According to researchers in the Terrella project the key to success lies in how well people work together and how knowledge is shared. Partners in the project included Norwegian certification heavyweights DNV and Nemko.

TERRELLA – international services for global markets – is a research project that ran from 2006 till 2009, funded by the Norwegian Research Council and participating companies. The project focused on service performance, organizational forms and global teams in international professional service firms.

A key finding of the study is that learning often takes place outside the individual’s awareness. It is not before things need to be verbalised that learning moves into the realm of consciousness. There are many indications that learning acquired in work situations is often passive knowledge.

Based on the knowledge generated, Nemko has altered its overall strategy and organised its knowledge-sharing practices and testing and certification services in new ways. The company has also created a knowledge database called Nemko Wiki, which uses the same technology as the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
The database includes an encyclopaedia of information for the individual work areas. Employees at offices around the world actively add to the base. Virtual discussion forums make it easy to ask colleagues for help across various cultural and time zone barriers.

For DNV Energy, the project has generated a deeper understanding of the importance of effective knowledge-sharing systems and close social networks for sharing best practice constructively throughout a global service organisation. The company has focused in particular on day-to-day learning and integrating the sharing of such learning into its competence-building system.

The central approach of this research project has been to study service performance in depth and to develop the processes of international collaboration and knowledge exchange within service firms, rather than focusing on firm level strategies and structures. This approach has contributed to organization development in company partners, and has also generated new research-based knowledge on the coordination challenges and the implications for work exchange and knowledge management in international service firms.
 
The research findings are based on data collection including interviews, fieldwork and questionnaire surveys. More than 250 interviews have been carried out, mostly within the partner companies but also in a broader set of international firms within business and professional and business, including Accenture, Hydro, IBM, Kongsberg Maritime, Norsk Akkreditering, Norconsult, Scandpower, SNPower, Statkraft, Statoil and Telenor.
 
The project has also conducted in-depth questionnaire surveys with more than 1500 responses from headquarter managers, subsidiary managers, subsidiary employees and customers.
 
The project was headed by Nemko AS in a research consortium with company partner DNV Energy, research partners BI Norwegian Business School and SINTEF, and commercialization partners DevoTeam Davinci and Computas.
 
Final report from the Terralla reseach project:
Learning international servicing - Simultaneously creating knowledge and value (pdf).