Managing Flow

Abstract

There is no one who in recent years has done more to shape the field of management than Ikujiro Nonaka. The body of work produced over the past two decades has been very influential, both in theory development and in management practice. Ikujiro Nonaka is a University of California, Berkeley graduate who has been the Xerox Distinguished Professor at the Haas School of Business for almost a decade. But it is not his UC Berkeley lineage that causes me to give praise to a great colleague and friend. Rather, it is his deep insights into the management of the new product development process, and his efforts to help us understand the role of both leaders and middle management in knowledge creation. Ikujiro Nonaka has become, for many of us, the new Peter Drucker offering a deep intuitive understanding of management and the ability to see gaps and deficiencies in existing theories, as well as emerging trends which will impact on the nature of the business enterprise and its management. In what follows, I give a selective and perhaps personal history of the field of knowledge management, and try to position his important contributions.