Lecture 8 17/11/11

Evaluate Lexar’s choices and performance to date.

What have they done right? Wrong? What opportunities for growth should

Lexar pursue? ◦ Within Digital Photography◦ Beyond Digital Photography

Lexar: Study Questions

Choosing Digital Photography: Advantages:

Avoid retaliation Shape technical agenda of firm CEO passion Premium segment of market Brand Product Differentiation

Disadvantages: ◦ Focus may limit firm’s growth potential◦ Must expand into areas where it doesn’t have current

technical advantage

Lexar: Overview

2002◦ Removed the word ‘digital film’ from its flash

memory card packaging 2002

◦ Shipped first USB Flash Drive 2003

◦ Shipped its first MP3 Player

Lexar in the Media…

Lexar and Digital China Join Forces to Distribute Digital Media

FREMONT, Ca., October 15, 2004 -- Lexar Media, Inc. (Nasdaq: LEXR), a leading marketer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media and accessories, and Digital China Holdings Ltd. ("Digital China", HKSE stock code: 861), a leading IT products distributor, have entered into a strategic distribution agreement for Digital China to offer Lexar's complete line of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, digital music players as well as its Kodak branded flash memory cards, in the People's Republic of China.

Lexar Unveils Website Designed to Inform and Educate Digital Photographers

ORLANDO, FL, February 20, 2005 (PMA booth #4132) – Lexar Media, Inc. (Nasdaq: LEXR), a world leader in advanced digital media technologies, today announced a new web site designed specifically for digital photographers. Located at www.lexar.com/dp, the new site includes valuable information and tutorials to help photographers more fully utilize the unique features Lexar products offer and achieve a more rewarding experience shooting and working with digital images. Additionally, this new site provides detailed information about new photography techniques, products and services, as well as interesting feature stories and background information about the many professionals who count on Lexar's flash memory cards and accessories to help them succeed.

Crucial.com/uk Wins Customer Satisfaction Award from Price Comparison Website PriceGrabber.co.uk

Crucial.com/uk Awarded the PriceGrabber 1K Bronze Award Having Received 1,000 Positive Customer Reviews in Q1 of 2009

Key Messages: Crucial.com/uk site received PriceGrabber 1K

Bronze Award Over 1,000 positive customer reviews in Q1

2009 Second consecutive such award from

PriceGrabber, giving crucial.com/uk more than 2,300 positive reviews overall

Demonstrates a successful customer experience found by customers shopping direct from crucial.com/uk

Lexar Mobile Memory Cards Top Group Test in Mobiles Magazine

Lexar microSDHC Cards Recommended as Best Solution for Speed and Performance

 London, August, 27, 2010 -- Lexar Media, a leading global provider of memory products for digital media, today announced that its range of microSDHC™ Mobile cards were recognised as the “best in test” in a recent round-up in Mobiles magazine, the leading magazine in France for guidance on mobile phones*. The Lexar® High-Speed Mobile microSDHC 8GB and 16GB cards, and the standard Lexar microSDHC 2GB and 4GB cards all received recognition in the June-July 2010 issue of the magazine.

Lexar in the Media…

Managing industry emergence◦ Lexar successful at shaping preferences and evaluation metrics

early on

Technology commercialization strategy◦ Lexar entered product market – will this strategy prove

successful over time

The role of identity in terms of guiding strategic choices◦ Lexar as a digital photography company was successful early

on, in the longer term will this continue?

Conclusion

http://www.lexar.com/

http://www.globeforum.com/en/TopRightMenu/Forums/Dublin/Right-now/#video

http://www.dconnolly.net/index.html

http://www.globeforum.com/en/TopRightMenu/Forums/Dublin/Innovators-Contest/

Interesting Links

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Knowledge Management

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KM, it’s like riding a bicycle…

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DefinitionsKnowledge Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed

experience, values contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information (Davenport and Prusak, 1998)

Explicit Dimension Tacit Dimension

Knowledge Management An organisation’s ability to effectively acquire, create, retain, deploy and leverage knowledge

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Data

Information

Knowledge

Con

text

Knowledge Hierarchy

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The Knowledge Continuum

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The Knowledge Evolution Hard and soft data (Mintzberg, 1975)

Managers get more information and knowledge from face to face meetings than they do from documentation/ repositories (Kefalas,1973; Keegan, 1974; Mintzberg, 1975; Eisenberg, 1984; Davenport, 1994; Davenport et al., 1998)

“Knowing who to consult” (Keegan, 1974; Simon, 1977)

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The Knowledge Evolution… Strategic Scanning (El Sawy, 1985)

◦ Accommodation Information ◦ Assimilation Information

Proposed Solution: ◦ “Programs that allow users to record their creative

ideas, provide editing, organizing, and outline facilities that later rearrange those thoughts into topics and give each topic a separate heading and sub-heading”.

