Stop Losing Lessons Learned
Those who don’t save their research are doomed to repeat it.
It’s not often you hear a discussion about “institutional knowledge” between design professionals — perhaps it’s the profession’s historical celebration of individual genius, or the fact that many architecture firms identify more strongly with creative studios than consulting businesses. But the knowledge that a team of design professionals builds together as they solve complex problems is an invaluable asset.
Of the many ways design firms grow their institutional knowledge, collaborating with other disciplines is perhaps the best. As we said previously in this blog, our profession, like others, has evolved to embrace new types of project collaboration. Firms that work with diverse project teams will find that their firm’s institutional knowledge benefits enormously from interdisciplinary conversations.
But institutional knowledge gained from diverse project teams is only valuable when it can be found again and used! Too often, material research is treated as “one and done,” and others in the firm never get a chance to benefit from it because the research, if saved at all, is squirreled away in a difficult to find project folder.
Most project managers don’t make it a priority to share important lessons from their projects with the rest of their firm. Instead, they treat this information as a temporary tool, only kept on hand as long as required for the current project. If asked, they may recall details later from memory, or may have notebooks or emails with useful information — but that’s only if someone knows to ask them in the first place. This approach not only silos important knowledge, but it dooms others in the firm to waste time repeating research — or worse, repeating costly mistakes.
Firms need an easier way to save their institutional knowledge and make it discoverable and accessible to their entire team.
Researching, collecting, and maintaining information about building products and materials is hard, time-consuming work, whether you’re junior or senior staff — but platforms like Arazoo make it easy for everyone to save, share and discover the fruits of their intellectual labor. All of your firm’s “lessons learned” and collective research and experience with individual products are right at your fingertips. Plus, outside collaborators like engineers, lighting designers, and spec writers can contribute information to your projects as well, expanding your firm’s institutional knowledge even further. Even clients and contractors can comment on and add valuable information to groups of products that you share with them for review or approval.
This is what the future of institutional knowledge will look like in our design profession: accessible, searchable, collaborative, archival, and above all seamlessly efficient. Firms that recognize the value of their hard-won institutional knowledge can create and utilize valuable Intellectual Property, and multiply the value of the design work on which their reputation is built.
