Hello, this is Peter Levesque. Welcome to episode eighteen of the Knowledge Exchange Podcast. This podcast series is a product supported by the Canadian Council on Learning – Canada's leading organization committed to improving learning across Canada and in all walks of life. I want to thank the great staff at CCL for their efforts with this project to advance our understanding of effective knowledge exchange to improve the learning of Canadians. You can download this episode, as well as one of the two future episodes in the series from my website at www.knowledgemobilization.net, from iTunes directly, just search for KM podcast. Alternatively go to knowledgeexchange.podomatic.com Dr. Robert Parent leads an exciting initiative at the Université de Sherbrooke: the Knowledge Transfer Research Laboratory. His comments about “second order knowledge transfer” should be considered very pertinent to those helping to create the conditions that will lead to sustained, trusting relationships necessary to ongoing learning and knowledge exchange. There is plenty that can be learned from sharing ideas across sectors and disciplines. Competitive advantage is not just something that is reserved for business; becoming better at the core functions of any organization or institution should be everyone's concern, just as knowledge exchange is everyone's responsibility. There are great challenges but there are also great rewards. Enjoy.
Peter: I'm here with Dr. Robert Parent and this is the first Podcast that we're doing on the telephone. Robert why don't you introduce yourself and tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do? Robert: Well thank you Peter. My name is Robert Parent, I'm with the University of Sherbrook, I'm a professor of strategy at the University of Sherbrook and I also am Director of the Knowledge Transfer Research Laboratory here at the University that is made up of five professors doing research on knowledge transfer, eight doctoral students doing research on knowledge transfer, two masters level students and two research professionals who keep us honest at the laboratory. Peter: This series of interviews for the Canadian Council on Learning is looking at knowledge exchange, at leadership, at lifelong learning, at policy decision making and you had sent me some background material that touches on all of those pieces except the way that you're looking at knowledge transfer and in this case the term that is used is knowledge exchange, seems to be a little bit different than a lot of people that I've talked about and I thought that was really interesting. The way that CCL is looking at knowledge exchange or the way they're describing it, is bring people and evidence together to influence behavior. What does this mean to you? Is that an appropriate definition and how would you extend…how does your work extend upon that definition?
Robert: Our work generally refers to knowledge transfer rather than knowledge exchange and our definition of knowledge transfer is a little broader I would say Peter, than the one you've just alluded to. We refer to knowledge transfer as the dynamic byproduct of interactions occurring between actors who are trying to understand, name, and act on reality - where I should qualify that definition by saying that we are a social constructionists so we're coming at knowledge transfer from that perspective and along the lines of CCL, I think the CCL definition fits fine into ours although ours is probably a little bit broader because of the nature of the work we're doing. We're working primarily with organizations and looking at how organizations can create competitive advantage and by doing so we have to look at the broad spectrum of what's involved in knowledge transfer because…or knowledge exchange if you prefer, because competitive advantage really refers to two things…three things rather…three characteristics and one is that an organization needs to have something that others don't have, they have to be able to do something that others can't do or that they have to be able to do something better than others can do. So knowledge exchange is certainly one of those components that allows an organization to have a competitive advantage but there are a broader perspectives of issues that we have to look at when we're talking about knowledge transfer. Peter: Okay. Can you talk about some of those issues?
Robert: Some of the knowledge transfer issues? Sure. We're looking at for example, how do we is an organization generate new knowledge? How do successful organizations who are really being recognized as high performers – how do they keep up to date on new knowledge? How do they stay abreast of what's being developed? How do they make sure that they know what their competitors are doing in terms of knowledge transfer – in terms of knowledge generation?
