Challenge of Knowledge Sharing: Integrating Customer in Product Development

Development of products and services requires information on customer needs. In many cases there are several people interfacing with customers throughout the organization. Information can be highly shattered, unorganized and not codified. One of the key issues is that the people who are interacting with customers may be other than those who are involved with development of products and services. Here the challenge is to integrate information and knowledge from customer needs to the R&D process. There are mechanisms for sharing information so that it can be effectively used in R&D process. Knowledge sharing mechanisms become especially important in a large organization which operates in multiple locations. These call for infrastructures, rules and procedures. In this paper we study mechanisms that empower the sharing of knowledge and information between individuals, especially customer feedback is the focus of this research.