Interviewee – Founder
Interviewer – Souad Mohammed
20/01/06
Knowledge Leakage Questionnaire – first round, January 2006
1. People leave through several routes: retirement, new job (outside the company or
within the company but in a different department, site or subsidiary), promotion, or
death.
How dependent is your company on a single person for certain knowledge and
experience?
T: In the first year it was entirely me, ok, it was just one person now at that point in
time and I can only say that retrospectively the essential issues or at least part of the
strategy was already in plan that was followed through my personality.
What might happen if they left?
Q What about if you left half way before it was sold, lets say you left around 1999 for
any reason what happens? not specifically that date, but at some point after others
were recruited, and it was no longer just a 1 man company.
T: again I will need to put some chronology in place, in 1999 if I had left; I think that
the company would have remained on a successful footing for the future. 1997-8 it
would be different.
Q why?
T: well because of the initial formation of the company, one man band, e- cuss, bits
and pieces of the strategy in place, no sense of business what so ever. I recognised at
an early stage, that I believe in autocratic principles rather than team play it simply
because the initiator of a company has a dream, fantasy in my head that is unique to
me, I also recognised that I had no business experience and needed to get people
around me to do things that I was spectacularly no interested in doing like
administration, I didn’t want to manage I wanted to give guidance that’s all; technical
guidance in this case and enthusiasm. So the reason I quote those times 1999 it would
have been successful, but in 97-98 it wouldn’t. At that time in 1998 a colleague of
mine that I known before joined the company and the decision was that he would be
the CEO and I would remain technical director. I didn’t want to be necessarily
involved in finance, or marketing or sales or any other side. My core competency was
the inventive side, the solution to the problem not the company administration.
Q So do you think before the period of 1999, was there any documentation you’ve
done? Or capturing knowledge in any way so that if you left the company wouldn’t
collapse?
T: Yes, absolutely, IPR published papers, other internal documentation about
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development processes or processes associated with this rather specialized materials
and products, commercial information as well, I had certainly by 99 a large array,
large collection of specialists in the medical field I can simply pick the telephone, the
doors were open for many surgical, scientific people necessary for the development
association with our products that I can call upon and this is a very very valuable
diary so that was completely out, people within the company particularly the
management. So yes there was quite a lot of documentation, it wouldn’t have carried
everything that I had in my head sort of speak but it would have carried the essence.
But after 1999?
T: Much less so, the products that we were on course to develop had been
rationalised, I suffer from this continued loss inventions patents and some clearly and
distinctly non-medical which is actually the root of some of the other companies. I
continued to chair those out, and this off course is in great danger of de-focusing the
for …. Strategy of the company, suddenly I would come out with something in the
cardiovascular arena to treat cardio vascular disease but in a different anatomical site
of the body lets say, a different product, it’s a difference between coronary through to
Venus insufficiency (problems with veins) it is very different. Company 8 and its
parent company (company 7) it’s initial guys would not have the resources and would
have remained without resources to take on board all the things that I have created, so
they’ve gone, they still lots and lots of info exchange possibly between companies 7
and 8
Does the company have knowledge capture procedures to anticipate employee
turnover?
yes (If yes, please give examples) no
Q it seems that knowledge transfer is just between you and the CEO. If he was to
leave before 2001 not known that the company will be sold. Did the company have
knowledge capture procedures to anticipate employee turnover?
T: Right, well I have to put that in part A and B, if I was there and Peter left the
company would have carried on, if he had left and I have left the company wouldn’t.
Did the company have in place any procedure to ensure that knowledge is not lost
forever?
T: Not in those terms, No, but the protocols established within the company we had
1999 installed an ISO oasis and we were heading rapidly towards certification of
products that’s statuary ok, and to fulfil these QA and regulatory obligations the
documentation is very expensive, the complete design portfolio of the products as part
of submission documents if you like to gain the right for the regulatory barriers is very
very strict. So yes certainly by 1999 extensive documentation to do with the product
under development yes, it’s when the problem really accurse of course when you
come up with developmental problems. For example, we are required for one of our
product sets which is a re-enforced graft tubular structure, it’s a life saving measure
we are required to cycle test these to a very large number, probably 400m cycles in
physiological mimic situation, well defined and known stuff in this industry. All this
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data has to be logged in probably and be put in; it is part of the regulatory
authenticity.
