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Inside the Virtual Prototype—How Organizations Create Knowledge through Software
Technovation 24 (2004) 671–672 www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation
Book review Inside the Virtual Prototype—How Organizations Create Knowledge through Software. Luciana D’Adderio; Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, Cheltenham, UK, 2004, pp. 236 (including Index), ISBN 1-84376-210-2; £stlg 55 (US$ 90) This book is a welcome addition to the as-yet small body of qualitative research into engineering and new product development. The fieldwork was conducted over a period of three years, in three organizations, respectively developing vehicles, consumer electronics and aerospace products. The introduction of new software technology was taking place, and so changes occurred in internal processes. Those changes were observed, in order to better understand how organizations perform knowledge retention, selection, variation and integration. That quite concise objective was expanded into a daunting list of 11 main research questions, however, they are all explored thoroughly and by-and-large all brought to useful conclusions. A thread that runs through the book is the importance of the tension between formal, documented processes and the actual, day-to-day reality of practice. When integrated software systems (ISS) products are introduced as part of a business process reengineering programme, that tension is exposed to view. Existing formal processes are readily incorporated into the new software-driven operation, but tacit knowledge and practice is more difficult to codify. Some of the tacit knowledge is actually lost during the process of simplification and reduction of ambiguity. Organizational routines, patterns of interactions and group behaviour need to be translated into cognitive artefacts. From the literature of the new cross-disciplinary field of computer-supported co-operative work (CSCW) comes the notion of technology impact. In that model, technology turns society into a rationalistic utopia (if you are an optimist) or into a de-skilled mechanistic hell (if you are a pessimist). But D’Adderio argues that technology and society shape each other over time. So as new software is introduced into an organization, it will cause ‘‘cracks and fissures’’ in the flow of activities which employees must repair. The computer’s pre-programmed formal models of their work are not perfect and so the software must be customized to make it compatible with the practical logic of their work. This can be viewed as a dialectic, where the two elements
co-exist and co-evolve in a way that is generative and ultimately beneficial to the organization. So the power of the new software comes from the distance between its formal representation and what is being represented; the very tension between the model and the modeled is what will generate new understanding and therefore new organizational capabilities. The product development process is often portrayed in the literature as a sequence of well-defined, wellseparated stages but in reality it is often in constant turmoil, a conflict between order and disorder. Here, D’Adderio proposes a new model where the level of risk and uncertainty changes as a project progresses. From initial concept, the risk rises to reach a peak during the high-level design phase, then reduces as the lower-level details of the product configuration are defined. There is a lesson for management here, to allow the designers maximum freedom to experiment in ‘‘privacy’’ in the early stages, until the time comes to release the product into production. Different parts of the organization have different needs for flexibility, in general more for the upstream functions (development and design) and less for the downstream functions (production and manufacturing). Two types of computer aided design (CAD) model are given as examples of cognitive artefacts that can act as an ‘‘intermediary’’ between upstream and downstream activities. They acted as ‘‘obligatory points of passage’’ between different parts of the organization. Each CAD model was the ‘‘virtual prototype’’ of the book’s title, in some cases completely replacing the traditional physical prototype made from clay or cardboard. It was at the stage of handover of the virtual prototype that the tension between formal and informal processes was seen most clearly. This was where the software most needed to be modified and customized so that its pre-defined procedures could be ‘‘actualized’’ into routines that really worked. The new software became a repository for organizational memory. It provided a new, common language and shared meanings, which enabled greater standardization. The danger was that this could make the organizations’ core competencies become core rigidities. Generic best practice may not apply equally to every business that adopts the new software. The organizations that D’Adderio studied were quite large and so contained not just one, but many
672
Book review / Technovation 24 (2004) 671–672
communities-of-practice. Each had their own idiosyncratic knowledge, culture, incentives and objectives. They formed temporary truces which were affected by the new software which was not ‘‘just a tool’’, and contained some hidden routines which the people found impossible to work around. Integration of knowledge and capabilities was achieved by ‘‘translation routines’’ that allowed one part of the organization to convert its local knowledge into global knowledge stored in a ‘‘boundary object’’, such as the virtual prototype. Other translation routines were then used by other parts of the organization to extract from that global knowledge, the local knowledge that was meaningful to them. Some specialist, local knowledge was thought to be impossible to articulate, but was an essential input to the product definition process. So somehow, that knowledge had to be de-contextualized, articulated and codified. In understanding the emergence of these translation routines, D’Adderio gained a new insight into how organizational capabilities are formed and maintained. Knowledge is neither a commodity, nor a static, abstract, cognitive entity. Knowledge needs to studied as a process, which is collective, dynamic, contingent and embedded with tensions. The idea of transferring knowledge by embedding it in a boundary object is already known. But by apply-
ing that conceptual framework to the study of virtual prototypes, D’Adderio has discovered something new. The routines that codify local knowledge into global knowledge and then back into local knowledge again are the mechanism by which the organization grows new capabilities. As a (part-time) practitioner, I would have like to have seen a more explicit set of recommendations of how I should now apply that new insight in order to gain competitive advantage. Perhaps that will be the subject of D’Adderio’s next book? Nevertheless, this book rightly claims to have made a very useful new contribution to Innovation Studies, Organization Science, Evolutionary Economics and the hitherto obscure field of Engineering Epistemology. Neil Morris, CENTRIM, The Freeman Centre University of Brighton BN1 9QE Brighton, UK Test and subsystems integration manager IBM, Hursley Park Winchester SO21 2JN, UK doi: 10.1016/j.technovation.2004.04.001
