Supporting Innovation with the use of a Balanced Scorecard Approach to Manage Knowledge Transfer

This paper considers supporting innovation through improvements to the management of knowledge within a UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), and reflects upon the need to ensure that the knowledge being transferred is based upon Deep Smarts. Deep Smarts are very difficult to define, and it was therefore considered that by monitoring changes within any consequential beneficial attributes associated with the Deep Smarts, through an Intellectual Capital Audit (ICA), a direct indication of successful knowledge transfer could be achieved. As a further indication of the level of Deep Smarts exploitation occurring on an on-going basis, when the cause (Deep Smarts) can't be measured, measuring the symptoms (any apparent consequential beneficial attributes) can provide a useful indicator of progress. So that the potential for innovation and creativity could be maximised, a generic balanced scorecard for Deep Smarts applied to KTPs was developed to be used as a tool to both determine the level of consequential beneficial attributes relating to the successful knowledge transfer, and also to assess the deployment of Deep Smarts within the delivery of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership.