Balancing Knowledge Protection and Sharing to Create Digital Innovations

Stefan Thalmann () and Ilona Ilvonen ()
Additional contact information
Stefan Thalmann: Pro2Future GmbH and Know-Center GmbH
Ilona Ilvonen: NOVI Research Center, Tampere University of Technology

A chapter in Knowledge Management in Digital Change, 2018, pp 171-188 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The creation of digital innovations requires active participation and knowledge sharing on behalf of all collaboration partners in inter-organisational settings. However, while the participants collaborate, they also have their own interests and as they are competitors in many cases, they have to protect their competitive knowledge. Collaboration thus requires balancing of knowledge sharing and protection on both the organizational and individual level. This paper reviews literature from several domains to assess how the balancing act is scoped and what kind of measures to achieve this balance prior research has identified. The balancing act is examined on the channel, partner and artefact levels. The paper identifies the balancing act as decisions made over the course of the collaboration both by the organizations as a whole, and by individuals on concrete knowledge artefacts in their daily work. Implications from the point of view of creating digital innovation are presented.

Keywords: Knowledge protection; Knowledge sharing; Inter-organizational collaboration; Digital innovation; Balancing act; Risks and benefits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:prochp:978-3-319-73546-7_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319735467

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-73546-7_10

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Progress in IS from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().