The explanation of how japanese companies create ne knowledge boils down to the conversion of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. Having an insight or a hunch that is highly personal is of little value to the company unless the individual can convert it into explicit knowledge, thus allowing it to be shared with others in the company. Japanese companies are especially good at realizing this exchange between tacit and explicit knowledge during the product development phase.

In 1978, top management HONDA inaugurated the development of a new concept car with slogan : “Let’s gamble”. The phrase expressed senior executives conviction that HONDA CIVIC and ACCORD model were becoming too familiar. Managers also realized that along with new postwar generation entering the car market, a new generation of young product designer was coming of age with unconventional ideas about what made a good car.

The business decision that follow “Let’s Gamble” slogan was to form a new-product development team of young engineers and designer (the average age was 27). Top managemen charged the team with two instruction :
1. To come up with a product concept fundamentally different from anything the company had ever done before and
2. To make a car that was inexpensive but not cheap.

It instructionprovided the teamwith an extremely clear sense of direction. For instance, in the early days of project, some team member proposed designing a smaller and cheaper version of HONDA CIVIC – a safe and technologically feasible option. But the team quickly decided this approach contradicted the entire rationale of its mission. The only alternative was to invent something totally new.

Project team leader Hiroo Watanabe coined another slogan to express his sense of the team’s ambitious challenge : “Automobile Evolution”. The phrase described an ideal.

The “evolutionary” trend the team articulated eventually came to be embodied in the image of asphere – a car simultaneously “short” and “tall”. Such a car, they reasoned, would be lighter and cheaper, but also more comfortable and more solid than traditional cars. A sphere provided the most room for the passenger while taking up the least amount of space on the road. The shape minimized the space taken up by the engine and other mechanical systems. This gave birth to a product concept to the team called “Tall Boy”, ehich eventually led the HONDA CITY, the distinctive urban car.

The story of “Tall Boy” illustrated the way Japanese managers approach the process of making tacit knowledge explicit :

1. To Express the Inexpressible
2. To Dissseminate knowledge, and individual’s personal knowledge has to be shared with others.
3. New knowledge is born in the midst of ambiguity and redundancy.

Reference : Ikujiro Nonaka & Hirotaka Takeuchi, The Knowledge Creating Company, 1995

1 Comment »

1. 

   nice post. thanks.

   Comment by pharmacy technician work — July 19, 2010 @ 3:49 am

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