Collaborative Infrastructures for Mobilizing Intellectual Resources: Assessing Intellectual Bandwidth in a Knowledge Intensive Organization

The use of intellectual resources of key professionals to provide customized goods and services is seen to be a key characteristic of knowledge intensive organizations. While knowledge management efforts have become popular in organizations that depend on the knowledge and skills of their employees, it is unclear what the benefits of such efforts are and how these intellectual resources may actually create value for the organization. At the same time, vast information and communication technology infrastructures are being implemented to tap into the diverse intellectual resources to little effect. This paper uses the Intellectual Bandwidth Model originally developed by Nunamaker et al. to investigate the extent to which do collaborative technologies support the mobilization of intellectual resources to create value for an organization. Following an investigation of the intellectual bandwidth of a large multinational consulting company, this paper provides insight into the role of technology for mobilizing intellectual resources and offers implications for developing an infrastructure to support core business processes.