Without "knowledge" we won't even be able to go to the bathroom
From 14 May it is available everywhere The wise enterprise, a capital book (there is no different adjective so much this book convinces me), written by Ikujiro Nonaka e Hirotaka Takeuchi, two thinkers of Japanese origin who have been studying the question of knowledge management for a lifetime (knowledgemanagement). In English it was published by the University Oxford Press in 2019. Chapeau to those who brought it to Italy. Congratulations to the editor, to Fabio Corno (who wrote the introduction) and to Lucio Morawetz for the excellent translation.
The Knowledge-Creating-Company of 1995, of which this edition is a substantial integration, by the same authors was defined by Peter Drucker "a classic".
The title does not do full justice to the content even if the "Socratic" word "wise" should provide some clues.
It is in fact a manual of moral philosophy: the spirit that pervades all 400 pages is philosophical. Philosophy in the sense of a foundational vision of acting towards a goal, that is, the construction of the principles of a culture. Culture is not understood as an ideology, that is, a systematic whole in which to cage reality. Quite the opposite: the process of pre-disposing to interpret and even transform the reality in which we live by thinking and acting.
As Nonaka and Takeuchi write, in the introduction to the book, it is the "knowledge” which incubates innovation at all levels: in organizations, in communities, in ecosystems. But knowledge cannot have any transformative capacity without “wisdom,” as the authors demonstrate with their many cases. The central issue is wise action "here and now", Heidegger's hic et nunc, not before and neither after.
Business and culture
Even companies, one of the most concrete and earthly intellectual creations of humanity, take shape and develop on the basis of the culture that gave birth to them. Culture is formed on shared values and transmitted with a specific purpose, often beyond the merely economic one. And some companies were born on an ideal transformative project that takes the form of innovative theory and practice at all levels of the organization.
It is this quality that attracts the reflection of the two authors, who have studied the evolution of dynamic businesses, long-lived attentive not only to business. And the common feature of these companies is that they have had a vision implanted by the founders and then transmitted, over time, through leadership at all levels of the organization, from the parking attendant to the board.
We like to think of two realities of our time widely discussed in the book: Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), e Honda. In the seventies Steve Jobs wanted to make a computer to improve the world, because the computer embodied the spirit of the counterculture of the sixties, and 15 years earlier Soichiro Honda was working on a low-emission engine to improve the lives of his engineers' children, after the devastating experience of war. But there are many other examples in the book, as you will see. And in the future there will always be more, because that of Steve Jobs and Soichiro Honda is the winning scheme.
So here is an excerpt from Wise enterprise which touches on two fundamental points of every innovative process: attention to the details of the project and the perseverance in carrying it forward.
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Attention to detail and perseverance
by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi
A good carpenter
Attention to detail was also the hallmark of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. In his pursuit of beauty, he made no compromises. Jobs often complained to his product development team that the circuit board inside the Macintosh looked ugly to him, with many lines too close together. To an engineer who had pointed out that no one would ever see the circuit board, Jobs replied as follows:
“I want it to be as beautiful as possible even if it's inside the box. A great carpenter doesn't use bad wood for the back of a piece of furniture, even if no one will see it. […] When a carpenter makes a nice chest of drawers, he doesn't put a piece of plywood on the back, even if it's facing the wall and no one will ever see it. He knows he's there, so he uses a nice piece of wood out back. To be able to sleep well at night, you have to bring aesthetics and quality to the end».
The Japanese model
A stickler for detail, Jobs traveled to Freemont, California, to tour the factory that made the Macintosh, wearing a white glove to control the dust, which he found everywhere: on the machines, on the tops of racks, on the floor. He cornered the factory manager, asking her to keep everything clean, so clean he could eat off the floor. Later, he reflected on one of the lessons he learned in Japan:
“He didn't understand why. And I couldn't explain it to her then. You see, I was influenced by what I saw in Japan. Part of what I greatly admired there and part of what was missing in our factory was a sense of teamwork and discipline. If we didn't have the discipline to keep that spot spotless, then we also wouldn't have the discipline to run all those machines."
