£18.99
Wise Company
How Companies Create Continuous Innovation
High-velocity change and the challenge of innovation
High-velocity change is the fundamental challenge facing companies today. Few companies, however, are prepared to continuously innovate—because they focus on the short-term and do not emphasize the wisdom needed to make sure that their interests are aligned with those of society. Practical wisdom is the basis of continuous innovation, where companies ceaselessly and repeatedly create new knowledge, disseminate it throughout the organization, and convert knowledge to action over time.
The role of wisdom in creating a wise company
In The Wise Company, legendary management experts Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi highlight how various companies have confronted the challenge of rapid change to create new products and new ways of doing business that benefit employees, consumers, and society. The key: a relentless self-renewal process where companies realize the future they envision, rather than only responding to changes in the environment.
Knowledge creation and the importance of wisdom
Nonaka and Takeuchi argue that while knowledge-creating companies focusing on tacit and explicit knowledge can generate innovation, they cannot create it on a continuous and ongoing basis without having wisdom about human interactions and how they influence organizational structures and practices.
Characteristics of resilient, sustainable companies
Companies that have resilience, longevity, and sustainability share a number of characteristics, Nonaka and Takeuchi show. Strategies are based on alignment of organizational and societal benefits. Leaders grasp the core of any situation or problem quickly, and intuitively comprehend the nature and meaning of people, things, and events. But wise leadership is not enough: wisdom must infuse the organization through informal as well as formal shared interactions and communications that focus on metaphors and stories that convey the essence and meaning of strategies and actions.
Continuous innovation through knowledge and wisdom
In short, Nonaka and Takeuchi demonstrate how continuous innovation results from companies ceaselessly and repeatedly creating new knowledge, disseminating knowledge throughout the organization, and converting that knowledge to action. The Wise Company presents a new model of knowledge-creation and practice for the twenty-first century.
