Knowing in Virtual Teams

How do virtual teams share and search for knowledge within and across its boundaries? – In this joint project with thought-leader Lynda Gratton, Professor at London Business School and Senior Fellow of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) we explore and compare the cooperation practices and knowledge processes of distributed team members within and across large multi-national organizations.

What INSEAD Assistant Professor Henrik Bresman and MIT Professor Deborah Ancona call the "x-team factor" is well documented: Good teams often fail when it comes to innovation. This is not because of a lack of talent or knowledge, but due to a lack in taking into account external stakeholders and conditions. We explore this core condition for innovation: the ability to cooperate across corporate boundaries.

Creating Hot Spots

Sponsored by Peter Pribilla Foundation, already early in 2006 we had the chance to engage in a fascinating project on the creation of hot spots and a lively and inspiring network meeting with thought-leader Lynda Gratton from London Business School and the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM).

For a rich summary of our early conversations you might want to browse our brochure “Creating Hot Spots”.

For more information about the “Hot Spots Movement” by Lynda Gratton, her publications, talks and events you might want to consult the Website of the “Hot Spots Movement”.

Open School Initiative

Faced with the intense competition of national innovation systems and rooted in Richard Lambert’s early report on “Business University Collaboration”, in 2007 the German Federal Ministry of Research together with the German Stifterverband in a nationwide competition called for the most innovative and convincing concepts for building fruitful long-term business-university relationships.

HHL with its team of CLIC researchers garnered the 250,000 EUR prize for the Open School Initiative precisely because it successfully demonstrated how HHL’s century-old tradition of meshing theory and practice fits with contemporary open innovation strategies. A guiding principle is the creation of open-source knowledge chains.

If you are interested to learn more about or to get involved in the HHL Open School Initiative please contact us at: clic[at]hhl.de

Business-University Collaboration

In December 2003 Richard Lambert released his report on business-university collaboration, which highlighted many examples of good collaboration, but called for further development and investment. The Lambert Review also recognised that the UK Government is pursuing an agenda of regionalisation and devolution and argued that the devolved administrations would have to consult on how best to take his recommendations forward. These comments set the scene for this AIM funded project, which explored the challenges of business-university collaboration and identified their implications for practice and policy.
For a summary you might want to browse the AIM White Paper “The Challenge of Business-University Collaboration”.