Engage Practitioners

Context:

‘Much of the most innovative research in design, and particularly technology, is founded in practice.  However, much of this research remains tacit … For the leading practices, intellectual property is what defines them and sustains them, and they are understandably loath to give it away … We therefore have to find a way to improve the communication of the tacit research carried out in practice, but in a way that does not compromise the value of the individual practice’s intellectual property.’  [7]

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For many corporate strategists, business is all about competition, and successful firms are those able to maintain a dominant position in their market place; but other experts are talking about collaboration, trust and level playing fields.  Is ‘collaboration the new competition’?

At a time when global economic forces and technological change are reckoned to be replacing large-scale, hierarchical organisations with flatter networked structures and supply chains it seems logical that small-scale architectural practices should be winning more work; however, many such practices are complaining that they are being increasingly excluded from larger commercial and government contracts.  A possible reason for this situation is a key finding of the RIBA’s report Constructive Change (2005), which states that due to their ‘introverted design perspective … architects are rarely seen as team players interested in interdsciplinary working.’ [2] The task of engaging practitioners with the RIBA architectural research wiki could start by promoting the commercial benefits of the project to architects as a collaborative platform for sharing knowledge.

In theory, the most efficient way to procure goods and services is through competitive markets; in practice, the costs of collaboration (searching for information and advertising, co-ordinating different processes and products, agreeing prices and collecting payments etc.) can mean that it is
cheaper for firms to manage many aspects of the business internally.  This situation is reflected in Coase’s Thoerem: ‘A firm will tend to expand until the cost of organising an extra transaction within the firm equals the cost of carrying out the same transaction on the open market.’  However, permanent reductions in the cost of many market transactions due to developments in ITC are causing firms to buy things from other firms which they once produced themeselves.   Coase’s Theorem is still valid, but it is more usefully stated in an opposite sense: ‘The size of a firm will decrease until the cost of organising an extra transaction externally is no longer cheaper than the cost of carrying it out itself.’ 

Despite a current trend towards mergers and consolidation within the UK construction industry, the size of most architectural firms is very small –more than half of all architectural practices employ fewer than 10 people.  A report about knowledge management for the RIBA by Artemis Consulting and David Haynes Associates (2000) advised that the small size of many architectural practices limited what they could achieve  in comparison to larger firms, so that they would tend to rely more on external methods for managing knowledge.  The RIBA architectural research wik is not the only external resource available to practitioners in this context, but it does have the potential to attract smaller practices who wish to become more competitive by collaborating, as well as creating a market for brokering between small firms and larger practices and clients.  As more practices join the wiki, the ‘network effects’ of collaboration are likely to grow and encourage further participation.

Therefore:

Establish the wiki as a business network for end users and suppliers who wish to share knowledge and ideas – enabling collaboration at all levels of the industry supply chain and acting as a market place for larger firms and clients looking for external services.

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The previous pattern Academic Community explained how an information commons operates in academic communities.  However, the practical applications of such research are often proprietary and protected by intellectual property rights - it is this type of knowledge which is usually guarded by architectural firms.  It is unrealistic to expect practitioners to share knowledge which is commercially sensitive, but the focus of the wiki is likely to be developing new, innovative ideas rather than established expertise – ‘the milk of innovation doesn’t flow from cash cows’.