Knowledge Exchange at GlaxoWellcome.

• Author: DUFFY, JAN

Knowledge management is a process that drives innovation by capitalizing on intellect and experience. In support of this concept, GlaxoWellcome Inc. Canada has designed and implemented The Knowledge Management Exchange[TM]. Its focus is on developing a learning organization that continues to capitalize on the new knowledge it generates.

GlaxoWellcome Inc. Canada, in Mississauga, Ontario, is a leading research-based pharmaceutical firm committed to bringing innovative medicines and services to patients and health care providers. The subsidiary of England-based GlaxoWellcome plc employs approximately 1,300 people. The company's prescription medication line includes more than 60 products. In particular, GlaxoWellcome is known as a leader in respiratory, central nervous system, AIDS/HIV, and anti-infective research.

Along with the rest of the pharmaceutical industry, GlaxoWellcome faces major challenges. Competition is strong in the marketplace and in the development of new drugs. Costs of product development continue to soar, and the need to bring new drugs to market much faster (but without risk) is increasing. These challenges are difficult to overcome in the traditional knowledge-hoarding silo structure still prevalent in many organizations.

GlaxoWellcome Canada's vision is that making the organization's collective knowledge available to employees when and where they need it will bring valued, innovative, and timely solutions to their customers faster than competitors can. It will also ensure that no employee ever stands alone in the face of competition.

The results of a process reengineering initiative changed an organization with poor access to information, little appreciation for what it knew, and constant relearning to one with immediate and global access to information. The result is an organization that knows what it knows (and doesn't know) and minimizes rework. The end product of the reengineering process is something GlaxoWellcome calls The Health Outcome Map[TM] (HOM).

The HOM tracks the flow of patients through a health system and identifies every major health care decision point (HCDP) along the way. It can be used to review any disease to understand what decisions need to be made and to measure the impact of decisions on an economic, clinical, and humanistic basis.

A high-level representation of the HOM was developed to enable and simplify the GlaxoWellcome internal planning process. It identified the areas that drive or can achieve specific objectives. For example, it became clear that the potential for accelerating prescription growth from x to y over a specified period of time is driven by actions taken at specific points in the overall process. It also became easier to understand where GlaxoWellcome should take action to defend its leadership position in a specific brand area. The HOM was also used to identify areas of strength and weakness and to better understand where more (and better) knowledge could benefit the company.

The HOM demonstrated that the key to GlaxoWellcome's reaching its full potential lies in capturing the learning process results and applying lessons learned in one business to another. Secondly, the HOM provided a way to view decisions across a process, not in the traditional silos, and provided an ideal way to understand how to manage information in context.

Rick Scully, director of knowledge management for GlaxoWellcome Canada, was given the task of developing a learning environment wherein the results of the learning process could be reused; the environment would offer a challenge to maximize everyone's potential through shared learning. He designed and developed an environment that supported the generation, sharing, and better application of knowledge as a way of life. Scully recognized that knowledge is gained through the experience of learning and that organizational learning begins with the individual and is...