The Involvement of Knowledge Workers

Dr. Nat: How do knowledge workers involved in innovation receive credit and what are the motivational issues regarding knowledge workers?

Dr. Adkins: I think that most knowledge workers get involved in the process in multiple levels of the process. As I said, in the mode of a quality function employment, they became involved in establishing and developing criteria for correlating what the problem was with possible solutions thereby helping us determine what are the solutions that might show us the best results. They were involved in the design of experiments by helping us formulate the experiments, helping us understand what might have gone on before, what are some of the variables that we needed to consider. Then they brought an awful good piece of the equation through codification. Codification of any process is critical for process improvement so knowledge managers from that standpoint bring that piece of the equation home to us and allow it to be done in a much more efficient manner. The motivation for their part is being part of and being a critical element to creating things that have never been created before, to solving problems that people said cannot be solved. Anytime you allow a person to be part of a team like that, the motivation factors just take care of themselves at that point.