Innovating by accessing knowledge across departments

It is widely believed that individuals are more likely to be innovative if they are exposed to different perspectives and domains. While it is purported that knowledge management systems can help, they have generally failed to do so, because there are significant thought world barriers associated with the different perspectives and domains that individuals have to overcome. Using the theory of thought worlds as a theoretical lens, we examined how innovative engineers successfully accessed knowledge from other functional departments. We found that the way they accessed the knowledge had implications for designing knowledge management technology specifically focused on fostering innovation.