The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

Tipping Toward Sustainability: Emerging Pathways of Transformation

“…Top management does not so much ''control or direct'' the innovation process, as provide resources and opportunities for exploration and experimentation (Nonaka and Nishiguchi 2001;Westley 1990). There is a key role here for intermediaries, or knowledge brokers, at the middle management level, who are able to question the strategic context to understand why and where a firm wishes to move, frame that for those working on the front lines, identify promising innovations, and sell these to the strategic apex (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995;Burgelman 1983). This is sometimes called management up-down or ''sandwiched'' innovation (Lane et al 2009).…”

Exploring knowledge exchange: A useful framework for practice and policy

“…However, with a few notable exceptions (Ferlie et al, 2005;Van de Ven et al, 1999;Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995), there are very few descriptions of how knowledge exchange unfolds in practice settings and, as Ferlie points out, even fewer of how it unfolds in healthcare settings (Ferlie, 2009). This has hampered attempts to produce realistic and useful models and frameworks which can help policymakers and researchers understand how knowledge exchange works and how formal knowledge translation interventions can add value.…”

Subjective Evidence Based Ethnography: Method and Applications

“…These visual and motor responses are guided by the goals that the operator pursues throughout the performance of her/his activity. While the activity of operators essentially entails the application of procedures, an internal layer of tacit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995;Polanyi, 1958Polanyi, , 1967Ryle, 1945) has been built and shaped over the years by the experts. Tacit knowledge underlies the prescriptive aspect of the task and expresses itself in the actual work of operators.…”

“…Crucial, because it is essential to preserve this competitive resource as the intellectual and know-how capital, and to pass it on to the new generations of experts. This invisible, internal, not formalised and no longer conscious part of knowledge is often directly shared between apprentices and experienced fellows through socialization practices (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995) such as professional craft mentoring on the work field (Argyris & Schon, 1974;Castéra, 2008;Cushion, Armour, & Jones, 2003;Furlong & Maynard, 1995;Schön, 1983;Zanting, Verloop, & Vermunt, 2003), or within communities of practice (Wenger & Snyder, 2000;Wenger, 1998). However, the current societal context of the baby-boomer generation's mass-retiring makes less and less possible those types of relationships and training settings.…”

“…However, the current societal context of the baby-boomer generation's mass-retiring makes less and less possible those types of relationships and training settings. While some methods in knowledge management have been developing over the past twenty years to address this issue (Earl, 2001;Ermine, Boughzala, & Ounkara, 2006;Ermine, 2010;Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995;Srikantaiah & Koenig, 2000), it seems that techniques using visual ethnography provided by the field of social sciences are rarely used, in spite of their obvious relevance. Indeed, episodes or elements that are difficult to verbalize or have become so automated that they are unconscious for the subject can still be visible, remarkable and questioned by the observer (e.g.…”