There were experts, but not a good means of extracting and publishing that know-how. In underwriting, Cigna gave home-office managers the additional job of building and maintaining a knowledge base, housed in the same software that every underwriter uses to process applications. Claims processors and agents have similar setups. They were collecting all the information anyway, but it just went in the files. Third, structural intellectual capital can help companies stay lean.
Knowledge networks can help provide the value that staff added with fewer of the costs.
In Buckman's business, like so many others, success comes these days from providing fast, customized solutions to specific customer needs rather than from just shipping carloads of product. That means putting brainpower on the frontline. Besides, better to have your smartest people in the field than tethered to their desks. By connecting people through a network, you can replace the depth of knowledge that a multitiered hierarchy offers with the breadth of knowledge that is the sum of employees' collective experience. The diaspora depends on efficient knowledge transfer from one far-flung smarty to another.