CHANNELS TO FIND NEW KNOWLEDGE

To understand the knowledge seeking behaviour of SMEs, I explored how, where and when respondents search for new knowledge. To gain these in-sights, I asked the following questions: “What sources and tools do you use in your current work?”; “Do you ever look for new knowledge, and if so, in what situations?”; “What do you do if you get an assignment you do not know how to solve?”; “Where have you previously searched for new knowledge related

to your work?” and “Why did you search there?”; “What do you think about searching for new knowledge, i.e. do you find it fun, annoying, stressful, in-spiring?”; and “In your opinion, is searching for new knowledge prioritised in this enterprise?”. I am aware that there is an entire research area of Infor-mation Science that engages in the study of knowledge-seeking behaviour and practice, also specifically for enterprises and SMEs. However, because this study focusses on understanding the situation that SMEs are in, in relation to (scientific) knowledge, rather than SMEs’ information need, I will not draw par-allels to that scientific tradition. There are, however, similarities and differ-ences, but this thesis refrains from going into the scientific discipline of Infor-mation Science.

The questions asked for this analysis initially created three themes: (1) Search-ing for new knowledge: Where; (2) SearchSearch-ing for new knowledge: How; and (3) Searching for new knowledge; When. However, as the analytical iterations on creating codes and themes from the data came along, the third theme was deleted due to a lack of relevance, and in the next iteration I ended up merging the first and second theme. It was simply too ‘forced’ to keep them separated, as they were deeply connected and interdependent. Accordingly, the merged theme was called: Searching for new knowledge: How and where. Working on refining the codes made it possible to reduce the theme even further. The answers could essentially be boiled down to what channels SMEs used to find knowledge. Under this theme, several codes were identified. Figure 5.2 pro-vides a statistical overview of the created codes.

As the figure shows, ‘Colleagues’ and ‘Online searching’ were by far the most common channels used to acquire new knowledge. Referring to ‘Colleagues’

was mentioned a little more than ‘Online searching’, which can be said to reflect several characteristics. First, it implied that SMEs prefer to access knowledge through a relational pathway. The mention of ‘External networks’,

‘Rival companies’ and ‘Experts’ also pointed to this. Second, it implied that SMEs prefer knowledge that is experience-based and person-dependent, which was addressed in the previous section as well. Third, it points to the fact that employees in SMEs are accustomed to working closely together to solve problems, which is a consequence of the smaller number of employees in this type of enterprise. Fourth, asking a colleague is a quick and cost-effective way of learning something new and solving a problem. It points to a need for the solution to come immediately, be cost-effective – preferably free of charge – and to be quickly practicable, which relates to the general lack of resources in this type of enterprise, which was addressed thoroughly in the Literature Study in Chapter 4. Fifth, asking a colleague can be said to nurture a habitual way of thinking and working and as a consequence a ‘we know best ourselves’ men-

Figure 5.2. Channels to find new knowledge

tality can occur. This is what was labelled the ‘not invented here-syndrome’

(Baltes, 2000; Bearden et al., 1995; Decter et al., 2007; Sher et al., 2011) in the Literature Study, and which covered a tendency to reject external knowledge because a group of employees can believe that they know best themselves and could not gain from external knowledge. Collectively, the frequent mention of

‘Colleagues’ as a preferred channel to acquire new knowledge can be inter-preted as SMEs being accustomed to finding the answer amongst themselves, which could make it difficult to disseminate external knowledge to them.

However, respondents mentioned ‘Online searching’ nearly as frequently as

‘Colleagues’. Contrary to what I just stated, this implies that SMEs are in fact

0 33 Online knowledge banksWatch servicesSuppliers Business magazines

oriented towards searching outside of the enterprise for new knowledge. Fur-thermore, ‘Online Searching’ is an example of a generic pathway, by which the personal relation (relational pathway) appears to not be entirely evident to SMEs’ search for new knowledge. However, what ‘Online searching’ has in common with ‘Colleagues’ is that it also points to a need for knowledge to be quickly accessible and inexpensive. Further, using ‘Online searching’ can re-sult in different types of knowledge being found.

“I can be directed to The Danish Building Research Institute here in Aalborg. I can go to the webpage of the Danish Business Authority. It is mainly such pages I use when I Google things.”

Respondent 6

“Well, Google is amazing. It is a bit random. But otherwise there is borger.dk where you can find a lot of information that we need in our world.”

Respondent 26

“In the old days, we had hand books and all sorts of other things, today the internet is a goldmine of data, it is a large inspirational source, both regarding architecture and regarding problem solving.”

Respondent B

“We typically read it at something called Montell, which is a pan European energy news portal. Here at home something is called EnergyWatch and they have also become really competent. Those journalists have become really good in just one year. And then you can go to the European Union’s website or the Parliament, if it is Danish politics. The Danish Energy Agency or energinet.dk.”

