Affiliations: Senior Research Engineer, Georgia Tech Research
Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA | Professor Industrial and Systems Engineering and
Director Executive Programs at Tennenbaum Institute, Georgia Institute of
Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Valerie B. Sitterle, Senior Research
Engineer, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: This chapter discusses the process of Knowledge Exchange and the
challenges associated with Knowledge Transfer both within a multi-disciplinary
academic research team and across the research team to the customer
stakeholders. Specifically addressing socio-technical complex adaptive systems,
Knowledge Exchange provides a vital cornerstone to both successful integration
of research findings and communication to the customer in a continuous process.
This takes place on three primary levels: 1) among the members of the
multidisciplinary research team, 2) between researchers and identified user
counterparts with the customer, and 3) across the research team and the user
(customer) stakeholders. Challenges include creating and sustaining active
collaboration at all three of these levels, beginning with engagement within
the research team itself. Modeling and analysis of complex adaptive systems,
especially those with a high degree of socio-technical complexity, requires
various, often highly separate, disciplines within an academic team. These may
include change management, operations management, behavioral science,
marketing, policy, computer science, systems engineering, and complexity
analysis, as well as involving researchers across multiple academic
institutions. Active Knowledge Exchange serves both to facilitate
researcher-to-researcher interactions and to integrate the research findings
into a synthesized whole. It is this whole that must then represent the
socio-technical complexity of the system in a manner that illustrates the
findings in a clear, tangible, and especially actionable manner to the customer
stakeholders. Specifically, this chapter discusses our starting challenges and
expectations, the process and continuing, new challenges we discovered, gaps
that remained between realities of these challenges and realization of our
vision, and offers suggestions for future research.
