design of ‘ba’ for successful knowledge management—how enterprises should design the places of...

Journal of Network and Computer Applications (2002) 25, 263ÿ278

doi:10.1006/jnca.2002.0139, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on1

Design of `Ba' for successful KnowledgeManagementÿÿÿhow enterprises shoulddesign the places of interaction togain competitive advantage

Takahiko Nomura

Knowledge Dynamics Initiative, Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd, 2-17-22 Akasaka, Minato-ku,

Tokyo, 107-0052, Japan

(Received 1 November 2001; accepted 1 April 2002)

This paper represents the framework, based on the study results of practical benchmarkingand assessment of Knowledge Management, for designing `Ba' where creative interactiongenerates. In organization, we can ®nd various Ba, such as cyber space for Community ofPractice to gather and open physical space for collaboration beyond divisions. Ba developscirculation of knowledge and which is the key to the improvement of competitive advantageof organization. When benchmarking was conducted to KM leading companies, we havefound that the method of utilizing Ba was very logically adapted to the business strategy,which supported corporate culture for knowledge sharing. On the other hand, after assessingthe workstyle of knowledge workers in detail, we have uncovered that although the style ofknowledge work is different, the design of Ba for each department in a company isstandardized and does not apply to the current situation. This is because, a guide for strategicdesign of Ba does not exist, even though the importance of Ba for interactions that go beyondorganization is increasing, which is necessary for business that creates value added. In thispaper, we propose a new framework for the design of Ba that applies to both knowledgestrategy and the workstyle of each knowledge worker.

# 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd

1. Introduction

In the twenty ®rst century, the economy will become much more software/service-based. We have entered a new age where knowledge is the source of a company'scompetitive advantage. Companies must continually create new values for theircustomers in the face of rapidly changing social and economic environments. Thus,we believe that the development and promotion of knowledge is more importantthan the management of conventional managerial resources such as people, materialresources and money, because knowledge adds new values to the conventionalmanagerial resources.

`Knowledge Management (KM)' cannot be de®ned simply. When one mentionsKM, we tend to think of `Managing Knowledge.' However, knowledge cannot be

1084--8045/02/040263� 16 $35.00/0 # 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd

E-mail: [email protected]

264 T. Nomura

managed, because most of knowledge is tacit. When Professor Peter Drucker made apresentation at the UCB Knowledge Forum 1998, he de®ned knowledge by com-paring with information, such as `What is in books is information; what is in thedatabase is data. Knowledge exists only between two ears.' However, there was amisunderstanding that KM is `IT method which manages knowledge,' and numberof companies have failed to its introduction. We sometimes heard the complaints ofa KM promoter as follows: `The system for KM has been designed, but there wasone problem. No one uses it.' KM, in a narrow sense, entails the enhancement ofcorporate competitiveness by identifying, sharing and utilizing knowledge and bestpractices existing both inside and outside the company [1]. To gain new com-petitiveness to cope with drastic changes taking place in the twenty ®rst century,each company must focus not only on the effect of KM in a narrow sense but also onthe value and signi®cance of knowledge. Therefore, KM must be understood in abroader sense as the encouragement and promotion of innovations, considering thepotential of employees and customers for creating knowledge. In this sense, KM is anew paradigm for managerial innovation that should be recognized as `Knowledge-based Management,' not as `Managing Knowledge.'

When this kind of management process is considered, management is, namely, tounderstand and nurture the ecology of man and knowledge. The essence of know-ledge work cannot be described as a business process [2]. This is because, importantknowledge work is decision making, which relies on situation, and knowledgecapture, which enhances the quality of such decision making. For example, expertmarketers do not only rely upon secondary information such as the past researchresults, but also verify their hypotheses from various methods by discussing withother expert marketers, visiting the site, or meeting with leading users. Suchinformal exchanges of knowledge, which cannot be described as business process,determine the quality of knowledge work, and as the result, either raise or lower thepossibility of innovation. We call such resource of organizational power thatcontinuously creates value-added, `Knowledge Dynamics.' Knowledge Dynamicscan be found in the personal connections and community, dialogue within a group,interactions that go beyond the border between departments, network of externalexpertise and competitors, and interactions with customers. However, suchKnowledge Dynamics are unclear to the management and hardly recognized asbusiness resources. We believe the objective of KM is to visualize and reform suchKnowledge Dynamics as business resources to enhance the organizational powerwhich continuously creates competitive advantage.

An approach for fostering Knowledge Dynamics, the concept of Communities ofPractice (CoPs) structured by experts with speci®c knowledge is drawing attention[3--5]. Dr Wenger, who is the originator of the idea of CoPs, pointed out that CoPsare the third wave of KM beyond the fails of IT-based approaches (®rst wave) andcultural change approaches (second wave) [6]. For example, it is important for thecompany to organize a community structured by people with a number of exp-eriences and knowledge on a customer maintenance system. Therefore, the

Design of `Ba' for successful Knowledge Management 265

management of the company should consider designing such communities forsharing and creating important knowledge. Don Cohen and Larry Prusak, insist thatthe resource of the most important competitive advantage for a company is SocialCapital formed by networks and communities where people collaborate based ontheir trust [7]. And its key elements are said to be space and time. In other words, theestablishment of Ba to support important communities is one of the most importantstrategies for a company to maintain its future competitive advantage.

