La connaissance : vérité, utilité et beauté
Friday, March 30th, 2007[billet en anglais]
This is a short summary of “Knowledge has to do with truth, goodness, and beauty (Acrobat PDF format) - conversation with professor Ikujiro Nonaka“ by Claus Otto Scharmer.
At UC Berkeley
Ikujiro Nonaka interests when at UC Berkeley:
Information processing
Marketing
Sociology
At UC Berkeley, Nonaka learns about
Contingency theory that focused mainly on the relationship between an organization and its environment, and
The law of requisite variety: creating variety in one’s own organization structure.
The study of the innovation processes
When studying innovation processes, he discovers that innovation is not simply information processing. He defines innovation as a process to
capture
create
leverage, and
retain knowledge
Nonaka says that employee’s innovation starts with their beliefs - a very subjective thing (a mental model).
On information and knowledge
information is the flow (the flow of a message) - a medium or material - something passive
knowledge is the stock (accumulating information) - more proactive
Nonaka is well known for
The spiral of knowledge creation
The SECI model (Socialization, Externalization, Internalization, Combination)
The two types of knowledge: tacit knowledge (personal) and explicit knowledge (transmittable in formal language)
The view on the positive role of the middle managers
The middle-up-down (MUD) model
The hypertext organization
The enabling conditions (intention, autonomy, fluctuation/creative chaos, redundancy, and requisite variety)
The five phases of knowledge creation: sharing tacit knowledge; creating concepts; justifying concepts; building an archetype; cross-leveling knowledge.
The importance of socialization
Fractal / Holographic structures with self-organizing individuals
The concept of Ba (not discussed in the article)
I strongly encourage you to read the complete article (Adobe PDF format). There is a lot more to learn about Nonaka.
Enjoy!