In the service economy of the 21st century, companies face intense competition in providing customer-centric products and services. In an environment where emerging technologies constantly stimulate innovative methods of service delivery, customer and technological knowledge remain the primary types of information applied by a company in providing customers with quality products and services. Managing knowledge interactions for synergetic business operations is critical in building a service-oriented infrastructure for continuous innovation.
This study explores the pattern of knowledge interaction between R&D and marketing departments. Knowledge possessed by R&D department is defined as technological knowledge, while knowledge possessed by marketing department is defined as customer knowledge. First, the concepts, theories, and relevant research regarding the relationship between customer and technological knowledge is reviewed. Based on boundary-spanning theory, this study conducts an exploratory case study to examine the interaction between customer and technological knowledge. The case study focuses on the interaction between sales personnel and R&D employees across three levels of interaction, the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. This study found that different types of knowledge and activities between R&D and marketing departments generate different results. This study also found that most business knowledge for innovation is generated at the knowledge interaction between semantic and pragmatic level. Another finding is that Field Application Engineers play the important roles of boundary spanner because they possess both technological knowledge and customer knowledge for their specialized field. Boundary spanners serve as both filters and facilitators in information transmittal between internal units, and play an important role in the transfer of ideas within organizations. To develop critical innovations, businesses should interact according to what type of knowledge accessed.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 7
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 9
2.1 Characteristics of knowledge in the service economy 9
2.2 Development of customer knowledge and technological knowledge 10
2.2.1 Customer knowledge 10
2.2.2 Technological knowledge 10
2.2.3 The application of customer knowledge and technological knowledge
……………………………………………………………………………..11
2.2.4 Relationship between customer and technological knowledge in the service economy environment……………………………………………..13
2.3 Internal knowledge transfer 15
2.3.1 Boundary spanning 16
CHAPTER 3: REARCH METHOD 21
3.1. Research framework 21
3.2.1. Research process 22
3.3. Data collection and analysis 23
3.3.1 Data Collection 24
3.3.2 Data analysis 24
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS 26
4.1 Company A: Sunplus Technology Company 26
4.1.1 Background 26
4.1.2 Activities of company across the three levels of boundaries 26
4.1.3 Interaction between customer knowledge and technological knowledge 26
4.2 Company B: Audix 29
4.2.1 Background 29
4.2.2 Activities of company across the three levels of boundaries 29
4.2.3 Interaction between customer knowledge and technological knowledge 29
4.3 Company C: Lite-On Technology 32
3.1 Background 32
4.3.2 Knowledge of company across three levels of boundaries 32
4.3.3 Interaction between customer knowledge and technological knowledge 32
4.4 Company D: Avant Technology Inc 34
4.4.1 Background 34
4.4.2 Activities of company across three levels of boundaries 34
4.4.3 Interaction between customer knowledge and technological knowledge 34
4.5 Company E: MiTAC Inc 36
4.5.1 Background 36
4.5.2 Activities of company across the three levels of boundaries 36
4.5.3 Interaction between customer knowledge and technological knowledge 36
4.6 Company F: TSMC 38
4.6.1 Background 38
4.6.2 Activities of company across the three levels of boundaries 38
4.6.3 Interaction between customer knowledge and technological knowledge 38
4.7 Company G: Asus 40
4.7.1 Background 40
4.7.2 Activities of company across the three levels of boundaries 40
4.7.3 Interaction between customer knowledge and technological knowledge 40
4.8 Company H: Zhongshi 42
4.8.1 Activities of company across three levels of boundaries 42
4.8.2 Interaction between customer knowledge and technological knowledge 42
4.9 Company I: Deanway 44
4.9.1 Activities of company across the three levels of boundaries 44
4.9.2 Interaction between customer knowledge and technological knowledge 44
CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION 46
5.1 Knowledge processes involving technological knowledge and customer knowledge carriers 46
5.2 Activity between technological / customer knowledge carriers 49
5.3 Field Application Engineer as a boundary spanner 51
CHAPTER 6: Conclusion 54
6.1 Conclusion 54
6.2 limitations 54
6.3 Academic contribution 55
6.4 Managerial implications 55
6.5 Further Research 55
References 56

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