How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally. The authors point out that there are two types of knowledge: explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and tacit knowledge, learned only by experience, and communicated only indirectly, through metaphor and analogy. U.S. managers focus on explicit knowledge. The Japanese, on the other hand, focus on tacit knowledge. And this, the authors argue, is the key to their success--the Japanese have learned how to transform tacit into explicit knowledge. To explain how this is done--and illuminate Japanese business practices as they do so--the authors range from Greek philosophy to Zen Buddhism, from classical economists to modern management gurus, illustrating the theory of organizational knowledge creation with case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, Nissan, 3M, GE, and even the U.S. Marines. For instance, using Matsushita's development of the Home Bakery (the world's first fully automated bread-baking machine for home use), they show how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge: when the designers couldn't perfect the dough kneading mechanism, a software programmer apprenticed herself withthe master baker at Osaka International Hotel, gained a tacit understanding of kneading, and then conveyed this information to the engineers. In addition, the authors show that, to create knowledge, the best management style is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but rather what they call "middle-up-down," in which the middle managers form a bridge between the ideals of top management and the chaotic realities of the frontline. As we make the turn into the 21st century, a new society is emerging. Peter Drucker calls it the "knowledge society," one that is drastically different from the "industrial society," and one in which acquiring and applying knowledge will become key competitive factors. Nonaka and Takeuchi go a step further, arguing that creating knowledge will become the key to sustaining a competitive advantage in the future. Because the competitive environment and customer preferences changes constantly, knowledge perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Company, managers have at their fingertips years of insight from Japanese firms that reveal how to create knowledge continuously, and how to exploit it to make successful new products, services, and systems.

The knowledge-creating company

This handbook looks to provide academics and students with a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the phenomenon of innovation. Innovation spans a number of fields within the social sciences and humanities: Management, Economics, Geography, Sociology, Politics, Psychology, and History. Consequently, the rapidly increasing body of literature on innovation is characterized by a multitude of perspectives based on, or cutting across, existing disciplines and specializations. Scholars of innovation can come from such diverse starting points that much of this literature can be missed, and so constructive dialogues missed. The editors of The Oxford Handbook of Innovation have carefully selected and designed twenty-one contributions from leading academic experts within their particular field, each focusing on a specific aspect of innovation. These have been organized into four main sections, the first of which looks at the creation of innovations, with particular focus on firms and networks. Section Two provides an account of the wider systematic setting influencing innovation and the role of institutions and organizations in this context. Section Three explores some of the diversity in the working of innovation over time and across different sectors of the economy, and Section Four focuses on the consequences of innovation with respect to economic growth, international competitiveness, and employment. An introductory overview, concluding remarks, and guide to further reading for each chapter, make this handbook a key introduction and vital reference work for researchers, academics, and advanced students of innovation. Contributors to this volume - Jan Fagerberg, University of Oslo William Lazonick, INSEAD Walter W. Powell, Stanford University Keith Pavitt, SPRU Alice Lam, Brunel University Keith Smith, INTECH Charles Edquist, Linkoping David Mowery, University of California, Berkeley Mary O'Sullivan, INSEAD Ove Granstrand, Chalmers Bjorn Asheim, University of Lund Rajneesh Narula, Copenhagen Business School Antonello Zanfei, Urbino Kristine Bruland, University of Oslo Franco Malerba, University of Bocconi Nick Von Tunzelmann, SPRU Ian Miles, University of Manchester Bronwyn Hall, University of California, Berkeley Bart Verspagen , ECIS Francisco Louca, ISEG Manuel M. Godinho, ISEG Richard R. Nelson, Mario Pianta, Urbino Bengt-Ake Lundvall, Aalborg

The Oxford Handbook of Innovation

Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Models that depict innovation as a smooth, well-behaved linear process badly misspecify the nature and direction of the causal factors at work. Innovation is complex, uncertain, somewhat disorderly, and subject to changes of many sorts. Innovation is also difficult to measure and demands close coordination of adequate technical knowledge and excellent market judgment in order to satisfy economic, technological, and other types of constraints—all simultaneously. The process of innovation must be viewed as a series of changes in a complete system not only of hardware, but also of market environment, production facilities and knowledge, and the social contexts of the innovation organization.

An Overview of Innovation

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01133837/document

Two decades of research on innovation in services: Which place for public services?

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01133749/document

Mapping innovation dynamics in hospitals

This paper is based on a postal survey of innovation in services carried out in France. It seeks to account for the modes of organisation of innovation processes. It addresses the following themes: the sources of information, the internal and external actors involved in innovation, the costs and duration of projects, the realisation of R&D activity, experimentation and innovation protection systems. Statistical data are used to test the validity of a certain number of theoretical models of the organisation of innovation, in particular the professionals in partnership model, the managerial model, the traditional industrial model, the neo-industrial model, the entrepreneurial model and the artisanal or craft model.

/pdf/patterns-of-innovation-organisation-in-service-firms-postal-48mq75ca42.pdf

Patterns of innovation organisation in service firms: postal survey results and theoretical models

We begin with an overview of innovation in services using two existing data-sets. In Chapter 2 we compare the extent and orientation of innovation in services and manufacturers across Europe using the Innobarometer survey. In Chapter 3 we draw on the second European Community Innovation Survey (CIS-2) and look primarily at patterns of innovation within services, highlighting in particular how these patterns vary within and between various service ‘sectors’. 

In Chapters 4, 5 and 6 we report the results of the original research undertaken for this study. Chapter 4 introduces the four ‘sectors’ that were analysed for this study. These ‘sectors’ were: road transportation and logistics; information processing; care for the elderly; and design. In Chapter 4, we provide an overview of these activities and outline, using case studies some of the innovations that have been introduced within them. Chapter 5 then presents the findings of the questionnaire survey which was undertaken for this study. The results pertaining to each of the sectors are outlined in turn. Chapter 6 then attempts to draw the evidence together, through the use of multivariate statistical methods, to examine the ‘drivers of innovation’ in services. 

Chapter 7 looks at the empirical evidence concerning the factors hampering innovation in services. This chapter draws on evidence from the Innobarometer, the second European Community Innovation Survey, and the ‘Four Sector Survey’ which was undertaken for this project.

Chapter 8 concludes the report with a summary of the findings and an outline of policy related suggestions.

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01113600/document

Faridah Djellal

Papers

Two decades of research on innovation in services: Which place for public services?

Mapping innovation dynamics in hospitals

Patterns of innovation organisation in service firms: postal survey results and theoretical models

Innovation in Services: Issues at Stake and Trends.

The Handbook of Innovation and Services