Issues in Technology Transfer and Knowleged Management

Dr. Nat: What are the issues on technology transfer and knowledge management in large technology oriented organizations like Boeing?

Dr. Atkins: I think one of the biggest issues, especially on a large organization, maybe even in small too. We had a little of it at McDonald-Douglas Technologies, but especially in a big organization is, NIH. Not Invented Here. We hire excellent people at Boeing, and most companies hire excellent people. And they think they are hired to solve problems, and they don't necessarily feel it is in their best mode or interest to go and get a solution from somebody else because they have a tendency to say, “Well you don't need me then.” Which is just the opposite of the truth, so transferring and convincing people to look outside, to look at what other groups are doing, and not reinvent the wheel but to take that and move with that realizing that the end result is to make a product for a customer which allows the company to grow and the sooner and faster you can do that, the faster you can grow and continue to grow is the result of what we are after. Now, we at Boeing had a centralized with the phantom work that was a centralized planning and execution of R and D. What you did was, R and D was central to all the business units, all of the business units needed lightweight material. We did all that kind of technology, all that kind of research and development within the Phantom Work, specific applications that only met the needs of one business unit such as a landing gear for a fighter. The commercial unit didn't need a landing gear for their aircraft that was built like a fighter. For instance, the F-18 does a carrier landing. It's a controlled crash is exactly what it is. So the landing gear has to take tremendous loads coming down at tremendous descent rates. No other aircraft that we built has that requirement. Therefore research and development on that was done at a business unit because it was unique to that particular problem. We would do all of the common technologies, and we got into this problem. How do we transfer all of this really neat stuff, technology not stuff, all this really neat technology to the business units, and satisfy the need of the inventor and innovator to keep them in an environment where they can still innovate and come up with new ideas because that is what they wanted to do. Several things that occurred were incentives and emphasis from the top. Harry Stonesipher would go to the business units president's and ask them on a regular basis what technology have you gotten out of the research area and integrated into our new product for our customer. Otherwise, he knew this research was for fun, it wasn't for making money, which wasn't what the business was about. So he started placing goals up on the business unit presidents to act as catalysts to pull technology out of the Phantom Works. Now we in the Phantom Works had a process where we worked with the business units to define what technology was critical to their success, what they needed. And as we would put together our strategic plan in a similar manner to what we did at MDTI, the input, the voice of the customer came from our business units. Our grade card, our score card, our reward incentive came from how much technology we were able to transfer out of our organization. The person that defined that is the receiver of that technology, it wasn't us. We would say we have a good piece of technology, they can make all kinds of money out of it. But if they don't take it, they don't make any money. So our scorecards was written by the business unit. What we would also do on quite a bit of the imp active technology is send a team from within the phantom works to help them incorporate, with the assurance of the team that they would always have a home back at the Phantom Works because they were researchers, developers not necessarily production oriented engineers or scientists. So that took away the fear that if they produced something really good, they would have to leave the Phantom Works. They would leave for a little while and then they would come back. The other element we did in many cases, we need an application to prove and mature the various technology as they developed. And we would pick one of the business units and work closely with them to prove that technology while we let the other business units watch the maturation. And we would spread these around to the space unit, commercial unit, to the military units and the different product lines they had there. So it was a combination of emphasis from the top, you have to have leadership. Demanding and asking questions and wanting to know what's being transferred. We had the business unit themselves pulling that in and giving us a scorecard back, which resulted in us getting our results and incentives to do more research in that area. Then we had the assurance that the individual wouldn't loose their job within the research area by transferring the technology and going with it for a while until it got put well into place. And those were the key elements.