Q This is all public knowledge?
T: No the methods of conducting the test is public knowledge but the data regarding
the testing of our products is specific knowledge to us.
It wouldn’t be given out it is commercially sensitive information, it could, it could be
indeed a significant problem every one knows whether you’re doing a stents or a graft
of the vascular system, 400m of physiological solution outside the body and we
accelerate, that effectively mimics the 10 years in dwelling life but clearly we cant test
these in normal physiological rates we can afford 10 years in testing them so we
accelerate the process, it happens in 90 days. Our protocols, our methods, sort of
equipment are proprietary.
What is your view on the impact of the people leaving on the whole organisation?
What steps are taken to ensure that when employees leave they no longer have access
to the organisation systems?
T: Well on a personal level of course they do indeed have a direct access to
information. There is a legal firewall for people working in commercial organisation
whether or not there is proprietary come out, it is with each individual in their
contract, for company issue a contract of employment or the company should be in
existence. You’re not allowed to disclose information to do with commercial activities
and or research, innovation this is information that belongs to the company and
shouldn’t be released without permission.
Q Was that done in Company 8?
T: Oh absolutely, yes this is common in commercial companies.
Q So they can’ have access?
T: again it is written in that contract, it is usually a timing period in these thing,
releasing proprietary information either in perpetuity or for a period of time subspecified, in my case the service contract determined that I’m not allowed to work for
a period of 12 month and it would be illegal for me to do so
Q Why 12 month?
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T: That just 12 month, that is over and above the essential condition, that there is
proprietary information in that company and I’m not allowed to release it without
permission, (during that period) well that’s specific for me.
Q does that only apply to specific project?
T: yes it is, its stent grafts because this particular information that I have about the
development process, so shared with the invention any way, very strongly so that’s
very much proprietary information which we do not, critical sensitive information.
And it is incumbent upon me not to release it.
During the day people would be at their computer designing products and there were
several leaks however firewall you have at this age you can never guarantee complete
safety, the other thing is if you wanted to be illegal or you had some commercial or
monetary probably financial with advantage, just before you left, or being fired you
could run a whole series of CDs and download every thing from there.
There is a certain amount of trust involved here, unfortunately money comes through
the door and morality flies out of the window, and you know it’s human nature but
with some people they may not have any agenda to steel, it is theft after al, theft and
fraud if you’re doing it but the temptation can be quit strong, by some kind of
competitors, industrial espionage ensure. It might be tempting for some people to pick
up a wad of money for doing something like that.
Does your Company have a strategy for storage of Knowledge?
yes (If yes, please say something about it) no
T: No not in specific way no
Does your Company have a phase of training for the replacement employee?
T: Not that usually doesn’t’ happen, No there are some cases were it has at senior
level, the FD, we recently have changed and indeed the CEO at Company 7, and
while the new employee is waiting to join, the exiting person give information to do
with role, it is a little bit different, perhaps CEO the incumbent would already be
armed with quit a lot of information; he should be before he even go for the job
interview sort of things, these are stuff known within the trade but I think exclusive to
senior management level
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2.
What risk assessments do you undertake when subcontracting/ outsourcing?
What proportion of manufacturing/tooling/product development/ sales, etc. is
outsourced?
T: Yes a great deal, we have subcontracted stuff such as fixtures and these sort of
things; we have production of a good number of the actual product one now in
Germen and west of England manufacturing pretty well the finished product.
What are the key outsourcing locations for manufacture/other?
See above
All products/moulds/tools to same subcontractor?
T: Yes they are in the form of the subcontractors, strictly in legal terms. These are all
bind by well-defined contract. What they are by item, what they can and can’t do and
information on both sides, so far so good.
Well there is the main subcontractor, and we have other local engineers making tools
for manufacturing process, which we share with our device manufacturer. We have
reengage with manufacturing company in Germany. Similar situation arises there with
difference in the governors or guidance, there is commonality in commercial issues
here; they are in most respect say similar.
