At the 2023 Global Innovation Network Annual Workshop, held in Nairobi, Kenya, last month, over thirty WFP innovators convened. The objective was to bring together Innovation Champions from throughout WFP in order to exchange insights and new concepts and together develop innovative methods for WFP innovation. Over the course of the week’s several conversations about innovation, knowledge management kept coming up as a crucial component of incorporating innovation into our ongoing efforts to end hunger. What relevance does knowledge management have to innovation, then?
Knowledge management: What is it?
Knowledge management (KM) is the process of gathering, arranging, storing, and using corporate knowledge to create value and enhance performance. Every organization is built on the gathering and exchange of knowledge; without it, it is impossible to track the flow of information among employees. At WFP, we understand that reaching our ultimate goal of Zero Hunger requires effective knowledge management throughout our whole company.
How do innovation and knowledge management interact?
KM is a crucial innovation enabler. It integrates internal and external knowledge to produce creative ideas, tools, and approaches. It also offers a basis for collaborative problem-solving and knowledge sharing. Beyond these fundamental effects, knowledge management (KM) can enhance creativity in the following ways:
enhanced output
As innovators, we should constantly aim to outperform previous efforts. Knowledge management (KM) enables us to methodically analyze our work, grow what works, and create fresh, creative solutions for what doesn’t.
Preservation and dissemination of innovative knowledge
The ability to regenerate, or to come up with the next concept or product, is the most costly expertise for a firm to lose, according to Harvard Business Review 1. Years of knowledge and skill in creating and manufacturing a specific kind of product are frequently the foundation for innovation.
improved use of innovations
Innovations can be better designed for their operating environment and meet the requirements of the people and communities they intend to improve because KM enables innovators to continuously improve. Innovations can thus be moved from test runs to “business as usual” using KM.
Enhanced productivity of employees
Employees are thought to spend eight hours a week copying the work of others and nine hours a week looking for information2.3 Teams may concentrate on continuously pushing the limits of what is possible with the best-in-class information available when they have time to develop thanks to effective knowledge management.
Envirofly is utilizing knowledge management to safeguard climate solutions.
The WFP Innovation Ecosystem event featured six distinct inventions in a World Café during Workshop week. Knowledge sharing between participants and innovators as well as among innovators themselves was made easier by the World Café concept. It was unexpected that with every breakthrough, knowledge-based problems and answers spontaneously surfaced.
Consider Envirofly, which turns food waste into reasonably priced, environmentally friendly fertilizer and a source of protein using the larvae of black army flies. Controlling temperature is one of the main issues this invention faces since dead or inefficient larvae will perish if they get too hot or too cold. Envirofly will need to adjust its answer to new climate realities as the environment continues to change and become more unpredictable. In this sense, Envirofly’s long-term viability will depend heavily on its capacity to learn from others, share, and scale new information—all essential components of effective knowledge management techniques. When used effectively, KM can enable Envirofly to stay abreast of industry advancements and modify their approach in response to emerging problems.
Lessons Learned from the 2023 Annual Workshop of the Global Innovation Network
Innovation and KM face comparable difficulties.There is still uncertainty around knowledge management (KM) even though it has been a discipline since the 1980s (and is not). Innovation teams frequently have to clarify, reframe, and explain their work to their peers, which leads to misunderstandings and a breakdown in team communication. More understanding, well-defined procedures, and improved capacity building are required to support the meaningful integration of innovation and knowledge management at every organizational level.
Knowledge transfer and retention are essential for sustainable innovation. What occurs when skilled employees in innovation quit WFP or leave a project? Many people have talked about ways to improve information retention and sharing among team members and units as a result of realizing the significance of innovation knowledge.
KM can assist innovators in identifying their knowledge and improving the way they communicate it.Extensive knowledge and learning about what functions well, what doesn’t, and what can be scaled in various situations are produced by the innovation process. Acquiring understanding of this procedure enables WFP innovators to interact with internal and external stakeholders on innovation’s impact more skillfully.
As we discovered in Kenya last month, innovation and knowledge management go hand in hand. This creates a loop whereby inventions generate new information that can be shared, which in turn inspires more innovations. At WFP, we will keep enhancing this cycle in collaboration with our global innovation network to generate ideas for solutions that contribute to the goal of achieving zero hunger.