HOME  | SERVICES & CAPABILITIES  |  ABOUT US  |  CASE STUDIES  |  ARTICLES  |  CONTACT US

Kathy Hagen Intellectual Capital Strategies & Knowledge Management Logo
managment consulting

Real-world examples of how clients:

  • Retain and Re-Use Knowledge
  • Increase Business Value
  • Develop Internal Capabilities
 image

Need to learn from know-how, know-what, know-who, know-why? No problem.

Title: Knowledge Transfer During Mergers and Acquisitions

Overview: Our client, a pharmaceutical company, purchased one of its competitors. The client organization decided to make a quick transaction, merging the two companies over seven months. Many of the researchers in the acquired company would be let go. Therefore, transferring deeply held, nonpublic knowledge around the various compounds would need to happen as quickly as possible after the transaction. We created training that dealt with effective knowledge transfer and included discussion of the various emotional aspects of change. We also trained a group of client organization researchers as facilitators and note takers to ensure group knowledge transfer was as effective as possible and that codification was standardized whenever appropriate. More than 400 researchers were trained to ask questions respectfully so as to elicit the deeply held or tacit knowledge of colleagues in the newly acquired company. The first two weeks of the acquisition were designed to facilitate the acquisition and to integrate the elicitation of knowledge.

Impact: The business value of the knowledge transfer became apparent as the client company gathered information about the assets it had acquired and could make better informed decisions about the portfolio. On a human level, the researchers who were trained had a common language to articulate with their colleagues the emotional aspects of change. The common language helped build bridges during a time of change.

Lessons Learned: It was essential that consultants did not do the knowledge transfer for the client. Because the researchers themselves were transferring knowledge with their colleagues, the body of useable learning grew and could be reapplied almost immediately. Ensuring that knowledge transfer was integrated into familiar business processes made the uptake of the new behavior more palatable for the organization.

 

RELATED LINKS