MEANS FOR INTERNAL KNOWLEDGE REUSE IN PRE-DEVELOPMENT - THE TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM APPROACH

Effective knowledge sharing within the R&D department is important to build and benefit from a company's portfolio of technologies. This paper presents challenges with accessing and sharing knowledge during pre-development, and elaborates on the potential of using a wiki and checklists as supporting tools. A wiki demonstrator for collecting knowledge about technologies was developed and received very positive response from the interviewees at a case company. The study was conducted as part of a research project about how a technology platform framework can increase the leverage of technology development efforts through increased reuse and strategic investments. The framework is intended to be used as a basis for technology development and when designing and configuring new products. New challenges arise for technology platforms compared to traditional product platforms as they support reuse on a higher abstraction level.