Our group, Knowledge Dynamics Initiative (KDI) is a new business group in FujiXerox to provide research and consulting services in the area of KM, based on theconcept of `vital individuals' and `dynamic Ba.' Of course, vital individuals are thepeople who take initiatives of innovation. `Ba' is de®ned by Professor IkujiroNonaka as follows: `a shared space for emerging relationship, which could bephysical, virtual and mental.' Dynamic Ba provides opportunities for individuals tocreate new value and leverage the quality of their knowledge work. This paperproposes a framework for designing Ba based on the practical researches on KMconducted by KDI.

Through the Knowledge Benchmarking Study of KM leading companies both inUS and Japan, we found three important knowledge strategies. The ®rst strategy isthe `Vision-driven KM,' which provides Ba for sharing problems to solve themrapidly. `KM for Professionals' is the strategy to improve competitiveness byconstantly enhancing individual ability. Pursuing innovations by utilizing theknowledge of customers and employees can be found in the companies that aim`KM for Emergence.' Although it implies that Ba should be designed based on knowl-edge strategies for implementing successful KM, the design of Ba has not been amatter of management. Typically, the design of physical space is a matter for facilitydepartment and the design of virtual space is left in IT system department's hand.

Furthermore, we have understood that it is not suf®cient for the design of Ba tothink of applying the design to the business strategy, because knowledge creation isderived from individuals. Since informal interactions are situated and cannot bepredicted, we should focus on people and their workstyle, especially how they createideas and what knowledge resources they use. Through the Knowledge AssessmentResearch, we found four type of knowledge workstyle: Nomad, Agent, Keeper, andAnalyst. The knowledge creating process of each workstyle is completely differentfrom each other: nevertheless, most of companies have assigned a standardized ITenvironment to every worker, even though one is Nomad-type and another isAnalyst-type.

In this paper, we propose the design discipline of Ba from the perspective ofKnowledge Dynamics as follows:

1. The design of Ba should follow the strategy of utilizing knowledge, which is thesource of competitive advantage. Furthermore, the objectives of that knowledgestrategy and knowledge which needs to be focused must be clear to theparticipants at Ba.

266 T. Nomura

2. The design of Ba should apply to the workstyle of participants at Ba. Althougheach knowledge worker is unaware, they have their own style to create knowl-edge. To create Ba where diverse knowledge actively interchanges, protocolwhich various type of knowledge workers contribute is necessary.

3. The design of Ba should be synthetically developed where not only speci®cdivisions such as IT and facilities, but also managers who are responsible forcorporate planning, structural reforms, and human resources participate. To makesuch collaboration possible, it is necessary for the KM promoter to interviewstakeholders, visualize workstyle of knowledge workers, and conduct participa-tory design that involves all the stakeholders. Although it might be devious, weneed to go through these processes in order to establish Ba that createsKnowledge Dynamics in an organization.

In the following sections, we ®rst show the framework of designing Ba. InSection 3, we review the Knowledge Benchmarking Program and show thecharacteristics of each knowledge strategy in detail to make the framework moreconcrete. Furthermore, the results of Knowledge Assessment Research with the 10companies are presented. Based on the results of the research, we give guidelines fordesigning Ba based on the way of knowledge work in each organization. Finally, weform a conclusion on how we can design Ba that drives KM dramatically.

2. Framework of strategic `Ba' design

KM does not only mean to retrieve knowledge stored in databases. The objective ofKM is to directly enhance corporate value according to business strategy bydeveloping personnel with competitiveness, increasing the speed of problemsolving, or creating new business and products/services. Ba connects knowledgeworkers to create, share, and utilize knowledge. However, it is not easy to establishBa that changes Knowledge Dynamics effectively. If the objectives of Ba do notapply to business strategy, it is dif®cult for people to get together frequently. If theatmosphere of Ba does not ®t to corporate culture and workstyle, people do not liketo gather. Therefore, we should recognize the nature of Knowledge Dynamics, suchas what kind of knowledge is applied to create competitive advantage and how is theindividual creating value added by applying knowledge.

In addition to factors of Ba when linked to strategy, it is important to determinethe situation when Ba is linked to the workstyle of knowledge workers in anorganization and design it which meets the objectives of KM and applies toorganizational environment. The design of Ba is not just a design of informationsystem and of®ce environment. So, the design of Ba, which is the key to the successof KM, should not only be left to information system and facility divisions. Totalredesign is necessary such as organizational system, incentive, and change of workprocess. We call designing Ba by determining all these factors, 360� design.