The other thing is, you are engaged with the subcontractor to manufacturer something,
and they are earning profit. It may not be wise to foul that by going competitive
against you or releasing data to a competitor, as it will be found later. It is in their
interests to do that if they want remain commercial, we are talking about serious sums
of money here for subcontractors.
What information (defined as covering everything) is supplied to subcontractors in
order for them to fulfil their contracts?
T: design data, necessarily they have to have the full sweet of design data. In this
particular case manufacturing protocols, because these are medical devices. We have
to have full traceability of every single item; from the supplier through to the baker,
through to the distributor. We need to have full traceability, if anything goes wrong in
the body we need to see the original metal manufacturer and be able to trace the
product. There is considerable trail here on here, this is because the final assembly is
done in clinical conditions, the discrete protocol, you pick up part A and you put it
with part B and you add part c, etc. that is all released. That has to be released to the
design manufacture. This is part of the design portfolio and you must not deviate.
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Q What is the risk of subcontractors becoming competitors arising out of the
outsourcing activity? Or even disclosing the information to a 3rd party?
T: Very little risk of the former, but there is a risk with the later. So in other words it
is most unlikely that our subcontractors will become our competitors that are not
going happen.
Q why?
T: Well if they go out and produce products similar to our one there will be
obviousness, and they could go to court, there also some legal bindings, which is
within the contract. all the manufactures that write out works have work should have
conditions of supply. Anti competitiveness.
Q What other risks are associated with subcontracting?
T: Well you could never account for an individual, if there was a personality clash in
company A and B between two people, there may be eventually leak of information.
This has certainly has never happened in my experience. It will be bad news.
In a formal sense you could still rely on the law, taking that person to the court, they
may go to jail, but your product or part of your technology been released to
competitors, there is nothing really you could do about that. So I think people mainly
rely on both legal documents and personal relationship/trust.
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3.
What risk assessments do you undertake when dealing with suppliers?
What is your procurement strategy for key components? What is the optimum
number of suppliers?
T: yes in our particular case I will give you an example. One of the critical
components, quit extensively used now for medical, this are very exotic
material, very difficult to make this material are, and indeed very
expensive. We will be foolish to tick the box and just go to one supplier to
get all our materials from them. That will be completely foolish, so we
have 2nd and 3rd routes that we could go. We buy most our material from
one supplier, but we have three other suppliers whom we buy small
materials from, se we keep these channels open for the future. We look for
who if one industry goes down, they not gonna go down with it.
All products/moulds/tools/etc sourced from the same supplier?
Answered above.
What information (defined as covering everything) is sent to suppliers?
T: individual suppliers for example the shape memory Alloy people, will not have any
information about what it is required for our product, all what they know about is the
wire.
Q is it because they do not need to know or because there is a risk they may become a
competitor?
T: they do not need to know, you could absolutely guarantee they are supplying their
materials to all different sorts of competitors. There is not risk of them becoming a
competitor themselves. The risk is that a competitor may actually be interested in the
volume of materiel that we are ordering, as that will give them some insight into how
our training/testing is going. All they need to do is get one of our products, measure
the wire and divide that by several of 100 kilometres of wires that we buy every year
and they may able to very quickly know how well we are selling, what it is the trade
we selling more or less.
Q isn’t there any legal bindings to prevent supplier from leaking that information?
T: yes there is in the contract. You know company X supply company Y and Z, one of
them being expert in metal production the other being expert in medical devices, etc.
it is in the suppliers interact to keep separation, if there is leakage we may not find out
immediately but we will find out eventually, then we will not buy anymore material
form them. And that is big loss of money for them, significant loss to the supplier
company.
Do you feel suppliers could become competitors?
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See answer above
Do you see any other risks associated with dealing with supplies?
T: Well the risk that we mentioned before ..if they go bankrupt.. even though we have
different tiers and levels, it will in the short time cause us logistic headache.
Particularly if we are busy and selling a lot of products, we cannot afford a break in
the supply chain. Even though, we would have stocked, we will have stock level that
will be a buffer for a period of time.
