Presented to: Sir, Pir Irfan Rashdi

Presented by: Ghulam Muheodin Kumbhar 14TIM01

Irfan Ahmed Morio
14TIM02

Japanese companies as innovators

Knowledge creation & conversion

Enabling conditions

Case study of Japanese innovation

Hypertext organization

Different management structures

Organizational knowledge creation is the key

to the distinctive ways that Japanese
companies innovate.
Organizational knowledge creation: The
capability to create new knowledge,
disseminate it throughout the organization,
and embody it in products, services, and
systems.

Uncertainty

Constant uphill battle

World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War,

economic crises (oil shocks, yen crisis)
Arrived later than Western companies, didnt
have proven track records or the usual
hindrances of success

Continuous innovation

Uncertainty forced Japanese companies to

look outward and convert external
knowledge into internal knowledge

JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL MARKET

Japanese see reality typically in the

physical interaction with nature and
other human beings (Buddhism,
Confucius)
Western Thought: More self-centered
and focused on knowledge as explicit
and quantifiable
Eastern Thought: Knowledge is more
tacit than explicit needs to be
translated and converted in order for
others to understand and benefit

EASTERN VS. WESTERN INNOVATION

Four Modes:

Socialization: Informal social environments (Hondas

brainstorming camps)

Externalization: Use of metaphors, analogies, concepts,

hypotheses, models (Hondas Automobile Evolution)

Combination: Combining different bodies of explicit

knowledge through documents, meetings, instant messaging
(Asahis Super Dry Beers taste, richness concepts)

Internalization: Learning by doing (Matsushitas reduction of

work hours to increase individual creativity explicit policy
tried out for one month)

KNOWLEDGE CONVERSION

KNOWLEDGE CONVERSION

Provide the proper context for facilitating

group activities as well as the creation and
accumulation of knowledge at the individual
level

Intention:
Clear corporate vision
Autonomy:
Imparting sense of freedom
Fluctuation and Creative Chaos: Suggesting sense of
crisis, stating ambiguous goals
Redundancy:
Intentional overlapping of info
Mandatory Variety:
Internal diversity

KNOWLEDGE ENABLING CONDITIONS

Matsushitas Home Bakery bread-making

machine
Engineers worked as baking apprentices
(socialization)
Creative chaos due to shift from household
appliances to high-end products
Integration of different divisions (Rice
Cooker, Heating and Rotation) created
requisite variety
Home Bakery success led to Human Electrics
Division

KNOWLEDGE IN PRACTICE

Best knowledge-enabling corporate model

is a synthesis

Interconnected layers or contexts

1.

Project System Layer

2.

Business System Layer

3.

Knowledge Base Layer

HYPERTEXT ORGANIZATION

Western tends to be either top-down or

bottom-up
Japanese companies excel at middle-updown management structures
Management model affects who plays what
roles in knowledge work, where knowledge
is stored, how knowledge is shared
Best Western model of middle-up-down is
U.S. military (task forces)

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRUCTURES

The future belongs to companies that can

take the best of the East and the West and
start building a universal model to create
new knowledge within their organizations

Nationalities will be of no relevance

Success in the new knowledge society will

be judged on the basis of knowledgecreating capabilities

CONCLUSIONS