Danone Case

Danone was founded in 1919 by Isaac Carasso in Spain. Groupe Danone is a world market leader in dairy products. The company has been successful in knowledge management through all level of business. The company created ways of transferring and sharing knowledge throughout the company and between employees from around the world as the company has implemented a concept called the “Networking Attitude”. As a global company, Donone had to face many challenges, such as building information to employees around the world; a tension between top-down approach and local autonomy and the role of IT in managing knowledge. Synergies bring more disadvantages than advantages to a group, because headquarters can only suggest options to local managers-decision maker, but cannot impose conditions. Decentralization is very important to Danone’s strategy, it led Danone to have differentiation competency, intimacy to consumers and allowed Danone to move faster than its competitors. Instead of using traditional knowledge management that uses technology, uploading files, building databases, Danone decided to look at behavioral patterns and interactions between people. In 2002 The Networking Attitude was launched as a new way of communication to enable and encourage staffs in different work sites to share knowledge and good practices in the company. As employee’s commitment is very important, several social tools were designed to make people enjoy the activity and see how knowledge exchange can benefit them. Such social tools include:
• Marketplace - Marketplace is a two-hour activity held during other meetings scheduled by the target group. Event’s theme is set up to build loosened-up environment with costumes, role-playing and lively music.
• Message-in-a-bottle - In this activity encouraged bottom-up approach by bringing takers to a small group of givers who were willing to give them solutions and good practices and they would take their turns to be takers. As it is important