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4.
What risk assessments do you undertake when dealing with customers?
Minimum information about product/component/service development route
T: the definition of customers may be a little different. Are we talking health
authority, or surgeons, or indeed the patients.
Q who will b your direct customer?
T: it is the surgeons really.. it is the surgeons who we will be dealing with.
All the sales and marketing people aim for the clinical environment. We are doing
very little in the UK, nearly all our preliminary customers are in Europe and
increasing now in the US, the market is expanding.
Q why not doing very well in the UK?
T: my interpretation would be that, we have not pushed our sales people hard enough,
which are stupid, as a local territory and do not have the geographical difficulty. But it
also it is coupled with what I call the really very conservative approach that we have
in the UK.
Q so it is a culture difference.
T: yes.. with the most of the Drs here also just working for the NHS. It is expensive
pieces of kits we talking about here.
Q will the surgeons be buying these pieces then?
T: no it will be the hospitals, but there could be an occasion where the surgeon works
in the private sector and the organisation the surgeon works for will buy the products.
Or there may be a case where the surgeon have his own successful business and he
buys the product and obviously if he is an able customer who will be able to cover the
cost.. he will be given the product.
All information about product/component/service development route
Q how much information about product development will you be sharing with them?
T: well if we can define surgeon being the customer in most cases, we have to provide
extensive information to do with the product, technical and scientific information, just
has to be done, because you need to know in some detail a lot of functional details and
what the expectations are, what the potential difficulties are. We advice surgeons very
closely on that, and the format they will like. This happens nearly in all cases, apart
from really emergency situations. They send us over the x-ray of the patient, etc,
because we have experience we look at that physiology and the state of the disease
and most cases we say yes that a is a ok for our product. They need to know a great
deal about the product, but not the fact that we had to run all these test, they do not
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need to know how we did it they need why we did it.
Do you see any other risks associated with dealing with customers?
T: well the risk is the surgeon goes bankrupt and we already got an order for 5 of
them and he is unable to pay for them.
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5.
How does your company maximise the use and/or capture of internal
experiences/knowledge?
When a new product/service is developed is there a post completion analysis and
experience absorption phase or are experiences and knowledge allowed to fade away?
T: no.. but there is a requirement for retention of data for a bit of time. There is a
period of time in which you should keep data, which may not be active, but may want
be active later on (not active ...i.e. not making that product any more). Also in terms
of traceability, if we are making a device and we put that device in a patient...but now
we are not longer making that device, 5 years later the patient dies because something
has gone wrong. We need to be able to get the paper work back.
Q so is this information stored electronically or is they actual hard copes of paper?
T: well there are 3-tier computer systems. By three tiers I mean 1 copy on the lab
system, 1 copy ‘taped stream copy’, 1 copy hard off site. Traceability is very
important.
Q Did you have any other ways of maximising the use and/or capture of internal
experiences/knowledge
T: not in any formal sense, let me give you an example. Lets us say, as it is very often
the case we have training for surgeons, we have specialised equipments and we that
on site. We set this up very often. The surgeons are very very important. They make
or break. If they do not like the product we go bankrupt. So they need to be nurtured
and treated in an appropriate way, and this is very important for internal networking.
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6.
Can you identify any other routes where knowledge flows within or from the
company?
Theft?
Indifference?
Electronic system failure?
Conferences?
Consultants?
etc?
T: yes there have a minor one where one of our mobile phone was stolen, which was
sensitive to the company; he made so many calls that it cost me £200.
Q who stole it?
T: it was one of the contractors with an odd character.
we have a discrete procedure within the company that is used in emergency, which is
very good for public relation. Someone in Holland requires an emergency procedure.
We have a telephone that we made a dedicated staff who will always handle the calls.
If the phone 3 in morning rings saying that we have a patient, and we require x-device
with specific requirements can you get these to us asap. And what we do is to get that
out of the door within 24 hrs, and this was the phone that was stolen.
