CA-KSE: a combinatorial algorithm for benchmarking in knowledge sharing environment

PurposeOver the past decade, the cost of product development has increased drastically, and this is due to the inability of most enterprises to locate suitable and optimal collaborators for knowledge sharing. Nevertheless, knowledge sharing is a mechanism that helps people find the best collaborators with relevant knowledge. Hence, a new approach for locating optimal collaborators with relevant knowledge is needed, which could help enterprise in reducing cost and time in a knowledge-sharing environment. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachOne unique challenge in the domain of knowledge sharing is that collaborators do not possess the same number of events resident in the knowledge available for sharing. In this paper, the authors present a new approach for locating optimal collaborators in knowledge-sharing environment using the combinatorial algorithm (CA-KSE).FindingsThe proposed pattern-matching approach implemented in Java is considered efficient for solving the issue peculiar to collaboration in knowledge-sharing domain. The authors benchmarked the proposed approach with its semi-global pairwise alignment and global alignment counterparts through scores comparison and the receiver operating characteristic curve. The results obtained from the comparisons showed that CA-KSE is a perfect test having an area under curve of 0.9659, compared to the other approaches.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper has proposed an efficient algorithm, which is considered better than related methods, for matching several collaborators (more than two) in KS environment. The method could be deployed in medical field for gene analysis, software organizations for distributed development and academics for knowledge sharing.Originality/valueOne sign of strength of this approach, compared to most sequence alignment approaches that can only match two collaborators at a time, is that it can match several collaborators at a faster rate.