Product, Process, and Knowledge Architectures in Organizational Competence

Abstract

Abstract The ability of an organization to succeed in a competitive environment ultimately depends on its ability to provide product offers that are perceived as valuable and attractive by potential customers. Firms differ greatly in their approaches to meeting this basic ‘market test’ of organizational competence, but all firms have in common the need to sustain effective processes for creating and realizing product offers. This chapter considers how a firm's product and process architectures shape the structure and content of the knowledge that a firm accumulates as it creates and realizes products — in effect, how its product and process architectures determine the knowledge architectures acquired and used by a firm to create new products in the future. The discussion focuses on how adopting modular product and process architectures can significantly enhance a firm's ability to identify and manage its organizational knowledge in creating and realizing products. Both ‘supply side’ and ‘demand side’ impacts of modularity on knowledge management are analyzed, along with how modular architectures can help a firm access knowledge and coordinate processes of organizational learning beyond its own boundaries.

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