Innovationin Action34There are various paths by which organiza-tions come to the realization that they mustdo more to manage their knowledge. Formany, it follows in the wake of reengineering anddownsizing: with fewer people to do the work, theyneed to equip each to work smarter. For others, it’s awake-up call from a major customer, taking theirbusiness to a more state-of-the-art competitor. But atMonsanto, the motivation is more positive, if no lesspressing: here, in the midst of prosperity, the drivingconcern is growth.White Spaces and Gray MatterWhen our Chairman and CEO Bob Shapiro tookoffice in 1995, his first priority was to makeMonsanto more growth-oriented. The demands ofan increasingly global economy were making it clearthat profits for the foreseeable future were notenough; world-class competitors would be vying forshare, and Monsanto would have to grow faster toremain a dominant player.Mr. Shapiro stresses two major themes in his questfor growth: more agility in existing businesses; andfaster recognition and exploitation of new businesspossibilities. With an eye to the first, he effected a“radical decentralization,” transforming Monsanto’sfour huge operating companies into fifteen businessunits—each of a size more conducive to flexibility,focus, and speed of adaptation. To help with thesecond, he charged one of those units to focus purelyCreating Fertile Ground forKnowledge at MonsantoAbout the author:Bipin Junnarkar is Director of KnowledgeManagement at The Monsanto Company,based in St. Louis, Missouri. Monsanto isa science-based company devoted to dis-covering, manufacturing, and marketingagricultural products, performancechemicals used in consumer products,prescription pharmaceuticals, and foodingredients.Junnarkar has been with the firm forseveral years, working mostly in the areaof management information systems.His long-time emphasis has been on intro-ducing new technologies, processes, roles,and behaviors to tap Monsanto’s collectiveintellect more effectively.Bipin JunnarkarWhy Knowledge? Why Now?, pg. 2Knowing the Drill: Virtual Teamwork at BP, pg. 14Innovationin Action35on growth opportunities. Called “Growth Enterprises,”the unit’s mission is: “to grow existing business withinbusiness units and create new business by exploiting‘white spaces’ where core competencies exist toincrease the overall profitability of the enterprise.”The “white spaces” concept is an important onedrawn from the work of Gary Hamel and C.K.Prahalad, but it raised immediate challenges. Howwould we find such spaces? What determineswhether they are unexploited opportunities, ortruly barren ground? How can priorities be setamong the opportunities? The key is in the referenceto “core competencies”: growth at Monsanto will bedriven by how well we are able to apply and buildon the knowledge our people already have. Themission of the Growth Enterprises unit was soonaccompanied by a vision: “to create and enable alearning and sharing environment where knowledgeand information are effectively used acrossthe enterprise.”What Knowledge Management Can DoFrom the outset, there has been no quibbling atMonsanto about the need for more explicitknowledge management. Our Board of Directorsreadily approved a significant investment in it.But the way to apply that investment was not imme-diately apparent: what would do most to make indi-viduals’ knowledge more accessible to others? Toensure that the best knowledge is being appliedto decisions? To uncover knowledge gaps and tofill them?In considering the right approach to knowledge man-agement, it helped to consult the available literatureon the topic and, even more so, to share ideas withother managers focusing on knowledge. Our currentthinking is that knowledge management at Monsantoshould focus on five objectives:T Connecting people with other knowledgeablepeopleT Connecting people with informationT Enabling the conversion of information toknowledgeT Encapsulating knowledge, to make it easierto transferT Disseminating knowledge around the firmIt also seems clear that, despite the claims of sometechnology vendors, there are no “silver bullets” toaccomplish any of these objectives. In our knowledgemanagement efforts, as in any major businessinitiative, lasting change can only come aboutthrough a sustained and balanced interplay ofprocess, technology, and people.Knowledge Creation as a ProcessMost managers today would agree that managing anarea requires an understanding of the basic processesinvolved. Certainly I, as a manager tasked withimproving knowledge management, felt I needed abetter understanding of knowledge processes, andparticularly of those involved in knowledge creation.At Monsanto, a need to grow quickly in new business areas convinced management it must focus on knowledge.Leaving the firm’s knowledge base to evolve at its traditional pace would simply not be sufficient. Instead, man-agement needed to actively support the creation of new knowledge (by connecting people and information andconverting information into knowledge), the encapsulation of that knowledge into forms that could be shared,and the dissemination of knowledge throughout the organization. Achieving these objectives requires attentionto people, process, and technology. The most important process to understand and manage is how new knowledgeis created—and the best guide Monsanto has found is the work of Nonaka and Takeuchi.article abstractInnovationin Action36How does a business become knowledgeable about anew area (a “white space”)? What’s the differencebetween collecting data points and advancingknowledge? How would Monsanto know if it werebecoming more knowledgeable in net over time? An excellent resource in thinking about thesequestions was the work of Ikujiro Nonaka andHirotaka Takeuchi, who wrote The Knowledge-Creating Company. Their starting point becameMonsanto’s: that, “in a strict sense, knowledge iscreated only by individuals.” That observation,simple as it seems, has served many times as a touch-stone for proposed initiatives. Far from denying thevalue of organization-level knowledge management, itemphasizes the need for explicit efforts to makeknowledge more widely known. In their words,“Organizational knowledge creation should be under-stood as a process that ‘organizationally’ amplifiesthe knowledge created by individuals and crystallizesit as a part of the knowledge network of the