A knowledge capturing and sharing framework for improving the testing processes in global product development using storytelling and video sharing

In today’s global marketplace, employee knowledge is seen as a crucial asset for organisations, which enables them to gain a sustainable competitive edge over competitors. Much of the knowledge generated during new product development and testing can be categorised as tacit, developed from employees’ personal experiences and perceptions during product development projects; this makes it more difficult to capture and document for future sharing and reuse. The advent of social media in the last decade has changed the way many employees and global organisations communicate and interact with one another, providing a medium for knowledge to be transferred across the World Wide Web in a less formal manner. This research explores whether storytelling and video sharing functionality, embedded into a corporate social media site, is capable of facilitating the capture and sharing of employee knowledge during the product development cycle, providing user feedback on the developed knowledge capture and sharing methodology. It also presents a knowledge framework that is directly driven by the knowledge user, providing both knowledge direction and content.