People-focused knowledge management

Sensemaking and Its Situational Awareness
Sensemaking is the initial — and perhaps the most important —
area within situation-handling. However, it is often made difficult for
several reasons.
4
Information may be insufficient or contradictory.
The situation may be unfamiliar. Most situations are close-coupled
and interwoven, with other aspects within or outside the enterprise.
Hence, it may be difficult to delineate what to include or exclude in
the target situation.
R&D and Marketing Leadership Find New Markets
for New Products
The Marketing Department of the electronic equipment man-
ufacturer Argis wanted to explore whether potential new com-
munications products would be successful in the marketplace.
The new products had capabilities far beyond the conventional
products, which primarily served logistics operations. The sales
staff and most of the marketing people argued that the new
products were overengineered and that the new features would
make them too expensive for the limited logistics market. Steve
Hill, R&D head, and Paul Rhone, Marketing vice president,
agreed that the “logistics only” perspective was too narrow and
that Argis would be able to drive down costs if a larger market
could be found to justify larger production runs.
The Market Research Department (MRD) had little market
data outside the logistics industries and was reluctant to expand
its product acceptance analyses. It felt that the new devices
probably had little attraction for industries other than logistics
and thought it would be a waste of effort. Steve and Paul
decided that the MRD was too constrained in its views and that
it needed assistance and insights by someone with a broader per-
spective. Consequently, they created a taskforce composed of an
outside group assisted by R&D and Marketing people who were
convinced the new devices would be attractive to larger markets.
The taskforce returned with a wealth of information from
focus groups and work meetings with operations people from
several industries. They had found that no one else was offer-
ing competing devices. Many potential users were enthusiastic
about how the new devices would make their jobs easier and
help their companies. The information included virtual user 
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scenarios — models — for how the devices would assist opera-
tions in practice. The taskforce also made up pro forma finan-
cial analyses to illustrate potential economic benefits. From
these models it appeared that the market for the new devices
easily could be double that of the logistics market. Steve and
Paul were able to summarize the findings in a succinct report
for the Argis management team which was to decide on whether
or not to pursue the new product line. They also explained the
deeper reasoning behind the concepts and findings in the report
in discussions with management, thereby transferring the
insights, and not just the results.
Comments: Argis was faced with an interesting situation and
needed to assess how it related to the potential marketplace. They
needed to understand if it made sense to pursue the situation.