Towards Knowledge Management for Explorers: The Case of the Brisbane Airport Corporation

Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) has recently been recognised as the world’s most efficient and customer focused privatised airport. Studying the corporate strategies and knowledge management issues faced by a company as successful as BAC holds important insights. This paper discusses four key characteristics which impact on BAC’s knowledge management strategy: First, corporate values are embedded in a strong culture that is built upon ‘win/win’ outcomes, operational flexibility, and consultative management. These values drive BAC’s strategy of maintaining a slim core, outsourcing, relationships building, and committing to shared risks and returns. BAC faces challenges of growth, exercise of influence on more with fewer, migration from control to culture, and migration from a value chain driven airport to a self-sustaining economic city. Second, BAC is exploratory by nature. An explorer meets new challenges afresh, is innovative, fluid, and populated by experienced and expert people who generate a constant flow of new ideas. Third, there is an increasing need to systematically capture and transfer competences across more people in the slim core. Fourth, BAC favours a personalisation strategy which is based in dialogue and the exchange of knowledge principally via people. It uses technology more as a communication device than a repository.