Knowledge sharing in product development consortia

Making optimal use and combine specialized knowledge of the participating organizations and combine it into a new product is a great challenge for new product development consortia. Currently, insight into the way knowledge sharing is enabled lacks both in practice and literature.

In the thesis of Marloes Smit-Bakker, a multi-theory social network analysis perspective was adopted to study knowledge sharing in NPD consortia. The study explores how several variables (possible enablers) effect knowledge sharing in new product development consortia. Moreover, adopting a multi-theory perspective allowed her to study the explanatory value of three social theories for knowledge sharing in instrument consortia. The empirical study is conducted in two large NPD consortia in the field of space science. Analyses showed that the enablers have different effects within teams and between teams. Findings also indicate that the explanatory value of the theories differ at for the intra-team and inter-team level.

Curriculum vitae
Marloes Smit-Bakker (Groningen, 1979) studied business administrationat the FEB en conducted her research SOM research school of the faculty. Her research was financed by NOVA, SRON and Astron. She currently works at Atos Consulting NV as Senior Business Consultant. Smit-Bakker will be awarded her PhD in economics and business on 16 February 2010 (1.15pm). Her thesis supervisors are prof. R.T.A.J. Leenders, prof. J.M.L. Engelen and prof. J. Kratzer. The thesis title is: Enabling knowledge sharing: a multi-theory perspective on knowledge sharing in new product development consortia.