Digital platforms as knowledge artifacts for clusters of SMEs

Digital platforms as knowledge artifacts for clusters of SMEs A. Ravarini, L. Cremona KITA workshop, IC3K conference Lisbon, 14.11.2015

Article developed under the DiDIY project funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644344

KITA workshop - Lisbon 15.11.2015

outline • Research motivation • Research aim • Key concepts • Digital platforms • Industrial clusters • Knowledge artifacts

• Methodology • Discussion • Digital clusters • DP as a KITA

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Research motivation • business value of KM not anymore an issue amongst IS academics and practitioners but • studies about KMS mainly focus on a single firm, ie KM at the intra-organizational level exception: inter-organizational supply chains • industrial clusters, a type of inter-organizational system, is a major theme in strategic management research and EU initiatives so • how KMS bring value in clusters, which heavily rely on knowledge sharing?

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Research aim • to exploit the concept of knowledge artifact to describe the enabling role of a Digital Platform as a tool for knowledge sharing in a cluster • to understand what are the properties that can make a knowledge artifact relevant for the business value. • Key concepts • Artifact: • Domain: • Research lens:

Digital platform Cluster of enterprises Knowledge Sharing and its impact on business value

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Social networks à Digital platforms • Social networks (Ellison et al. 2013) community

comm. mgr

• have uniquely identifiable profiles • can consume, produce, and/or

interact with streams of usergenerated content

App

• can publicly articulate connections

• “complementary assets that

companies and individuals can use and consume to develop complementary products, technologies and services”

platform

• Digital Platforms (Muegge 2013)

Enterprises’ data SW HW

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Industrial Clusters and Digital Platforms • Clusters: “geographic concentrations of interconnected

companies and institutions in a particular field” (Porter 1998) • From an IS point of view, clusters are a kind of Institutions inter-organizational entities: IOIS for Collaboration

Government entities

• IOIS widely studied in IS

(Kumar et al 1996; Kaufman 1966; Barret and Konsynski 1982; Cash 1985; Johnston et al.1988; Meier et al. 1991; Malhotra et al. 2005; Chi et al. 2008; Romano et al. 2010)

•

Firms

focus: effects of IT on firms performances within supply chains (Chang et al. 2011; Cheng 2011; Venkatesh et al. 2012)

• role of online platforms for SMEs joint activities (Konstadakapulos 2005; Bastías et al. 2014)

• supplier-customer relationships in a cluster (Kumar et al. 1996; Bakos et al. 2008, Im et al. 2008)

• assessing the value of digital platforms: important

and complex: competition and co-design, besides supplier-customer issues

Research Centers

(Yoo et al. 2010; Yoo et al. 2012; Henfridsson et al. 2013)

• industrial clusters enable innovation and competitive

advantage by fostering collaboration among firms thanks to a better knowledge and information sharing among users (Pavlou et al. 2010)

Financial Institutions

Components of a cluster (Solvell, Lindiqvist e Ketels, 2009)

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Knowledge artifacts • Knowledge Artifact (KA) representations (Cabitza Locoro 2014)

• representational perspective: knowledge as an entity • a KA is a representation of certain amount of information that is

inextricably related (on the physical side) to the physical supports (paper, hard disks, KMS) through which it is memorized and managed, and (on the abstract side) to its semantics and possibly its ontology

• situated perspective: knowledge related to processes such as innovation, decision making and learning. • a KA “cannot be decoupled, nor generalized, from the specific setting or

Community of Practice, or from the boundary between communities where the KA is supposed to play its role of knowledge facilitator and transfer medium.”

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Knowledge sharing, KMS and business value • Knowledge Sharing: strategic and organizational perspectives • Preliminary systematic literature review on “joint activities”, “knowledge

management systems”, “business value of IT”. 110 papers à 60 articles were reviewed • Joint activities: activities performed between different organizations involved in alliances or collaborating jointly on the market (Kent, 1991) do not explicate which kind of activity, if performed jointly, leads to a better competitive position on the market • don’t take into account the role of IT as potential enabler of new joint activities between firms •

• KMS: IT-based systems coupled with knowledge-sharing practices that support

knowledge management efforts within an organization (Alavi and Leidner 2001) •

focused on the adoption and usage of KMS, the mechanisms that facilitate and inhibit the knowledge and information exchange limitedly to an intra-organizational environment

• Business value of IT: impact of IT on organizational performance measures such

as productivity enhancement, profitability improvement, cost reduction, competitive advantage, inventory reduction (Devaraj and Kohli, 2003). •

focused on the effect on firms’ performances provided by specific IT tools at the intraorganizational level and within supply-chains

KITA workshop - Lisbon 15.11.2015

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Research framework Joint Activities Capabilities of a Digital Platform

Performance of the firm

Strength of interpersonal relationships

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Methodology • Multiple-case study methodology

• Questionnaire based on the research framework • 17 interviews in 6 firms belonging to the Lombardy Energy Cluster

• Empirical domain: Lombardy Energy Cluster (services and products supply for the production of electricity) • late 2012: 27 firms of the Energy Cluster (a cluster of SMEs located in the

Lombardy Region in Italy, specialized in) started a project to develop a Digital Platform with the purpose of improving internationalization • 2015: objectives achieved • KS about internationalization through the DP • every firm has an account for the platform and a profile page describing in detail

competences and products • number of firms has increased from 27 to all firms inside the cluster (almost 100)

• results achieved thanks to a systematic community management strategy:

story telling about events, trade fairs and events promoted within the Energy Cluster territory

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Results Capabilities of the digital platform • The community of the cluster showed a high resistance to the usage of the DP, during an initial transitory phase of limited usage • information exchange the DP is effective: • firms on line interaction is based on natural language, • coherence between the knowledge shared inside the cluster (mainly referred to products and services)

and the one available through the DP.

Joint activities • joint activities are seen with diffidence: a negative attitude smoothly decreased in parallel with the increase of usage of DP, generating a virtuous circle towards joint activities. Strength of interpersonal connections • usage of the DP reinforced the strength of the interpersonal connections • even if they did not experience any joint activity before Performance of the firms • positive impact of the DP on the internal operational efficiency. • DP as a tool that could boost the growth in new markets • DP influenced the selection of new suppliers and vendors • DP for the Internationalization: better understanding of new and emerging markets

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Discussion – digital platforms and clusters • the usage of a digital platform contributed to reinforce connections between the firms • knowledge sharing within the cluster enhanced by mechanism of information and knowledge filtering and selection that positively impacted on competitive advantage • success of of the DP related not only to generating competitive advantage, but also to its long-term sustainability

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Discussion - KA • the DP in a cluster: an emblematic Knowledge Artifact following the situated perspective • knowledge shared through the platform strongly intertwined with the

specific characteristics of the firms, and the employees using the DP • the evolution in the employees approach to the DP determined an increased effectiveness of the KA

• the three identified constructs composing the research framework (IT capabilities, joint activities, strength of interpersonal connections) are candidate variables to describe and possibly qualify a KA according to the situated perspective • the research extended previous studies: the KA affects the business value of firms, enforcing interpersonal connection and enabling joint activities

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Limitations and further research • sample of 6 firms among the 27 firms using the DP • the research considered only a specific cluster • Industry bias • Regional bias • Infrastructural bias

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Digital platforms as knowledge artifacts for clusters of SMEs A. Ravarini, L. Cremona KITA workshop, IC3K conference Lisbon, 14.11.2015

Article developed under the DiDIY project funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 644344