Business customer communities and knowledge sharing: exploratory study of critical issues

Abstract

Businesses in knowledge intensive industries must appropriately engage with their customers in order to produce goods and services that are desired and valued in the marketplace. Engagement with customers calls for exchanging information and knowledge with customers and fostering exchanges between customers. Recent developments in the area of information and communication technologies (ICTs) have radically increased the variety of opportunities for improving customer engagement. In this paper, we will examine the use of ICTs to build Business Customer Communities (BCCs) to help an organization foster knowledge exchanges between its professional and institutional customers. We define BCCs as groups of business customers, which are deliberately enabled by a firm and share a long-term need to exchange work related knowledge through online and offline interaction. The objectives of this study are (1) to describe BCCs and outline their attributes and features, and (2) to contribute to the understanding of challenges associated with the enabling of BCC formation and how firms can overcome these challenges. As such, a contribution is made to the discussion of knowing in practice in customer communities, which rely in large part on ICT.

Keywords:

• Knowledge management
• customers
• communities of practice
• case study
• knowledge
• information and communication technologies

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pablo Erat

About the author

Pablo Erat is a Partner at Executive Insight, a consulting firm helping companies operating in the European healthcare environment. For over a decade, Pablo has helped clients transform their organizations and systematically develop strategic competencies critical for improving efficiency and innovation. He has published several articles and regularly delivers speeches and workshops on strategic management principles for educational and business communities. Pablo received his doctorate from the University of St Gallen, Switzerland.

Kevin C Desouza

Kevin C Desouza is on the faculty of the Information School at the University of Washington. His immediate past position was the Director of the Institute for Engaged Business Research, a think-tank of the Engaged Enterprise, a strategy consulting firm with expertise in the areas of knowledge management, crisis management, strategic deployment of information systems, and government and competitive intelligence assignments. He has authored Managing Knowledge with Artificial Intelligence (Quorum Books, 2002), co-authored The Outsourcing Handbook (Kogan Page, 2006), Managing Information in Complex Organizations (M.E. Sharpe, 2005) and Engaged Knowledge Management (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), and edited New Frontiers of Knowledge Management (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). His most recent book is currently in press – Agile Information Systems – to be published by Butterworth Heinemann (2006). In addition, he has published over 50 articles in prestigious practitioner and academic journals in the areas of information systems, knowledge management, technology management, and public policy. Desouza received his B.Sc. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, an MBA from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Anja Schäfer-Jugel

Anja Schäfer-Jugel, Director Knowledge Management and Communication, was originally educated as a molecular biologist at the Max Planck Society in Berlin. Since 1995, she works for Eli Lilly in various roles in sales, training, marketing and medical. From 2000 on, Anja has been involved in building Eli Lilly Critical Care Europe, the first pan-European Business Unit functioning largely as a virtual organization. Her main focus has been the establishment of collaboration concepts including the facilitation of cross-functional and cross-national virtual teams. She is regularly invited as speaker for Knowledge Management.

Monika Kurzawa

Monika Kurzawa is a medical doctor and working as scientific content manager for Eli Lilly Critical Care Europe. For 13 years, she has been working in the pharmaceutical industry either as medical advisor in Marketing or in clinical research. For the last 2 years her focus has been on supporting healthcare professionals in Europe set up networks of care and engaging in knowledge sharing.