Executive Summary in English

Managing Expertise: Understanding How It’s Built to Better Support It

In large companies operating in high-tech sectors, expertise is critical—it supports both operational activities and innovation processes. In many cases, this expertise does not exist ready-made in the labor market. Often specific to an organization’s activities, it is largely developed internally. Its development requires stability, a long-term vision (often over a decade), and supportive organizational conditions. However, both managerial practices and academic research tend to focus on policies and mechanisms targeting already-established expertise, neglecting the slow and demanding process of building it. Why is this oversight problematic?

The challenges surrounding expertise are multiple and generally well recognized by both companies and the literature. They are economic (ensuring a solid foundation of distinctive scientific and technical skills) as well as socio-organizational (recognizing and retaining experts, identifying and capitalizing on expertise, encouraging collaboration among experts, etc.). Yet, these concerns are often addressed as though expertise were static—something to be managed only once it exists—without sufficient attention to how it is created in the first place. Given the importance of expertise in innovation processes, and the current pressure on those processes, overlooking how expertise is formed is risky—especially because the long timescales involved introduce significant inertia. This study addresses this blind spot in the management of technological innovation.

We begin by surveying the topic based on observations from CIME’s member network and insights from academic research through a literature review. The findings reveal that the production of expertise remains somewhat mysterious, despite a shared sense of urgency to better understand how expertise is formed.

To explore this further, we conducted two case studies, presenting both their characteristics and key findings. These inquiries come at a time when the organizations involved—like many others—are being challenged to better align their strategic oversight of expertise with evolving future needs. The fieldwork highlights a variety of organizational factors that act either as enablers or barriers to the development of both individual and collective expertise. It also raises questions about current management policies and mechanisms, pointing to their limited role and relative effectiveness in supporting expertise development pathways.

In the final section, we offer practical suggestions for scientific and technical organizations to ensure that expertise is managed as it is being formed, not just once it is established. Rather than focusing exclusively on creating entirely new formal systems, the study suggests improving and supporting existing expertise-building processes, making them more effective through a combination of support and incentives. This approach requires involving all stakeholders concerned with expertise and its management.