Product Description

When The Knowledge-Creating Company (OUP; nearly 40,000 copies sold) appeared, it was hailed as a landmark work in the field of knowledge management. Now, Enabling Knowledge Creation ventures even further into this all-important territory, showing how firms can generate and nurture ideas by using the concepts introduced in the first book.
Weaving together lessons from such international leaders as Siemens, Unilever, Skandia, and Sony, along with their own first-hand consulting experiences, the authors introduce knowledge enabling--the overall set of organizational activities that promote knowledge creation--and demonstrate its power to transform an organization's knowledge into value-creating actions. They describe the five key "knowledge enablers" and outline what it takes to instill a knowledge vision, manage conversations, mobilize knowledge activists, create the right context for knowledge creation, and globalize local knowledge.
The authors stress that knowledge creation must be more than the exclusive purview of one individual--or designated "knowledge" officer. Indeed, it demands new roles and responsibilities for everyone in the organization--from the elite in the executive suite to the frontline workers on the shop floor. Whether an activist, a caring expert, or a corporate epistemologist who focuses on the theory of knowledge itself, everyone in an organization has a vital role to play in making "care" an integral part of the everyday experience; in supporting, nurturing, and encouraging microcommunities of innovation and fun; and in creating a shared space where knowledge is created, exchanged, and used for sustained, competitive advantage.
This much-anticipated sequel puts practical tools into the hands of managers and executives who are struggling to unleash the power of knowledge in their organization.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87372 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review
"Enabling Knowledge Creation is not only carefully written and an interesting read, but it is also very practical and action oriented. The book is full of extremely useful frameworks and suggestions as well as case studies of successful companies in Japan, Europe, and the United States. It will clearly become a standard handbook in the knowledge management field."- Michael A. Cusumano, Sloan Management Review Distinguished Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of Microsoft Secrets and Competing On Internet Time

"Von Krogh, Ichijo and Nonaka write from the deep and accurate conviction that the most important but hardest part of enabling knowing is nurturing the tacit dimensions of knowledge."- Dorothy A. Leonard, William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

"Enabling Knowledge Creation is a key volume in the new second generation knowledge research texts, well written and researched by three outstanding scholars. It should be studied and absorbed by anyone working with knowledge and knowledge contexts."--Larry Prusak, Executive Director, IBM Institute for Knowledge Management

"Knowledge creation requires an organized effort, says this international author team. They offer a detailed program along with five enablers: a knowledge vision, managed conversations, a team of knowledge activists, a contextual framework, and a distribution process."--Business Reader Review

Book Info
Provides new concepts about how knowledge in organizations can be created and used for competitive advantage by describing knowledge-enabling conditions. Discusses 'practical approach' approaches to the amorphous, constantly evolving human realm of knowledge. DLC: Creativity ability in business.

About the Author

Georg Von Krogh is Professor of Management and member of the board, the Institute of Management, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. An active consultant, his clients include Hoffman La-Roche, PricewaterhouseCoopers, USB, and Unilever. He lives in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Kazuo Ichijo is Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University. Author of Management by Values, winner of the Japan Management Association's 1998 Best Book Award, he also works with the leaders of Toyota, General Electric, Fujitsu, Sony, Hitachi, and others, to help them transform their organizations. He lives in Tokyo, Japan. Ikujiro Nonaka is Dean of the School of Knowledge Science at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and is a chaired professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business. Co-author of the highly acclaimed The Knowledge-Creating Company (OUP), he lives in Tokyo, Japan.

Customer Reviews

Documented and thoughtful
This book made me discover knowledge management. It is very well documented, very thougthful, easy to read... An excellent starting point.

Knowledge Enabling not KM !!
I had a pleasant surprise when a friend of mine decided to gift me "Enabling Knowledge Creation" by Georg Von Krogh, Kazuo Ichijo and Ikujiro Nonaka. It forms a sequel to "the Knowledge Creating Company" co-authored by Nonaka and Takeuchi published in 1995 . The first book was a seminal work which has profoundly influenced my views on Knowledge Creation (Nonaka refuses to entertain the concept of KM , resolutely denying that Knowledge
can ever be managed!) along with writers like Tom Davenport and Larry Prusak. However, the first book was open to a lot of criticism saying that it was just too "theoretic", "vague" and "generalised" ...Nonaka et al try and get more hands on, and tool bookish with this book.

However, this book is likely to disturb people who have read and formed ideas about KM by reading works of the American thought leaders.

In the start of the book the authors try and make the difference explicit.

In a passage titled "what's wrong with knowledge management?" they spell it out :

Pitfall I: KM relies on easily detectable, quantifiable information.
Pitfall II: KM is devoted to the manufacture of tools.
Pitfall III: KM depends on a Knowledge Officer.

While the premises of Knowledge Enabling and Creation are:

Premise I: Knowledge is justified true belief, individual and social, tacit and explicit.
Premise II: Knowledge depends on your perspective.
Premise III: Knowledge Creation is a craft , not a science.

The authors reiterate that organizational Knowledge Creation involves five main steps :

1. Sharing tacit knowledge
2. Creating concepts
3. Justifying concepts
4. Building a prototype
5. Cross-leveling knowledge.

To facilitate this the following 5 enablers need to be in place :

1. instill a knowledge vision
2. manage conversations
3. mobilize knowledge activits
4. Create the right context
5. Globalize local knowledge

The book is rich in case studies which show how different companies that follow these concepts are growing in leaps and bounds and innovating over others who remain stuck in the KM paradigm.

The authors note that in the Knowledge journey companies can be mapped in 3 phases, which might or might not be sequential.

1. The Risk Minimisers , whose focus is capturing and locating knowledge. The tools they use are data warehousing, datamining, Yellow pages, IC-Navigator, Balanced Scorecard, Knowledge Audits, IC-Index, Business Information Systems, Rule-based systems [these firms still view knowledge as a resource that needs to be collected and managed]

2. The Efficiency Seekers, who focus on transferring and sharing knowledge. The tools they use are internets, intranets, Lotus Notes/Groupware, Networked organization, knowledge workshops, knowledge workbench, Best Practice Transfer, Benchmarking, Knowledge-gap analysis, Knowledge sharing culture, Technology transfer units, Knowledge transfer units, Systems Thinking

3. The Innovators who enable Knowledge creation are typically those who embrace a knowledge vision, managing conversations, creating the right context, mobilize knowledge activists, globalize local knowledge, professional innovation networks, new organizational forms, New HRM-systems, new corporate values, project management systems, corporate universities, communities and storyboards.

Highly Recommended!
Dust off those liberal arts degrees before opening this challenging treatise on knowledge management, written by a trio of academics who call themselves "constructionists," quote Sartre and speak passionately of "post-modernism." Their work explains how to gain initiative and constructive input from workers by modifying traditional command structures - a grounded approach that is much more realistic than the revolutionary conversions called for by other experts. Managers who balk at the thought of granting autonomy or increased access to their employees may well be converted away from their hierarchical dogma here. We at getAbstract particularly recommend the lively knowledge-creation case histories and the wonderful section explaining how companies can create valid, imaginative futures. (What if IBM had imagined a world in which software was more important than mainframes?)