In the area of knowledge dissemination it's the same thing – how do we make sure that we are leading edge in the way that we disseminate our knowledge? The third factor that we look at is how do we make sure that we're leading edge in the way we absorb knowledge as an organization? What's been our track record of absorbing knowledge and changing the way we do things based on this new knowledge that's been generated and disseminated. And finally the forth dimension that we pay a lot of attention to Peter, is the whole concept of being able to adjust rapidly and readily and these are all things that for an organization's competitive advantage become extremely important. Peter: Well that's actually really interesting and one of the articles that you sent me on learning histories I thought fits in very well with what the Canadian Council on Learning is trying to do around lifelong learning. One of the pieces that comes up with regards to knowledge exchange is that it's one thing to know, it's another thing to do and the two don't always meet. How is your work supporting that process of going not just from the…you know that great divide of it's one thing to disseminate but how do you move beyond knowing to doing? Robert: Ya. Well we've identified four capacities that I've just alluded to in my previous answer Peter; the capacities that are required for knowledge transfer to take place are the capacity to generate new knowledge, to disseminate new knowledge, to absorb new knowledge and to adapt to those…that resulting new knowledge. Now what we've found in dealing with most of our research clients is that, by far the toughest capacity for organizations to implement and to deal with and to develop is the one you're mentioning Peter – the absorptive capacity. How do organizations actually change and for that capacity we referred to a lot of literature on change management and we've also…I'd like to suggest one article to you by Cohen and Leventhal who talked about the absorptive capacity of organizations. Peter: Can you give some practical examples of places that are doing this? One of the things that's come up in conversations is who's doing this well? I mean there's an awful lot of conversation going on about knowledge transfer, about knowledge exchange, about knowledge mobilization, about knowledge management but who's doing it well? Robert: Excellent question and I'm not sure I have an excellent answer for you Peter. I think that a lot of light is being shed on the concept of knowledge transfer. I'm not prepared to tell you that a lot of organizations are spending a lot of time awake thinking about how do I transfer knowledge better or how to I exchange knowledge better? However at some organizations they are doing some exceptional work…in thinking for example of organizations like Toyota who have a whole section devoted to how knowledge transfer or knowledge management in general takes place.
Another one is Buckman Labs who has a lot of success in doing knowledge transfer activities. Here in Canada some of the groups that are doing pretty well in managing knowledge, I would refer to IBM and specifically here in Bromont, Quebec that I would consider a leader in knowledge transfer; they have a whole bunch of initiatives that look at how do they improve the way their employees keep abreast of what's going on. Peter: So what supports that? You know you use the example of IBM – what is different within say that example in terms of either the incentives for behavior or management or the infrastructure to support that behavior. What's the key support to engaging in this? Robert: I would say, that from my experience at least that you have somewhere in the organization a champion who supports this and a champion who is recognized as an opinion leader. If you don't have an opinion leader who is saying that this is something that we should be looking at, then I think we're going to have an awful lot of difficulty in even talking seriously about knowledge transfer. Let me give you an example, the World Bank in the United States a few years ago became very, very creative and devoted to knowledge transfer. They created a department of knowledge transfer, they were looking at capacity building in different countries as a tool for knowledge transfer and all of sudden the head of the World Bank left that organization, was replaced by Mr. Wolfowitz, who is not a fervent admirer of knowledge transfer and so that whole…almost that whole activity has now been disseminated to point that the World Bank does very little in the area of knowledge transfer. So I would say that the key ingredient is an opinion leader who is committed to the importance of knowledge transfer.
Peter: Well this points to the question of leadership then. What does…I mean aside from being an opinion leader, what does leadership look like in this area?
Robert: People who are constantly scanning the horizon to see what is coming – leadership is in this area is really, and I'm going to distinguish here between management and leadership; management from my definition in this context would be people who supervise an organization to make sure they do things right. A leader in the same context, from a knowledge transfer perspective, is a type of person who is much more concerned with doing the right thing. In other words, making sure that we're getting ready for what's coming down the highway in the next few months or the next few years. So it's really someone who's focused on the future and focused on getting our organization ready for the future. Peter: Okay, let me draw it back to the place that you work. You work at the University of Sherbrook in the Department of Management.
