The knowledge-creating company

Transcription

1 Paper research The knowledge-creating company by Ikujiro Nonaka Babette Huisman Kirsten Wu

2 The importance of knowledge Increase competitive advantage. Successful companies are able to constantly create knowledge. Embody knowledge in new technologies and products. Knowledge-creating is the best way to achieve innovation.

3 Introduction Managers misunderstanding for knowledge. Useful knowledge needs to be formal and systematic in western management. New way of considering knowledge leads the success of Japanese companies. The incomprehensibility of Japanese approach for western managers.

4 Japanese approach The use of subjective insights and intuitions of individual employees. The use of slogans to create new knowledge. Theory of automobile evolution Honda City The use of analogy to create new products. Analogy between a personal copier and a beer can Canon s personal copier. Personal commitment. Not a machine but a living organism. Recreate the whole company. Everyone has the right to create knowledge.

5 Tacit and explicit knowledge Tacit knowledge: Skill, highly personal, hard to be formalized and shared. Ex: A craftsman s technique for carving. Explicit knowledge: Fact, formal and systematic, easy to be shared or communicated. Ex: A financial report, scientific formula, product specification.

6 Four basic patterns From tacit to tacit: Ex: Shift a chief s tacit knowledge to your own tacit knowledge. From explicit to explicit: Ex: An accountant collects information and makes a financial report. From tacit to explicit: Ex: An accountant develops new approach to budgetary control and share with the team. From explicit to tacit: Ex: The team comes up with new idea of financial control after using the accountant s new approach.

7 Case- Matsushita Electric Company Product developers were having trouble getting the machine to knead dough properly and unable to obtain the reason. Software developer proposed a creative solution by apprenticing herself to a hotel s head baker. She gained her own tacit knowledge from the baker and reproduced his technique by creating a new product. New product broke the record for sales.

8 Conclusion of the Matsushihta case Illustrate a movement between tacit and explicit knowledge. Obtained tacit knowledge from the baker. Translated her tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge and shared with the team. The powerfulness of the combination of these two types of knowledge.

9 International language for knowledge From tacit to explicit: Ex: An accountant develops new approach to budgetary control and share with the team. Express the inexpressible The use of figurative language and symbolism

10 Case- Honda Honda realized that existing car models were becoming too familiar New generations in Japan had conventional ideas about what made a good car. Honda s assignment for the new team: Come up with a fundamentally different product concept Make a car that is inexpensive but not cheap Theory of Automobile Evolution

11 Result of the Honda case If the automobile were an organism, how should it evolve? Tall boy concept: short in length, tall in heigth Lighter, cheaper and more comfortable than existing cars

12 Figurative language A metaphor is a distinctive way of perception, to understand something intuitively This approach is very useful in the early stages of knowledge creation Contradictory metaphors such as a beer can and a personal copier stimulate conflict

13 Figurative language An analogy is a more structured process of making distinctions: it clarifies how two ideas are alike or not alike A metaphor is explained by an analogy The step between pure imagination and logical thinking An actual model is created in order to communicate clearly to the rest of the company

14 Managing knowledge creation Becoming a knowledge-creating company has direct implications for responsibilities, organizational design and managerial roles Redundancy is necessary to create knowledge Frequent dialogue and communication create a cognitive ground and spread newexplicit knowledge The principle of internal competition Strategic job rotation causes fluid knowledge

15 Managing knowledge creation Information must be accessible to any employee No one department is exclusively responsible for creating new knowledge Senior managers, middle managers and fronline employees have equal responsibility to create new knowledge Contribution is measured by importance of information

16 Managing knowledge creation Because of people s own interpretation, confusion is created when transferring knowledge Reexamination of what people take for granted is a rich source of new knowledge, especially in times of breakdown or crisis New knowledge is born in chaos, and the chaos must be oriented toward useful knowledge creation through using a conceptual framework

17 Managing knowledge creation Frontline workers know what is Senior managers know what ought to be This future is expressed by metaphors, symbols and concepts which are the socalled conceptual umbrella Top management also sets the standard for evaluating newly created knowledge Middle managers mediate between those two

18 Measuring knowledge creation The right direcion is given by the umbrella concept, quantitative criteria and qualitative criteria However, a company s vision must be openended and susceptible to conflicting interpretations Freedom and autonomy for employees own goals stimulates knowledge creation in all levels

19 True knowledge engineers Senior managers set a view and direction by giving metaphors and criteria Frontline workers have constant dialogue, create new knowledge and a new perspective Middle managers synchronize people s rhythms, synthesize tacit knowledge and make it explicit to incorporate it into the organization

20 Thank you for your attention.