mini-essay on the SECI model

The idea of "shared context in motion" (basho, 場所 in
Japanese, or "ba" for short) is dealt with extensively by
two progenitors of the knowledge management paradigm; see
Nonaka and Toyama [1].

The philosophical foundations of this notion, summarized
in Abe [2], describe the way in which events and objects
arise from their larger contexts. In other words, The
idea of ba can help us think about how a context
constrains or supports different types of (inter-)actions.

Nonaka and Toyama take this idea and apply it to knowledge
creation. They suggest that knowledge is created as
people interact over time in a shared context, in a
process that can be broken up into repeated phases of
Socialisation, Externalisation, Combination, and
Internalisation (SECI) [3].

The SECI process takes into account the range of different
behaviors and modes of interaction, involving processes
that are both individual and collective, and forms of
engagement that are embodied or virtual (see Table 1):

Phase Knowledge conversion Setting Gloss
Socialization tacit-to-tacit embodied/individual I
Externalisation tacit-to-explicit embodied/collective We
Combination explicit-to-explicit virtual/collective Its
Internalisation explicit-to-tacit virtual/individual It

Table 1: Nonaka and Toyama's SECI model, augmented with
simple glosses from Ken Wilber's similar AQAL model [4]

The idea of ba can thus help us move from the big but
amorphous picture of stakeholder groups in a given social
setting (e.g. Professions, Research), towards a clearer
picture of the roles of actual participants
(e.g. students, teachers). SECI can give us a detailed
understanding of the activities which support these roles
(e.g. a student's activities include going to class,
collaborating on a class project, building a transcript,
and ultimately gaining a skill).

In short, this analysis can give us a ``check list'' of
the forms of engagement we need to support to create
systems that have a broad impact.

[1] I. Nonaka and R. Toyama (2003), The knowledge-creating
theory revisited: knowledge creation as a synthesizing
process, Knowledge Management Research \& Practice, 1(1),
pp. 2-10

[2] Masao Abe (1988), Nishida's Philosophy of `Place',
International Philosophical Quarterly, 28(4), pp.
355--371

[3] I. Nonaka, R. Toyama, N. Konno (2000), SECI, Ba and
Leadership: a Unified Model of Dynamic Knowledge Creation
Long Range Planning, 33(1), pp. 5-34.

[4] Ken Wilber (1997), An Integral Theory of Consciousness,
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4(1), pp. 71-92