Empirical Validation of Knowledge Packages as Facilitators for Knowledge Transfer

Transfer of research results in production systems requires, among others, that knowledge be explicit and understandable by stakeholders. Such transfer is demanding, as so many researchers have been studying alternative ways to classic approaches such as books and papers that favour knowledge acquisition on behalf of users. In this context, we propose the concept of Knowledge Experience Package (KEP) with a specific structure as an alternative. The KEP contains both the conceptual model(s) of the research results which make up the innovation, including all the necessary documentation ranging from papers or book chapters; and the experience collected in acquiring it in business processes, appropriately structured. The structure allows the identification of the knowledge chunk(s) that the developer, who is acquiring the knowledge, needs in order to simplify the acquisition process. The experience is needed to point out the scenarios that the user will most likely face and therefore refer to. Both structure and experience are important factors for the innovation transferability and efficacy. Furthermore, we have carried out an experiment which compared the efficacy of this instrument with the classic ones, along with the comprehensibility of the information enclosed in a KEP rather than in a set of Papers. The experiment has pointed out that knowledge packages are more effective than traditional ones for knowledge transfer.