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248 Chapter 7

Box 7.2
An example: Buckman Labs

Buckman Labs is a specialty chemical company serving the pulp and paper, water treat-
ment, leather, coatings, agricultural, and wood treatment industries. Its core competency
is its ability to create and manufacture innovative solutions to control the growth of
microorganisms. Buckman ’ s expertise also spans specialty chemicals such as microbicides,
scale inhibitors, corrosion inhibitors, polymers, dispersants, and defoamers. Evaluated in
1990 by Goldman Sachs, Buckman had a market value $175 million higher than its asset
value. The difference owes a lot to the company ’ s focus on KM and knowledge transfer as
effective tools to improve and sustain its competitive advantage. They saw the need for a
system that would facilitate growth in the value of knowledge that existed within the
company. The best brains in the company on a particular topic were not necessarily in
the US, but spread out around the eighty offi ces worldwide. Hence, a system was needed
to facilitate communication between sister companies so that the collective knowledge
and understanding of the entire organization could be brought to bear on any problem.
The resulting acceleration of knowledge would lead to a strategic advantage based on the
leverage of internal as opposed to external knowledge. This thinking culminated in the
Knowledge Transfer Department. Its goals were to accelerate the accumulation and
dissemination of knowledge by all Buckman Labs ’ associates worldwide, to provide easy
and rapid access to Buckman Labs ’ global knowledge bases, and to eliminate time and
space constraints in communication. The department was given a budget of about $8
million.
The primary tool employed by Buckman to enable employees to share knowledge is
called KNetix, the Buckman Laboratory Knowledge Network. KNetix is an interconnected
system of knowledge bases used by Buckman associates worldwide to share knowledge
electronically and to collaborate closely with each other, unfettered by time and distance.
The principal component of KNetix is Tech Forum, a private bulletin board that only
Buckman associates are allowed to access. An employee in Malaysia needing information
about a water treatment process can post a query to the bulletin board in the evening,
and the next morning fi nd answers from a researcher in microbiology based in the US
offi ce or from a fi eld engineer in South Africa. This method of knowledge sharing recog-
nizes that no single person can possibly know everything about a topic, and that knowl-
edge is generally decentralized in the heads of many people, not just in single subject
matter expert ’ s head.
Employees are encouraged to both solve their own problems and to provide solutions
to others ’ questions on Tech Forum. The top 150 people from around the world who
were rated as top level performers in the Tech Forum with respect to answering questions
are brought to the company ’ s headquarters each year and presented with a state-of-the-art
fully loaded IBM laptop by the CEO. Such incentives help boost employees ’ desire to
participate in knowledge sharing. Besides the Tech Forum, other media such as virtual
conference rooms, libraries, and e-mail help employees to access knowledge rapidly.