Knowledge Management: From Brain to Business (PDF 5.5 - Asian ...

The model starts with a “vision.” The fundamental question of the knowledge-based firm is
“why do firms differ?” Firms differ not only because of factors like mobility barriers or the
cost of acquiring resources, which prevent one firm from imitating the successful strategies
of another, but also because they envision different futures based on their unique view of
the world, their values or their ideals. Not only do firms differ in their ability to foresee the
future, to sense or to seize new opportunities, but they also differ in their ability to envision
the future to create new opportunities, to realize their own vision of the future.
Traditional strategic management originating in neoclassical economics assumes profit
maximization is the sole purpose of the firm. We have to question the validity of this
assumption when we see the reality of how firms operate. Collins argues that many excellent
firms have pursued their own absolute values as goals rather than as mere means for profit
maximization. So in that sense, the knowledge vision is very important.
The essential questions are: For what purpose do we exist? Where should we exist
(existence and domain)? Why should we create knowledge?
First, we ask the question, “in what do we believe?” Our belief—this subjectivity—is
fundamental. So in the model as we present it, the knowledge vision is a very fundamental
guiding principle. One does it because he or she wants to, not because everyone else is
doing it. We need a long-term view beyond the arena of competition, not a short-term view
based on efficiency of knowledge utilization. We need a vision that can inspire the intellectual
passions of employees.
Second is the “driving objective,” the bridge between the ideal or vision and action, because
a firm’s knowledge vision is just empty words if there are no active efforts to realize it. For
knowledge to be created and justified, the firm needs a concrete goal, code of conduct or
standard of action to connect the vision with the knowledge-creating processes of dialogue
and practices. We call this connecting bridge the “driving objective.”
Third is “dialogue.” Dialogue is dialectic. Knowledge creation is guided through the synthesis
of contradiction. The world is filled with contradictions and their synthesis occurs in the
creative dialogue of the dialectic. Truth is dynamic and developed in dialogue through the
dynamic process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This is the dialectic. Synthesis does not
result in the elimination of one or the other proposition, but is reached by taking the
discussion to a new level.
Therefore, dialogue is open-ended. Conflict with others serves as a catalyst to reach a higher
level of understanding beyond compromise. It may be a zigzag process but it can lead to the
creation of something new.
The context of dialogue is existential; a theme is created by sharing deeply held thoughts
and beliefs.
Dialogue generates meaning. It is not about a very simple, logical deductive process like:
“Humans are mortal; Socrates is human; therefore, Socrates is mortal.” So what? This is
right, logically right. So what? No new meaning is created from such a proposition. But if we
ask, for example, what it means to be mortal, then we may reach a new conclusion, such as
“Socrates as thought is immortal.”
Dialectic dialogue is not easy to achieve. Companies like Toyota, for example, engage in
dialogue as a shared discipline expressed in the slogan: “Ask Why Five Times.”
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