Robert: Yes Peter: Are you…is your department a good knowledge transfer agency? Robert: I would say that we're not bad. I wouldn't qualify us as good – I would say that we're learning – we're struggling. We've recognized the importance. Our leader – our Dean has recognized the importance of knowledge transfer. We've created in the past 4 years, knowledge transfer courses within three masters level programs and I've just been asked to include a knowledge transfer course in our MBA, which I think is going to be a first in Canada where MBA students are going to be spending 45 hours focusing in on knowledge transfer and how to do knowledge transfer in organizations. Peter: That's really interesting that you say that MBA students are going to be doing this. I just did an interview earlier today and we were talking about knowledge brokers and I asked them, who…what are the characteristics of a good knowledge broker? And the person pointed to MBAs. What is it about management and about business administration that would lead people to be good knowledge transfer agents – good knowledge brokers?
Robert: Well in reality Peter, what we're trying to do with MBA students, at least at the University of Sherbrooke, is to create the kind of leadership skills that I mentioned to you earlier. That we're trying to develop people who are really focused on the future – who are focused on understanding of what's going to happen in the future and how to create an organization that can adjust to whatever those changes are going to be. Peter: I'm going to switch a little bit to some of the terminology that is used and one of the big movements in health care and increasingly in education and in government is around evidence – evidence-based practice, evidence-based decision making, evidence informed. When you hear the word evidence, what does that mean to you?
Robert: I've got to tell you that evidence for me has two dimensions. The first dimension obviously is the scientific dimension, which I think most of your experts that you are going to be interviewing are going to be talking about how do we build good evidence?
Being from a business school however, I'm equally as concerned about evidence from the practice community. What does evidence in a practice community imply? And I think that I'd like to share a quote with you that dates back to, believe it or not, 25 years ago in 1978 by a Mr. Ryans in which he said “there's a crisis in the field or organizational science. The principal system of this crisis is that as research methods and techniques have become more sophisticated, they've also become increasingly less useful for solving the practical problems that members of organizations face.” And so when we're talking about evidence, the two dimensions that I alluded to are evidence that is appropriate to the scientific community and the second is evidence that is appropriate for the practice community. And I think therein lies Peter, the biggest challenge that we as a country, face in the area of knowledge transfer. I think that we have to figure out a way to get our scientists to talk to our practitioners and to get our practitioners to talk to our scientists. So that in fact, the knowledge that is being generated is going to be responsive to someone's needs somewhere. Peter: Fundamentally responding to needs is where value gets created. It's in that exchange process or that dialogue process. When you think about how to get the scientific community and the various practice communities together what are the most appropriate or where are…what have you seen to be some of the emerging or more effective methods?
Robert: Well, what I'm finding is that if we're looking at the way that scientists think, they really think completely differently - they live in different worlds from the practitioners. For example for researchers, the speed requirements of practitioners are often seen as unrealistic and totally exaggerated, whereas for practitioners the quality requirements for scientific rigor appear exaggerated to those with a need for clear and immediate response to pressing issues.
Researchers see knowledge transfer as someone else's responsibility, not necessarily their responsibility. Whereas practitioners do view knowledge transfer from what I can…from what our research is revealing, as both a practitioner responsibility and a research responsibility. In fact we think that knowledge transfer is everyone's responsibility – both the researcher and the practitioner. In practical terms what can be done…what I think can be done to rapprocher - to get the two groups to work a little bit better and more closely and more effectively is to first off, encourage a climate of trust and collaboration, to accept diversity between researchers (and) practitioners and organizations, build collaborative work teams, to encourage co-production of research with practitioners and not just see practitioners as people that we go to to study but really involve them in the research process, encourage strong multi-discipline networks between researchers and practitioners, support communities of practice, foster a culture of continuous learning and exchange. Those are some of the issues that we ought to be looking at I think in order to bring those two diametrically opposed groups together.
