Articulating tacit knowledge in multinational e-collaboration on new product designs

An e-business new product development (NPD) knowledge articulation model is built from the interdisciplinary empirical and theoretical literature. The model is intended to facilitate a case study of a large multinational mobile communications services/products company (with team members in Europe, Asia and Australia). The NPD teams include subject matter experts that function as a community of practice, electronically collaborating in a virtual context. The knowledge created and shared in the NPD teams involve various unknown levels of tacit and explicit ideas, which are difficult to understand or assess. The goal of the research is to build a tacit knowledge articulation framework and measurement construct that can be used to understand how a successful (or unsuccessful) NPD team operates, in terms of knowledge innovation and productivity. Complex issues and controversies in knowledge management are examined to clarify terminology for future research.