The Knowledge-Creating Company. Ikujiro Nonaka

      

      THE

      KNOWLEDGE-

      CREATING

      COMPANY

      Harvard Business Review

      CLASSICS

      THE

      KNOWLEDGE-

      CREATING

      COMPANY

      Ikujiro Nonaka

      Harvard Business Press

      Boston, Massachusetts

      Copyright 2008 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation Published in Harvard Business Review in 1991 and 2007 Reprint #R0707n All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

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      ISBN 978-1-4221-7974-1

      Library-of-Congress cataloging information forthcoming

      The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.

      THE HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW CLASSICS SERIES

      Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice—many of which still speak to and influence us today. The HBR Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each volume contains a groundbreaking idea that has shaped best practices and inspired countless managers around the world—and will change how you think about the business world today.

      THE

      KNOWLEDGE-

      CREATING

      COMPANY

      Editor’s Note:

      This 1991 article helped popularize the notion of “tacit” knowledge—the valuable and highly subjective insights and intuitions that are difficult to capture and share because people carry them in their heads. Years later, the piece can still startle a reader with its views of organizations and of the types of knowledge that inform them.

      For example, the advice on how to distill objective and transferable, or “explicit,” knowledge from tacit knowledge—with a vivid illustration of Matsushita Electric’s efforts to build a better bread-making machine—is both arresting and actionable. The next step: ensuring that explicit knowledge is translated back into tacit knowledge that will then go on to yield yet another innovative solution.