The search for the latent information star

Abstract: R & D groups are knowledge-intensive organizations. As such, their principal assets are the men and women with scientific and technical training who constitute these groups. The raw materials that they work on and the products that they produce are ideas or information. The patents, papers, and hardware which emanate from these groups represent the physical manifestations of these ideas. One important concern for increasing productivity in R & D laboratories, therefore, is the facilitation of information flow into, within, and out of research group (Fischer, 1980). This paper considers an approach for improving the performance of an R & D group by increasing its information acquisition and processing capabilities and reports findings from a field study undertaken to examine this approach.