Network Development Phase 2: Relationship Building for Knowledge Sharing

The relationship building phase focused on building internal awareness of knowledge based resources and trust among the actors. This phase developed in response to the early momentum and success of the initial interactions and projects. This stage focused on establishing the knowledge domains and effectively communicating the capacity for bringing in additional expertise. This stage reflected a level of vulnerability and learning which encourage trust worthiness amongst the partners. This developed a level of knowledge-based trust, developing norms of commitment, and learning through dialogue and setting expectations.

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4.4.2.1 Awareness Building – Internal and External

Six months after the RGF was confirmed, additional P&G people came to the university campus to discuss their research objectives and goals. They provided a broad overview of current challenges being face by their organization in a presentation to members of the Durham University Faculty of Science departments. Following the presentation, individual academics could submit applications that proposed various approaches to addressing and solving the challenges. An interview participant recalled that Everyone had a fair chance to be involved but only a few proposals were selected. This allowed the challenges to be refined and academics to be involved in the development of solutions. Members of P&G staff selected the winning proposals.

As the initial project formation allowed for the entire department to be involved, it allowed a focus on bringing the entire expertise field into play. However, this form of communication indicated some level of knowledge redundancy to provide the initial communication platform/shared language and goals. The conversations within scientific knowledge and expertise do not always apply to the technical aspects a company might be interested in, or considers how their expertise can be jointly applied. This also allowed for understanding the knowledge resources on a micro-level, as it educated everyone about each other’s skills and expertise. Following this workshop, the partners began to share strategically sensitive information with each other.

4.4.2.2 Knowledge Access Building

The next phase of this was to develop a way that they could work together to solve problems and skills that complement their own levels of understanding. People talk about what they have in common, but there is the issue of address the unshared knowledge problem (Stasser, 1992). People don’t learn about each other’s diverse capabilities until later in the relationship. This was addressed through workshops that illustrated the challenges that were being faced among a diverse set of products. Participants choose the challenges and teams that they felt they may be able to contribute solutions to. The relationship developed exploratory workshops for the project scoping phase – “The workshop takes the premise that a ‘stretchy’ technology can be thought of as a platform that has enabled the company to defend and grow its position in a market and/or enter or disrupt a market it hadn’t before.”

Document reads that objectives are two-fold. First objective is “to develop new application ideas for 10 well developed P&G technologies in current field of application or in

148 other fields.” Second is “to recognize areas where further research is required to progress technology application opportunities.”

Due to the size and scale of the relationship, members needed to become aware of the knowledge content and expertise available within the network. Initially, this access based objective was communicated through key gate-keepers that acted to increase connections across the network. This eventually translated to the members developing relationships amongst themselves, aiding in the development of the network size. They hosted monthly technical meetings that were designed to ensure shared responsibility for the project success through joint problem solving. The additional benefit was in the career development of the PhD and Postdocs working on the projects during these joint-problem solving sessions. The room was typically composed of several academics from the university and several technical scientists from P&G. The students developed and delivered the presentation and was lead on answering the questions pertaining to the research. Conversations would typically ensue for approximately 45 minutes after the presentation completed. These sessions also provided the opportunity to communicate developments on either side of the organization.

4.4.2.3 Knowledge Based Trust

The frequency of interaction between the partners gave light to the abilities, intentions, and behaviours. This helped to ensures that the knowledge sharing behaviours, levels of commitment and the interpretation of the results shared were aligned with each other’s expectations. In this form of relational exchange, members of the relationship had the potential to interpret the same results in different ways.

One informant had commented that there was an instance when the partner was working on a similar technique that had been previously proven to be ineffective by their research. This technique would not be sufficient for solving the challenge outlined in the project. This member of the relationship commented that – “Although some time was lost, the partner reacted and shared prior results.” This aided in establishing how the knowledge domains could be effectively communicated. This layer of redundancy also facilitated a deeper discussion for joint problem solving, as they offered the capacity to bring in additional expertise. This can be used as a signal to indicate vulnerability yet trust worthiness.

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4.4.2.4 Developing Norms

In the development of knowledge and competence based trust, procedures and expectations were defined. This aided in developing norms of commitment and learning the dialogue and expectations. The development of normative behaviours facilitated the shared expectations within the network; such as time commitment and the resources could be shared. This also established how the members expected to collaborate, e.g. the frequency of meetings and levels of autonomy.

This stage also developed norms of reciprocity. As trust developed within the relationship, the more that the individuals were likely to extend their services beyond their current projects. For instance, several of the members of the technical meetings would offer to provide analytical services to those that were presenting. Often, they were not the direct supervision of the student (and not bound by contract) but offered services in goodwill.

4.4.2.5 Tipping Point – Satisfaction yet growing complexities

During this phase the network performance was lauded for its effectiveness, both internally and externally. It presented benefits to P&G that are in fact multi-faceted. As an interview participant remarked, “There was a speed of translation” in the pursuit of fundamental science and the “breadth of knowledge” as there is access to new knowledge resources and expertise. “Complexity of solving real world, multi-scale research problems.”- Clearly, the size and time invested allowed the challenges to be solved more quickly than if P&G was doing this on their own. The company was capable for achieving a shorter time scale and essentially reducing development costs. “we have productivity gains, not cost gains. i.e. we can reach a project completion in three years not six. This is clearly a benefit to industry.” Because of the satisfaction, P&G wish to not only replicate the model, but also to grow the current scope of the project. Members of the partnership began to seek support from various institutional stakeholders. Members of the network received prestige and recognition for their unique collaboration. This encourage a greater emphasis on growing the scale to include more opportunities for knowledge exchange. However, as the relationship grew in scale it also grew in complexities. This presented the network with challenges in governance and oversight.

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