Respondent F

As the quotes show, online searching for technical knowledge (know that) is very common. It covers searches for rules and regulations in particular. Online searching for experience-based knowledge (know how) is equally used:

“Mostly I just Google it. There is something called Facebook Developers and then there is something called Facebook for Business. They have some good articles about what happens and it is often those that appear when I search. Otherwise I just enter some debate forum.”

Respondent 9

“I can look at how others have solved something similar and then maybe I can do that but add some percentages to it. Often it is a collaboration with others where they ensure to share something, it primarily takes place online. So, it is a question about skimming through a lot of forums and find out what others have done.”

Respondent 11

“In my search for knowledge it is primarily larger, known sites with plenty of examples on how to do things that suits me best (…) There are many TED talks that are relevant for what we do.”

Respondent 21

“It is often Master Google. But then sometimes you can specifically go to that PMI Society and ask questions too, I am also a member of some-thing called a Chapter on the PMI Society, and that is the Denmark Chapter and there I can ask questions. But there are also plenty of other forums.”

Respondent 24

Searching for experience-based knowledge means searching for inspiration, what others have done before you, and so on. As Figure 5.2 shows, ‘Business websites’, ‘External networks’, ‘Rival companies’, ‘Online forums’, ‘Social me-dia’, ‘Previous projects’, ‘Online knowledge banks’, ‘Suppliers’, ‘Business mag-azines’ and ‘Blogs’ all indicate an orientation toward experience-based know-ledge. Further, several of these codes, i.e. ‘Business websites’, ‘Online forums’

and ‘Social media’ indicate an orientation toward ad-hoc knowledge that pro-vides ideas and inspiration specific to market and business, of which the quote above from Respondent 24 is a concrete example. The latter, that knowledge has to be specific to the market and business of the SME, appears to be a central and general characteristic for the knowledge-seeking behaviour of SMEs. It points to a communication principle about the providing of scientific knowledge: According to the preferences of SMEs, scientific knowledge should be provided where they already look for knowledge. The mention of “Courses and further studies”, which also figures relatively high in Figure 5.2 also bears witness to the aforementioned need for knowledge to be subject-specific and further indicates an orientation toward intensive training in a chosen and rel-evant subject.

‘Online searching’ is a very broad code and, actually, several of the other codes can be said to be sub-codes to it. That goes for ‘Business websites’, ‘News me-dia’, ‘Online forums’, ‘Social meme-dia’, ‘Online knowledge banks’, ‘Blogs’, ‘TED talks’ and ‘Google analytics’. At the same time, ‘Previous project’, ‘Scientific papers’ and ‘Customer surveys’ can also be said to be part of this code, seeing as these types of knowledge often appear in online searches. In conclusion, a main code for all of these sub-codes can be ‘Digital information channels’ and it would, accordingly, be the code mentioned most times and, as a result, it would be the channel used most frequently by SMEs. What all of these (sub)codes have in common is that they are generic pathways. Regarding the communication principle mentioned above, this points to the provision of knowledge through generic pathways being in line with SMEs’ preferences.

From the analysis, it can be concluded that using generic pathways is not for-eign to SMEs. Using generic pathways to find scientific knowledge particu-larly, which can be labelled a specific type of technical knowledge, however, is only rarely mentioned by the respondents:

“I would go and search online to see if I could find some scientific papers.

I actually do that sometimes.”

Respondent 5

“It could be at the website of Aalborg University, it could be at MIT’s webpage. Or if it is economic theory, it could be Stanford or Harvard.”

Respondent F

Here a potential for improvement exists. Related to this, an interesting obser-vation is that several of the generic pathways mentioned by the respondents in some way or another contain a relational pathway. For example, ‘Online fo-rums’, ‘Social media’ and ‘TED talks’ are generic pathways that disseminate knowledge using a relational feature. Compared to existing literature, e.g. de Zubielqui et al. (2015), who conclude that SMEs prefer to use generic path-ways, this analysis now contributes with an expanded understanding of SMEs being oriented towards generic pathways where features of relational path-ways are implemented. Accordingly, multimodality appears to be a preferred option, which has also been pointed out by Bielak et al. (2008) and referred to in Section 2.2.4.

In conclusion, using colleagues and a diverse list of digital information chan-nels (generic pathways) appear to be characteristic of SMEs’ knowledge-seek-ing behaviour. In line with existknowledge-seek-ing literature, this analysis has shown that us-ing generic pathways is not foreign to SMEs, which is of relevance to the search question of the thesis. However, this analysis also adds to existing re-search in that it outlines the diverse types of channels used by SMEs to find knowledge. The perspectives on using colleagues and online searches respec-tively elaborates on SMEs’ preferences when engaging in finding new know-ledge. Another contribution of this analysis is the advancement of some char-acteristics about the knowledge product that SMEs request: Knowledge must be easily and quickly accessible, personalised, experience-based and specific (according to the business or market area), and cost-effective (due to a lack of resources); providing both ‘know how’ and ‘know that’; and experimenting with incorporating relational pathways (or features thereof) into a generic pathway. This points to a communicative principle about how scientific know-ledge should be organised – or reorganised – according to SMEs.