How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

How to Do Things With Words

物件導向軟體之架構(Object-Oriented Software Construction)探討

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

Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Edited by I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave. Pp. viii, 282. £3·50, paperback £1. 1970. (Cambridge University Press.)

The Geospatial Semantic Web

Although Object Orientation is emphasized in software engineering education, few have attempted to alleviate the initial learning curve associated with an inexperienced audience in non-computer science disciplines. The authors propose a Problem-Based Learning curriculum centered on game development to deliver basic Object-Oriented programming concepts in an interactive and engaging manner. Class activities occur within the context of the Object-Oriented Rational Unified Process. One of the most significant contributions of this paper lies in the design of class modules containing tasks intended to educate students on Object-Oriented Software Engineering in an incremental and self-actuated way.

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Teaching Object-Oriented Software Engineering through Problem-Based Learning in the Context of Game Design

The development of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) is often the victim of an excessive focus on data and standards. In this paper we use the hermeneutics of Gadamer and Habermas to understand the problem of how SDIs can succeed. We use Gadamer's concept of phronesis to show how being an application-driven project is a key to success, and draw on Habermas's ideas to show the importance of emancipatory knowledge in the implementation of SDIs. A case study on a geographic information system (GIS) project in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is presented. The project has been evolving for 15 years; it started with a focus on data and standards and generated a strong and active spatial data infrastructure for the city. The reasons for success were many; here we highlight the application-driven nature of the project, along with the combination of multiple disciplines and multiple levels of expertise in its design and implementation team.

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Considerations from the development of a local spatial data infrastructure

Transitional economies with large geographical areas (such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China) represent both a challenge and an opportunity for the creation of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). Setting up an SDI in transitional economies is critically dependent on the diffusion of geographical information systems technology in public and private institutions. We use Rogers's diffusion of innovations model to study how geographic information system (GIS) technology was introduced in a transitional economy (Brazil). Because GIS technology is nonneutral, we use actor network theory to explain the roles and importance of each of the main actors in the Brazilian case. We conclude by discussing the policy choices for making the Brazilian SDI sustainable, including both the open access to data and the use of open software. The Brazilian experience points out that public policies focused on the organization of SDI in transitional economies in midsized and large countries should promote the growth of collaborative networks.

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Networks of innovation and the establishment of a spatial data infrastructure in Brazil

The complexity and richness of geospatial data and the difficulty of their representation create specific problems for geographic information systems interoperability. This paper proposes the creation of software components from ontologies as a way to integrate geographic information. These software components are derived from ontologies using an object-oriented mapping. The translation of ontologies into active information system components leads to ontology-driven geographic information systems. The approach introduced by this work enables the use of the architecture by users developing new applications and by GIS database designers. The results presented here answer many questions presented in past works that dealt with the quest for a new GIS. The proposed architecture is up to date with requirements of modern information systems that should provide interoperability and move from managing data and information to managing knowledge. Resumo. A complexidade e riqueza das informacoes geograficas e a dificuldade de sua representacao cria problemas especificos na tentativa de sua integracao. Este trabalho apresenta a estrutura de um Sistema de Informacao Geografico baseado em ontologias, que sao o principal componente neste tipo de sistema. Um mapeamento baseado em orientacao a objetos e usado para criar classes a partir das ontologias. Esta abordagem proporciona um alto grau de interoperabil idade, permitindo integracao parcial de informacoes, quando a integracao completa nao e possivel. Este sistema permite ainda o reaproveitamento de classes ja desenvolvidas incorporando, assim, nos novos sistemas, o conhecimento existente em outros SIGs. Os resultados deste trabalho respondem a muitas das questoes apresentadas em trabalhos relacionados a nova geracao de SIGs. A estrutura apresentada permite a resolucao da interoperabil idade semântica, uma das caracteristicas dos modernos sistemas de informacao.

Frederico T. Fonseca

Papers

The Geospatial Semantic Web

Teaching Object-Oriented Software Engineering through Problem-Based Learning in the Context of Game Design

Considerations from the development of a local spatial data infrastructure

Networks of innovation and the establishment of a spatial data infrastructure in Brazil

Ontologias e Interoperabilidade Semântica entre SIGs