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

https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa48788/Download/0048788-10022019003706.pdf

Artificial intelligence for decision making in the era of Big Data – evolution, challenges and research agenda

When will we learn? Improving lessons learned practice in construction

The value of information (VoI) is a decision analytic method for quantifying the potential benefit of additional information in the face of uncertainty. This paper reviews the prevalence of VoI applications reported in the peer-reviewed literature from the years 1990–2011. We categorize papers’ applications across the types of uncertainties considered, modeling choices, and contexts of social importance (such as health care and environmental science). We obtain and analyze statistics on the range of applications and identify trends and patterns in them, and conclude with an interpretation of what these mean for researchers and practitioners as they pursue new efforts. Key results include a substantial increase over the last 20 years in published papers utilizing VoI, particularly in the medical field. Nineteen trends in VoI applications from the period of 1990–2000 to 2001–2011 were found to be at least weakly significant. Beyond simple trends, some characteristics of VoI usage depend on the area of application, and in some cases, certain sets of characteristics tend to be found together.

Value of information analysis: the state of application

The value of information (VoI) is a decision analytic method for quantifying the potential benefit of additional information in the face of uncertainty. This paper reviews the prevalence of VoI applications reported in the peer-reviewed literature from the years 1990–2011. We categorize papers’ applications across the types of uncertainties considered, modeling choices, and contexts of social importance (such as health care and environmental science). We obtain and analyze statistics on the range of applications and identify trends and patterns in them, and conclude with an interpretation of what these mean for researchers and practitioners as they pursue new efforts. Key results include a substantial increase over the last 20 years in published papers utilizing VoI, particularly in the medical field. Nineteen trends in VoI applications from the period of 1990–2000 to 2001–2011 were found to be at least weakly significant. Beyond simple trends, some characteristics of VoI usage depend on the area of application, and in some cases, certain sets of characteristics tend to be found together.

/pdf/value-of-information-analysis-the-state-of-application-4xp3prm6wt.pdf

Value of information analysis: The state of application. Environment Systems & Decisions

High value information in engineering organisations

https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/files/288760/Darlington_IJIM_2010_30_4_315.pdf

Codification vs personalisation: A study of the information evaluation practice between aerospace and construction industries

In any enterprise, decisions need be made during the life cycle of information about its management. This requires information evaluation to take place; a little-understood process. For evaluation support to be both effective and resource efficient, some sort of automatic or semi-automatic evaluation method would be invaluable. Such a method would require an understanding of the diversity of the contexts in which evaluation takes place so that evaluation support can have the necessary context-sensitivity. This paper identifies the dimensions influencing the information evaluation process and defines the elements that characterise them, thus providing the foundations for a context-sensitive evaluation framework.

/pdf/defining-a-framework-for-the-evaluation-of-information-15v12cdfus.pdf

Defining a framework for the evaluation of information

Managing information in engineering organizations is facing the particular issue of the ever-increasing volume of information. It has been recognized that an effective methodology is required to evaluate information in order to avoid information overload and to retain the right information for reuse. By using, as a starting point, a number of the current tools and techniques which attempt to evaluate ‘the value’ of information, it is proposed that an assessment or filter mechanism for information can be developed. This paper addresses this issue firstly by briefly reviewing the information overload problem, the definition of value, and related research work on the value of information in various areas. Then a “characteristic” based framework of information evaluation is introduced using the key characteristics identified from related work as an example. In order to quantitatively calculate the quality and value of information, a Bayesian Network diagram method is introduced to the framework to form an evaluation assessment model. Furthermore a decision supported method, with an assorted scoring system is also developed as the basis of the evaluation assessment result. Finally the additional benefits, especially the reversible reasoning inference process are discussed along with the issues of the challenge of the framework and the implementation of evaluation assessment method.

/pdf/establishing-information-valuing-characteristics-for-2ab5mlu15v.pdf

Establishing Information Valuing Characteristics for Engineering Design Information

Throughout the engineering design process, engineers make decisions based on various information sources without formally judging the value and quality of information. With a wide range of information characteristics available to assess information, the question to the engineers is, "is it possible to establish a metrics to theoretically assess the credibility and value of information within the context of engineering design when they create, store and retrieve the information?" This paper first makes a brief review of the works that are related to assigning "value" to information with the focus being put on analyzing existing information valuing methodologies. In particular, the paper investigates and summarizes the information characteristics involved in these models and methodologies. Together with the fieldwork conducted in a number of global engineering and construction companies, the key information characteristics that are critical to information evaluation are identified. Finally the paper introduces an Information Evaluation Model (IEM) that uses the identified information characteristics as the assessment criteria to judge the value of information.

Yuyang Zhao

Papers

High value information in engineering organisations

Codification vs personalisation: A study of the information evaluation practice between aerospace and construction industries

Defining a framework for the evaluation of information

Establishing Information Valuing Characteristics for Engineering Design Information

A characteristic based information evaluation model