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Explicit and Tacit Knowledge Explicit Knowledge

◦ formal / codified◦ documents, best practices, databases, proposals

Tacit Knowledge◦ informal / uncodified◦ experiential, within employee’s head, ◦ hard to effectively capture and share

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In the Media…

ideascampaign.ie – smart/knowledge/innovation economyFuelled by the power of the people

◦ Prime Time 3/3/09/ Morning Ireland 4/3/09

Access all areas: companies are making the most of technologyCapitalising on IT is as important as knowing when to leave it alone◦ From The Times, October 3, 2007, Mark Hunter

Knowledge causes a fussYOU know it, and she knows it, and that chap downstairs seems to have a basic grasp of the idea. Problem is, the other 6,000 people in the organisation don’t have a clue. ◦ From The Times, April 4, 2006

If I were bossOur chief exec has just come back form a corporate junket and is buzzing around talking about "knowledge management". Now he wants the team of line managers to start looking at ways of implementing this concept. The trouble is we are all left scratching our heads. How do we apply the concept to make our business more effective?◦ The Guardian, Saturday November 13, 2004

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KM, a fad? Knowledge is not new

People in organisations have always sought, used and valued knowledge

Companies hire for minds rather than hands

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What’s your Strategy for Managing Knowledge? (Hansen et al., 1999)

Codification Strategy ◦ Computer centred◦ Captured and stored in database

Personalisation Strategy◦ Associated with an individual◦ Shared person to person

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People Broker Locate “experts” to help solve business

problems

Link “knowledge holders” to “knowledge seekers”

Transfer valuable “Tacit” Knowledge

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Knowledge Roles and Skills“Humans add the value that

turns data and information into knowledge…it is unrealistic to assume that a company can throw knowledge management activities on top of its existing positions” .

(Davenport and Prusak, 1998)

Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) Knowledge

◦ Integrator◦ Writer◦ Author◦ Editor ◦ Synthesizer

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Role of the Chief Knowledge/Learning Officer Build organisational knowledge culture

Create knowledge management infrastructure

Make it all pay off

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Learning Organisation “the sum of individual knowledge used in

the value creation process and the knowledge embedded in collective action”. (Von Krogh et al.,1996, pp.227)

Organisations ability to :◦ Have a memory ◦ React◦ Make decisions

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Introduction to Knowledge Management

Systems (KMS)

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Knowledge Management and IS

“‘Techknowledgy’ is clearly part of Knowledge Management” (Davenport and Prusak, 1998)

KM is 80% about organization, and 20% about IT

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Basic Features of a Knowledge Management System (KMS) Storage Publishing Subscription Reuse Collaboration Communication

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Searching and Filtering Knowledge Knowledge should be

◦ Intuitively accessible◦ Searchable to find relevant knowledge◦ Inform how things get done

Alternatively you should be able to connect to experts

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KM Technology

Solution which complements strategy◦ Technology is an enabler

Customized solutions which integrate with work processes◦ Non invasive◦ Build on Web and Email platforms

Combination of tools and technology◦ Search / Categorization / Messaging /

Collaboration

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Examples of implemented KMS- Pharmaceutical

Business◦ Prosthetics manufacturer

Technology ◦ LINK (Leveraging Internal Knowledge)

Web tool facilitates◦ Expert finder

Describes people who might be working on things that you might be working on

◦ Ability to index sent items folder Enables a user to build a personal work profile

◦ “Brokers Discussions”

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Continued… Making it pay

◦ Reduced length of time to uncover knowledge related to a clinical trial by finding existing experts in the area within the organisation

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Manufacturing (1) Business

◦ Box design and manufacturer

Technology◦ InnoBook: An interactive database of box design

concepts, continually updated by over 300 designers

Utilised by 250 sites across Europe

Each design department has access to all designs and uses the system to search for base designs when an order is placed

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Continued… Designers motivated to contribute their

box designs to the repository

Initial reluctance to the utilisation of designs contributed to the system by other departments, question mark over the quality of the design not produced by the local team

Making it pay◦ overcomes localisation of box design knowledge◦ avoiding ‘reinventing the wheel’

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Manufacturing (2) Business

◦ Multinational data storage device manufacturer

Technology◦ Primus a knowledge repository for customer solutions

Implemented by Customer Service Team in two locations – European and US

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Manufacturing (2)

Objective◦ to manage customer support knowledge issues by

breaking down a problem or situation into its knowledge components

◦ to classify knowledge about the problem received or add new knowledge about the problem

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Continued… Making it pay

◦build a knowledge base of solutions and solve customer’s problems in a more time efficient and effective manner

◦to provide an integrated approach to problem resolution and a solution for managing the knowledge across the CS group

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Conclusions?

People are the key to successful knowledge management

IS may be identified as one factor that can enable the capture, storage, creation and dissemination of organizational knowledge

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But:

The focus on utilising organizational knowledge should be on a dialogue between two individuals or a community of practice and not knowledge objects stored in a database (Hansen et al., 1999)

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