We found that very quickly, but not quick enough. In terms of information leakage
not damaging, in financial terms damaging as it cost us 200pound. It could only make
a difference if that person phoned in or attempted to phone in our emergency
procedure and made us manufacture half a dozen new expensive products that will be
a loss. On the other hand, a competitor pretending to be a surgeons could get into a
web site let us say and use the emergency phone number and order up a lot of grafts
and cost us a lot of money.
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7.
How high would the impact of knowledge loss within your organisation be, on
the whole organisation?
T: it will of course depend on the sensitivity of that particular knowledge.
Q for example the test you run for your products?
T: I do not think that could be damaging, we have developed our own proprietary
methods, which are acceptable to the FDA and a range of authorities. But I think I
would question by looking at IPR issues. If you think of a concept, you should a proof
of that concept, if it is a positive outcome, then paper goes into the relevant office, it
is not public domain. In this country it is about 12-18 months it is not public domain,
as you know. I write my own patents, as I am well experienced of that.
It is critical for companies to know about patents within that 12-18 months, so they
know what is coming, and therefore adjust their systems, or re-write patents.
A particular real world example, I had a particular product, which is indeed public
domain, I had a 1 year and 34 days advance in terms of stating, in other words I
logged the product 1 year and 34 days before me. This is an area where it will be
worth 10s of millions if not patented.
Q how does the employee know what is critical knowledge to the company?
T: there is another level here, let me add something; currently the directors of the
present parent organisation of company 8 or concerned about the lockout period.
The lock out period is determined because between now and the end of march, the
will be some financial issues to the city to tell how well the companies are doing. This
is always very very sensitive information, whether it is up side or downside
information, you know huge loss expected greatly expected or greater profits expected
anticipated, etc. that is sensitive information financially. It is not allowed for me to
reveal this information, I must button it, it is against the law. This type of information
is intensely secret and there are strict legal requirements.
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8.
Do you have a risk management procedure or strategy in your organisation?
If yes how is knowledge leakage managed?
T: yes we do we have several of them. Not a unified one. It is required to do what we
call a risk analysis, there is essential financial risks, we have to draw up and submit a
matrix associated with developing a new product, is the price appropriate, etc. Q does our risk assessment include knowledge leakage?
T: no not have risk assessment for that sort of thing.
Q do you think it will be good to include in future assessments?
T: I am not sure it would be actually, because the individual elements as we described,
IPR leakage is hugely damaging, probably testing if leaked to competitors could be
damaging. This are covered in the right way, I mean the normal legal procedures and
the legal systems invested the documents you develop, conditions of supply or
conditions of purchase, they individually find all these elements, but there isn’t
anything in a unified way.
I am not sure whether we need it…let me underline am not saying we don’t..am just
not sure.
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9. Does the term knowledge leakage mean anything to you and if so, what?
T: it will mean on a one hand a water going down the drain, call that water
knowledge/information, on the other hand there is storm of drain ……..(can’t hear the
rest of the sentence)…..and someone wants damage the company for some personal
reason, purposefully.
Q so you only see Knowledge leakage in its negative form?
T: I could see it in both doubly negative and one positive if you like.
It could be to our advantage to purposely leak knowledge, leaking information to a
customer about a potential product. If I was somewhere, cardiovascular products
workshop, where I had to very dangerously predict what will happen in 25yrs time.
This could be a very good platform, because there will be a number of interesting
people there, there will commercial companies there listening to what I have to say,
where I could purposely leak some information purposely, predict what will happen in
the theatres in 25yras, which is very dangerous thing to do. I could purposely activate
buckets of knowledge, by saying I do not think you will be x-procedure, and I do not
think you will be seeing y-procedure in 25 years, so the manufacturers of medical
device will be concerned. Furthermore, I could say tissue regeneration is the way
forward. I could make a diversionary leaking where I do not really tell them what I
really think, I am in a position where I can speak with some authority, and I have a
reputation that I speak with authority, and people listen.
Q So what do you call this? And would you use it.
T: Anti-competitive. This diversionary leakage is not something I would do; I am just
giving examples of potential leak paths and what you could do. It is giving poor/ or
misinformation information to the competitors which they may want emulate to their
competitive advantage, which is damaging for them, but should on its own perverse
way improve our companies’ position.
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