Innovation and sharing of knowledge in learning organization

Resumen

Promoting collaboration and knowledge sharing through informal networks of relationships is increasingly important for organizations to compete in the areas of knowledge and innovation. Supporting awareness – to be aware of the ideas, knowledge, and activities of the others - has been used as one of the strategies to increase collaboration opportunities and efficiency. This study explores the concept of social awareness in a distributed Research and Development (R&D) community of forty researchers. For that purpose, a human-centered design tool was developed, the KIWI, for gathering data about the knowledge sharing processes. The early results have shown that the KIWI facilitates collecting information about the social interactions that allow knowledge transfer. Furthermore, the visualization of the knowledge networks, given as feedback, appeared to have a positive impact on the group, augmenting their social awareness.