Noboru Konno

SECI, Ba and Leadership: a Unified Model of Dynamic Knowledge Creation

Abstract Despite the widely recognised importance of knowledge as a vital source of competitive advantage, there is little understanding of how organisations actually create and manage knowledge dynamically. Nonaka, Toyama and Konno start from the view of an organisation as an entity that creates knowledge continuously, and their goal in this article is to understand the dynamic process in which an organisation creates, maintains and exploits knowledge. They propose a model of knowledge creation consisting of three elements: (i) the SECI process, knowledge creation through the conversion of tacit and explicit knowledge; (ii) ‘ba’, the shared context for knowledge creation; and (iii) knowledge assets, the inputs, outputs and moderators of the knowledge-creating process. The knowledge creation process is a spiral that grows out of these three elements; the key to leading it is dialectical thinking. The role of top management in articulating the organisations knowledge vision is emphasised, as is the important role of middle management (‘knowledge producers’) in energising ba. In summary, using existing knowledge assets, an organisation creates new knowledge through the SECI process that takes place in ba, where new knowledge, once created, becomes in turn the basis for a new spiral of knowledge creation.

Organizational knowledge creation theory: A first comprehensive test

Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test Nonakas ((1994) Organization Science, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 14-37) a priori model of organizational knowledge creation with data collected from 105 Japanese middle managers. The results provide strong support for viewing organizational knowledge creation as a higher-order construct comprised of four knowledge conversion processes: socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization.

Scenario Planning: The Basics

This article covers the basics of scenario planning: Why scenarios? What are scenarios? How do you develop scenarios? After covering the preliminaries—the constitution of the scenario team; interviews; research; the identification of a focal issue; set and setting for a scenario workshop; staffing; the trajectory of a scenario planning project—the article moves on to describe several methods for identifying a finite set of diverse scenario logics. After a set of scenarios has been developed, there are several different routes from scenarios to strategy. Early indicators can help identify which of several scenarios is in fact unfolding.

Toward Narrative Strategy

Strategic planning exercises often begin with the observation, “We need a better story to tell.” We argue that this is not just a figure of speech but that the narrative form is uniquely appropriate to both the development and the effective communication of good strategies. Drawing on recent literature in the relatively new field of narratology, we argue that the temporal structure of stories allows for a reach into the future that evidence-based, analytic approaches cannot achieve. The case of Nakamuras turnaround at Matsushita/Panasonic is cited as an example of narrative strategy.

Virtue-Based Management

Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyres book, After Virtue, we criticize current approaches to business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Both Kantian approaches that stress the importance of good intentions, and utilitarian approaches that stress the importance of good results come under MacIntyres critique, as do Moores ethical intuitionism and Stevensons emotivism. In their place, a return to Aristotle shows us the importance of good habits, good practices, and the unity of the several virtues. The example of Winston Churchill is used to illustrate virtue-based leadership.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Strategy, Story, and Emergence: Essays on Scenario Planning

This issue pulls together the work of three authors from Japan and the United States, coagulating a collaboration that extends more than a decade. While Ogilvy is the main wordsmith in English, he is hardly the principal author. Noboru Konno and Ikujiro Nonaka are the authors of several texts in Japanese that first articulated many of the ideas in the following pages. For the most part, we will not attempt to attribute particular ideas to the writings or brains of one or another co-author. The interested reader can seek out origins in earlier published works if he or she wishes. The important thing to us is the happy convergence of thinking, the dance of ideas that our collaboration has produced. The important thing is not so much the origins, much less any claims to intellectual property, but instead the shape of the eventual convergence. From our several backgrounds, we have come to share a number of attitudes and ideas that are at once:

The Mind of the Scenario Thinker

In the face of increasing uncertainty and changes, corporations must dynamically examine their business environment and activate the knowledge creation process in a future-oriented manner without getting hung up on analyzing their past (much like driving a car using only the rear-view mirror). In the previous article, we discussed the basics of scenario planning. We should not use this tool as a mere technique. Our knowledge of the world and the environment around us is important because it underlies our scenarios. When we look toward the future in an uncertain environment, we necessarily create knowledge proactively. Scenario planning and knowledge creation are commonplace when working on knowledge of innovations that shape the future. In this article we focus on the importance of having “scenario mind,” the philosophy underlying scenario planning. With any managerial tool, you cannot create real knowledge if you use only superficial know-how, like procedures described in manuals, to seek quick results. In the following sections, we discuss how scenario planning must be recognized as a “discipline of knowledge” to be embedded as a way of thinking and behavioral pattern of each individual or organization, not as a mere tool.