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The creation of customized, technology-based services is highly dependent on experience-based knowledge embodied in individual expert employees. Therefore, knowledge upgrading through recruitment is fundamental to advanced services firms. Paying particular attention to the role of pre-existing knowledge bases and organisational contexts, this paper aims to investigate how software services firms search and select new employees. By doing so, it addresses an underdeveloped part of the human resource management (HRM) literature that concerns the relationship between recruitment and organisational learning.

The analysis uses qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews with HR managers and executives in 12 software firms located in the Norwegian capital, and supplementary information from technologists’ CVs. The firms are strategically chosen to support conceptual development and to allow theoretical generalizations that have relevance for practitioners, and for future research.

The findings point to a challenging tension associated with the need to create stable individual knowledge linkages internally in consultancy-based business environments where technologists tend to develop their careers through external labour market mobility.

Mangers should reflect upon the balance between external and internal competence investments. The creation of an organisational labour market represents one way of co-investing in integrative capabilities and thus of avoiding over-dependency on external sources of knowledge.

The study provides a conceptual model linking recruitment to organisational learning, and emphasises the importance of knowledge management functions at the intersection between external labour markets and the internal organisation.

Data-driven innovation is a key pillar for economic development in the 21st century, accordingly the role and value of data in developing new products, services and business models has gained attention. The study aims to identify three important factors explaining the challenges faced by young entrepreneurial firms when seeking to use public data in their business development.

This study presents the user journeys of five data-driven start-ups in the capital region of Norway aiming to use public data in their business development process. Multiple methods for data collection were used, such as interviews, observations and secondary data.

The study reveals how differences in culture, communication and work methods across stakeholders and sectors affect and delay the process of gaining access to data. Moreover, how various forms of knowledge are expressed differently throughout the user journeys of the start-up firms, with stronger dependency on explicit and codified in early phase, and tacit and experience-based knowledge in later stages, each stage relating to the maturity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem for data-driven innovation. Therefore, the ecosystem for data-driven innovation may be further developed through arenas for collaboration that simplify the process for access to – and use of public data.

The study reveals how young entrepreneurial firms identify opportunities whilst simultaneously facing substantial barriers when they seek to take advantage of publicly available data and transforming them into value creating activities. The study contributes to the theoretical understanding of data-driven innovation by exploring the user journeys of start-up firms and identifying the challenges they face when utilizing public data, highlighting the importance of a mature ecosystem, collaboration for market development and the evolving role of tacit and experience-based knowledge throughout the business development process.