OA Virtual Organization
Knowa.com is an internet consultancy and software development
company located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The company develops software for a wide range of corporate
clients with an emphasis in web applications.
Knowa.com is a “virtual organization,” meaning that we bring teams together using talent from around the
world to work on short to medium term projects. When the project is completed, the team disbands or
moves to another project. We have well-established, long-term relationships with most of our
team members, some of whom have worked with us for ten years or more. Using this approach,
Knowa.com is able to offer very competitive prices while delivering best-in-class technology
solutions. Our team members include developers, designers, graphic artists, database experts,
and project managers from the USA, Russia, Ukraine, India, Argentina, and Bangladesh. Because of the
wide geographic dispersion of team members, Knowa.com literally works “around the clock” to deliver
your project.
In May 1998, Professor Thomas W. Malone and Robert J. Laubacher published an article in the Harvard
Business Review titled, "The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy" (Malone & Laubacher, 1998). This landmark
article spurred much discussion in the academic and business press. Its core proposition was that
"the devolution of large, permanent corporations into flexible, temporary networks of individuals"
was already underway. Knowa.com is just such an organization, and was slightly ahead of the curve, having
begun operations in the summer of 1997.
Early in our business life, our company established relationships with overseas software programmers,
initially in the Ukraine, and later in Russia, India, Argentina, and Bangla Desh. Over the years,
we have gained a competitive advantage by being able to offer our clients high quality software
development at a low price.
We rely on our globally dispersed “virtual teams” to rapidly develop software applications for
our clients. Like Hollywood film producers, we bring teams together briefly to complete projects,
and then disperse or reassign them to new projects on an as-needed basis.