Similarly, Tadashi Yanai tells the story of a senior executive who complained to him, not long after joining Fast Retailing, about having to clean a toilet: "I don't understand why someone like me, who he graduated from university with excellent grades, he should do this kind of thing,” he said. "I joined the company to be a leader, not a cleaner."
Yanai recalls: «I answered him in kind, in a somewhat harsh way: “How the hell can you be successful as a leader if you are not able to do something that the customer expects to be done? If you can't satisfy one person, I don't see how you can satisfy the whole world." The executive became a highly respected leader because he took that comment to heart, and he has tried to live by it ever since.
Intuition and discipline
To grasp the essence, wise leaders grasp universal truths from the details. Drawing universal truths from the particular requires a continuous interaction between subjective intuition and objective knowledge. No one understood this interplay better than Jobs, who worked at both Apple and Pixar, and understood how the combination of intuition and discipline leads to success:
“When I went in Pixar, I realized the big gap. Tech companies […] don't value intuitive thinking; they think creative people sit on couches all day and are unruly. On the other hand, record labels know nothing about technology. They think they can just go out and hire some technicians. But it would be like Apple trying to hire someone to produce music. […] I am one of the few people who understands that producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and that producing something artistic requires real discipline and strong perseverance».
It's about being an entrepreneur Jobs said;
«What distinguishes a good entrepreneur from a bad one is perseverance».
Secondo Walter Isaacson, the author of the definitive biography of Jobs, Steve was a genius at combining subjective intuition with objective knowledge:
«His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected and sometimes magical. He was, in fact, an example of what mathematician Mark Kac called a genius-magician, someone to whom ideas come suddenly and require intuition more than mere calculation. Like an explorer, he knew how to absorb information, smell the winds and perceive what awaited us ».
The semplicity
For Jobs, seeing the essence of a product came as a result of years spent in Japan and India during his youth. Jobs believed that the essence of a product can be found eliminating unnecessary parts. Looking for simplicity is not easy, however. According to Jobs,
«Simplicity is not just a visual style. It's not just minimalism or lack of clutter. It's about delving into the depths of complexity. To be really simple, you have to go really deep. For example, by not using screws, you can end up with a complicated and complex product. The best way is to go deeper with simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it is manufactured».
Jobs attributed his love of simplicity to his Zen training and his visits to gardens in Kyoto. He confided to Isaacson that at one point he had thought of going to Japan to try to enter the Eihei-ji monastery in Kyoto. He didn't become a Buddhist monk, but his Zen training developed his intuition and sharpened his ability to concentrate, showing him how to put a filter between himself and anything distracting or unnecessary.
Jobs, at nineteen, also made a trip of seven months in India, where he learned the concept of prajna experiential, wisdom or cognitive understanding experienced intuitively through concentration. Years later, she reflected on the lasting influence of her trip to India this way:
“In rural India people don't use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is much more developed than in the rest of the world. In my opinion, intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than the intellect».
According to Jobs, concentration works like this:
“If you just sit and watch, you realize how restless your mind is. If you try to calm her down, you only make it worse, but over time she calms down, and when she does, there's room to feel things more subtle - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and understand. be more present. Your mind slows down, and in that moment you see an incredible expansion. You see much more than you could see before. It is a discipline; you have to practice."
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Excerpt from the book by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, The wise enterprise. How companies create continuous innovation, Guerini Next (with goWare for the digital version), 2021, pp. 426.
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Ikujiro Nonaka is professor emeritus in Tokyo, at the Hitotsubashi Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy. Acclaimed author, along with Takeuchi, of The Knowledge-Creating Company (1995), is known worldwide for his theory of business management based on the acquisition, development and sharing of knowledge.
Hirotaka Takeuchi is Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, specializing in marketing, competitive strategy, and knowledge management. Together with Nonaka he has written numerous texts, which have become a reference point for the development of the knowledgemanagement.
