;
2) channels consisting of dynamic knowledge maps that categorize certain kinds of
documents automatically; and
3) ‘Autonomy active knowledge’, a function which dynamically monitors the typing of texts
and tries to find relevant, matching documents in the index.
- The users are software designers and system architects at Ericsson Intracom.

7. XPERTiSE
- Structured approach to the design and implementation of a number of communities of
practice.
- The different communities are found within both technology and business domains and
have very different foci for example configuration management, Mobile Internet
applications, Java Tool Enterprise Edition, and knowledge management.
- The users are managers, designers, researchers, specialists and business developers at
Ericsson Research Canada


From the above we can see that the knowledge networking initiatives are all very different when it comes to design, user groups, interaction mode and management.

The number of topic- or profession- based knowledge nuclei, consisting of communities of knowing in its stricter sense, or by other groups of people with an explicit knowledge focus and the dynamic knowledge directories are the two important components in the knowledge initiatives.

Basically, knowledge sharing culture at Ericsson is to be very positive. But, the more troublesome issues almost exclusively regard the lack of time and the absence of good incentives and rewards for the sharing and reuse of knowledge, which all negatively impact the motivation for searching and sharing knowledge. The significant challenges to handle for Ericsson are in terms of design of user groups in terms of extension and focus, the role of management in KN initiatives and the promotion of knowledge sharing behavior.