Book review Inside the Virtual Prototype—How Organizations Create Knowledge through Software. Luciana D’Adderio; Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, Cheltenham, UK, 2004, pp. 236 (including Index), ISBN 1-84376-210-2; £stlg 55 (US$ 90) This book is a welcome addition to the as-yet small body of qualitative research into engineering and new product development. The fieldwork was conducted over a period of three years, in three organizations, respectively developing vehicles, consumer electronics and aerospace products. The introduction of new software technology was taking place, and so changes occurred in internal processes. Those changes were observed, in order to better understand how organizations perform knowledge retention, selection, variation and integration. That quite concise objective was expanded into a daunting list of 11 main research questions, however, they are all explored thoroughly and by-and-large all brought to useful conclusions. A thread that runs through the book is the importance of the tension between formal, documented processes and the actual, day-to-day reality of practice. When integrated software systems (ISS) products are introduced as part of a business process reengineering programme, that tension is exposed to view. Existing formal processes are readily incorporated into the new software-driven operation, but tacit knowledge and practice is more difficult to codify. Some of the tacit knowledge is actually lost during the process of simplification and reduction of ambiguity. Organizational routines, patterns of interactions and group behaviour need to be translated into cognitive artefacts. From the literature of the new cross-disciplinary field of computer-supported co-operative work (CSCW) comes the notion of technology impact. In that model, technology turns society into a rationalistic utopia (if you are an optimist) or into a de-skilled mechanistic hell (if you are a pessimist). But D’Adderio argues that technology and society shape each other over time. So as new software is introduced into an organization, it will cause ‘‘cracks and fissures’’ in the flow of activities which employees must repair. The computer’s pre-programmed formal models of their work are not perfect and so the software must be customized to make it compatible with the practical logic of their work. This can be viewed as a dialectic, where the two elements
co-exist and co-evolve in a way that is generative and ultimately beneficial to the organization. So the power of the new software comes from the distance between its formal representation and what is being represented; the very tension between the model and the modeled is what will generate new understanding and therefore new organizational capabilities. The product development process is often portrayed in the literature as a sequence of well-defined, wellseparated stages but in reality it is often in constant turmoil, a conflict between order and disorder. Here, D’Adderio proposes a new model where the level of risk and uncertainty changes as a project progresses. From initial concept, the risk rises to reach a peak during the high-level design phase, then reduces as the lower-level details of the product configuration are defined. There is a lesson for management here, to allow the designers maximum freedom to experiment in ‘‘privacy’’ in the early stages, until the time comes to release the product into production. Different parts of the organization have different needs for flexibility, in general more for the upstream functions (development and design) and less for the downstream functions (production and manufacturing). Two types of computer aided design (CAD) model are given as examples of cognitive artefacts that can act as an ‘‘intermediary’’ between upstream and downstream activities. They acted as ‘‘obligatory points of passage’’ between different parts of the organization. Each CAD model was the ‘‘virtual prototype’’ of the book’s title, in some cases completely replacing the traditional physical prototype made from clay or cardboard. It was at the stage of handover of the virtual prototype that the tension between formal and informal processes was seen most clearly. This was where the software most needed to be modified and customized so that its pre-defined procedures could be ‘‘actualized’’ into routines that really worked. The new software became a repository for organizational memory. It provided a new, common language and shared meanings, which enabled greater standardization. The danger was that this could make the organizations’ core competencies become core rigidities. Generic best practice may not apply equally to every business that adopts the new software. The organizations that D’Adderio studied were quite large and so contained not just one, but many
672
Book review / Technovation 24 (2004) 671–672
communities-of-practice. Each had their own idiosyncratic knowledge, culture, incentives and objectives. They formed temporary truces which were affected by the new software which was not ‘‘just a tool’’, and contained some hidden routines which the people found impossible to work around. Integration of knowledge and capabilities was achieved by ‘‘translation routines’’ that allowed one part of the organization to convert its local knowledge into global knowledge stored in a ‘‘boundary object’’, such as the virtual prototype. Other translation routines were then used by other parts of the organization to extract from that global knowledge, the local knowledge that was meaningful to them. Some specialist, local knowledge was thought to be impossible to articulate, but was an essential input to the product definition process. So somehow, that knowledge had to be de-contextualized, articulated and codified. In understanding the emergence of these translation routines, D’Adderio gained a new insight into how organizational capabilities are formed and maintained. Knowledge is neither a commodity, nor a static, abstract, cognitive entity. Knowledge needs to studied as a process, which is collective, dynamic, contingent and embedded with tensions. The idea of transferring knowledge by embedding it in a boundary object is already known. But by apply-
ing that conceptual framework to the study of virtual prototypes, D’Adderio has discovered something new. The routines that codify local knowledge into global knowledge and then back into local knowledge again are the mechanism by which the organization grows new capabilities. As a (part-time) practitioner, I would have like to have seen a more explicit set of recommendations of how I should now apply that new insight in order to gain competitive advantage. Perhaps that will be the subject of D’Adderio’s next book? Nevertheless, this book rightly claims to have made a very useful new contribution to Innovation Studies, Organization Science, Evolutionary Economics and the hitherto obscure field of Engineering Epistemology. Neil Morris, CENTRIM, The Freeman Centre University of Brighton BN1 9QE Brighton, UK Test and subsystems integration manager IBM, Hursley Park Winchester SO21 2JN, UK doi: 10.1016/j.technovation.2004.04.001