When Bad Things Happen to Good Ideas - Knowledge Management
Measure business impact. The point of knowledge management is to make your business more valuable, and you need to find ways to ensure this happens, says Michuda. Have you reduced your product development cycle 30 percent because of your KM process? Have you reduced the amount of time it takes to get government approval of your product? These are the real measurables that will show the value of your KM initiative.
Michuda cites pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson as an example. J&J analyzed its FDA product application process in an effort to learn why the company wasn't getting new products to market faster than the competition. Typically, J&J would submit an application to the FDA, which would review it and bounce it back with questions. The submission team would have to go back, research the questions and resubmit the application. What if they could capture all the questions the committee raised on similar J&J products that had already won approval? The company started keeping a repository of previous applications. Now, prior to every submission, the application team digs out the files, looks at previous rejection questions and goes back to the product development team to make sure they're answered. "This has drastically reduced the amount of time it takes to get through the FDA process," says Michuda. The company made $30 million on one product alone just by releasing it a month earlier, he says. "That's real business. That's real stuff."
