To Accelerate Innovation, Address the Knowledge Gap

  

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As companies continue their focus on growth and innovation, they are faced with a demographic challenge:  the largest generational turnover we have ever experienced. 

In the US, nearly 50% of today’s workforce will become eligible for retirement by 2012.  And, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,  the US labor force will continue to age, with the annual growth rate of the 55-years-and -older group projected to be nearly 4 time that of the overall labor force; as the participation rates of older age groups increase, the older population's share of the workforce will rise.

Across the globe, companies are faced with the prospect of their most senior contributors retiring and taking valuable implicit knowledge with them. For some organizations this can mean the loss of hundreds of subject matter experts every month.

At risk is the loss of generations of knowledge  - and with the imminent wave of retirements by Baby Boomer generation employees -  this problem is fast becoming urgent. 

But retiring workers is only part of the problem. Companies also struggle with similar issues (increased demand on decreasing pool of expertise, subject matter experts not available when needed, etc.) when it comes to multi-national teams; teams dispersed across time-zones, geographies, and languages.  And, companies continue to struggle to make project/program knowledge available to those not directly involved in the project or program.

The result of such knowledge gaps include: inefficiencies, repetition of past mistakes, long ramp times for new employees (individuals must re-learn - often via trial and error - what the corporation already knew), and breakdowns of critical activities.

To offset the loss of critical know-how, judgment and institutional memory, companies need to implement systems and processes that:

• Retain corporate knowledge; Capture best practices
• Provide engineers, scientists and researchers with access to global technical knowledge
• Encourage active and passive collaboration
• Leverage expertise of senior workers
• Provide subject matter expertise to those who need it, when they need it and in the context of the problems they are trying to solve

Interested in learning how Invention Machine has helped global companies address the knowledge gap issue?  Click here to request  a demo of Goldfire and learn how our software can help your organization capture, retain and reuse  tribal knowledge while also accelerating inventive problem solving and concept generation.