Empirical Investigation of the Efficacy and Efficiency of Tools for Transferring Software Engineering Knowledge

Continuous pressure on behalf of enterprises leads to a constant need for innovation. This involves exchanging results of knowledge and innovation among research groups and enterprises in accordance to the Open Innovation paradigm. The technologies that seem to be apparently attractive for exchanging knowledge are the Internet and its search engines. Literature provides many discordant opinions on their efficacy, and no empirical evidence on the topic. This work starts from the definition of a Knowledge Acquisition Process, and presents a rigorous empirical investigation that evaluates the efficacy of the previous technologies within the Exploratory Search of Knowledge and of Relevant Knowledge according to specific knowledge requirements. The investigation has pointed out that these technologies are not effective for Explorative Search. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of other technologies to develop and analyse in order to overcome the weaknesses that this investigation has pointed out within the Knowledge Acquisition Process.