Seeking Information in Order to Produce Information: An Empirical Study at Hewlett Packard Labs

The essential characteristic of knowledge workers is that they use information to produce information subsequently. Hence, information seeking is a knowledge worker’s central aspect of work life. In a corporate research laboratory environment, this is even more pronounced because the results produced are often in the form of more information, such as publications, tech reports, patent applications, or the embodiment of these into prototypes. The practices and expectations regarding information seeking and collaboration are fundamental to productive research in a corporate setting. To this end, a survey research project sampled researchers from selected labs of Hewlett Packard and Compaq Computer shortly after their merger. This survey examined researchers’ usage of information sources, their preferred means of information seeking, and the types of information assets they produced. Findings indicated that participants relied heavily on the Internet and other Web-based resources, more so than on their colleagues inside the company. Participants chose which information resources to use based on the time it took them to track down the information as well as the authoritativeness of the sources. Most information assets were generated collaboratively by teams rather then by individuals. Findings suggested that behavior was affected by the unstable environment resulting from the merger and the process of integrating the two research organizations.