Dr. Gopsill has been awarded an EPSRC Researcher in Residence Award to continue his Knowledge Management work with the National Composite Centre. The project is entitled ‘Valuing Digital Knowledge Assets within the High-Value Manufacturing Catapult’ and will be running over the next 2 years.
Project Summary
The High-Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC) Centres are technology intensive organisations whose activities produce innovations and knowledge on a daily basis. Central to these activities is the need to utilise the unique and valuable knowledge that is stored within the digital assets that reside in the IT infrastructure of the centres. Maximising the value of these Digital Knowledge Assets (DKAs) is crucial in ensuring Catapult centres remain at the forefront of innovation and knowledge.
With scoping studies revealing that a large proportion of the National Composite Centre (NCC) DKAs having not been accessed in the past two years, it is contended that unexploited Knowledge Management (KM) opportunities exist in increasing the value of DKAs to support the centres’ activities. Opportunities that could come in the form of developments to the data and information management processes, IT infrastructure and/or knowledge sharing activities. To be able to recognise the added value that these opportunities may bring, a method of assessing the value of DKAs is required.
A method that this proposal will develop by taking the novel approach of monitoring the DKAs’ metadata activity. This step-change in capability will provide actionable information to an organisations’ KM strategy that is both automatic and real-time. The method will also be embedded into the piloting process for developments to KM strategy to assess the potential value they may bring to the organisation.
By understanding and developing a means to assess the value of DKAs, HVMC centres will be able to better leverage the value of their increasing digital footprint as well as ensuring value is added through their KM strategy.
The project starts in April 2018 and you can keep track of his progress on the projects website here.