Fig. 1 shows the framework for designing Ba to ®t both knowledge strategies andworkstyle. The most important message is to balance the perspectives of

Figure 1. 360� design of `Ba.'


management and the perspective of individual when designing Ba. The knowledgeissues that should be solved by Ba may vary according to knowledge strategy. Forexample, it is important to provide workspace awareness [8,9] to all the participantsof Vision-driven KM to promptly share the problem. It is necessary to allow highcontextual communication for sharing tacit knowledge in KM for Professionals. Bathat promotes exposing new knowledge and ideas to those with different backgroundknowledge and informal dialogue is necessary in KM for Emergence (see Section 3).

On the other hand, it is very important to design Ba where individual knowledgeworker can effectively work on knowledge creation activities. If this perspectivelacks and you jump to a conclusion that all knowledge workers' workstyle is thesame, diversity is lost and Knowledge Dynamics that create new value decreases.For example, Ba where one can work on several activities by virtually belonging tonumber of organizations and communities is needed for Nomad-type workers withgreat freedom of activity and work freely. On the other hand, Ba that promotes newideas by learning a trend of customers and market is needed for Analyst-typeworkers who thoroughly work on research/study (see Section 4).

It is not easy to design Ba by balancing these two perspectives. By visualizingknowledge issues and allowing all the stakeholders to participate in 360� design,commitment from each participating division will be drawn and as a result, vital Bais created in the organization.

3. Benchmarking knowledge strategies: how to design`Ba' to ®t knowledge strategies

3.1 Knowledge Benchmarking Program

The Knowledge Benchmarking Program was developed with American Productivity& Quality Center (APQC) and supervised by Mr Noboru Konno, who is the partner

268 T. Nomura

of KIRO and co-authoring several books with Professor Nonaka. This is the ®rstbenchmarking study in Japan based on the APQC's of®cial methodology. Theobjective of the study is to make the concept of KM clearer and further ®nd themechanisms to launch successful KM. Therefore, the criteria for selecting bestpractice partner companies are (1) not just companies which is promoting KMconsciously but those who are continuously accomplishing innovation, and (2) com-panies which are successfully applying not just IT but Ba and community as well.

The study was kicked off on August 24th in 2001 and completed on December13th in 2001. We conducted all the site visits to best-practice companies to getqualitative information, and developed the detailed questionnaires to collectquantitative data for each best-practice partner company. As the best-practicecompanies, APQC chose the following 4 companies: BP, World Bank, NorthropGrumman, and Buckman Laboratories, and we chose the following 7 companies inJapan: Recruit, Askul, Nippon Roche, Kao, PwC Consulting, Toyota Motor, andSumitomo 3 M.

3.2 Three important elements in KM: objective, contexts, and knowledge

We have found that the eleven best-practice partner companies both in US and Japanshare the following characteristics: such as making objective, knowledge, andcontexts visible (Fig. 2).

� The objective of utilizing knowledge has been made visible. In other words, thepurpose of KM efforts is clearly recognized by both executives and employees,because the KM of each best-practice partner company has directly contributed toits competitive advantage.� The focus of important knowledge has been made visible. Since the purpose of

utilizing knowledge is clearly recognized, it is easy for them to focus on theknowledge which contributes to its competitive advantage: otherwise they have tocollect all of knowledge in their organizations. It is time-consuming and most ofcompanies have gotten few fruits from such never-ending efforts.� The contexts of the job of each person have been made visible. Each best-practice

company is more interested in `people who have knowledge' than `knowledgeitself,' so it is critical for them to understand and trust each other. If anyoneunderstands the context, which is the background information representing whatother people need to know and how they can collaborate with each other, he/shemust distribute his/her knowledge voluntarily with internal motivation.

As a result, each best-practice partner company has developed a corporate culturein which cross-functional interaction and knowledge sharing are common and evencustomary. We surprised the contrast between these best-practice companies and thesponsor companies in the process of implementing KM, because the sponsorcompanies have been a hard time to promote knowledge sharing.

Figure 2. Making three important elements in KM visible.


I would like to explain why IT-based KM usually fails, by using the three-layermodel. If the organization pursues KM in a narrower sense with the objective toacquire, store and utilize knowledge organizationally, it is very likely to take anapproach focusing only on the bottom layer `making knowledge visible.' So, peopledo not recognize why they must spend time to register their knowledge, and thus endin failure. Please suppose a situation you are responsible for creating environmentsof knowledge sharing among different organizations. If you start from `makingknowledge visible,' you will not able to motivate the members of your organizationto share knowledge. You need to `make the objective visible' ®rst. In other words,you need to set forth a speci®c objective, such as `the development of a new productto meet customer needs,' and attach a signi®cance to collaboration between thesales/service division and the R&D division. In addition, you need to facilitatespontaneous circulation of knowledge in the organization by `making the contextsvisible,' which is to say making what each person has to do and what knowledge he/she needs visible.

3.3 Three knowledge strategies to successfully implement KM

From the perspective of the three layers: objectives, contexts, and knowledge, we®nally found three types of KM: `Vision-driven KM,' `KM for Professionals,' and`KM for Emergence.' Each type of KM, which we call `Knowledge Strategy,' has thecharacteristic of how making the objective visible, contexts visible, and knowledgevisible. We should choose one strategy to launch successful KM initiative, becausethe business rationale of each strategy is totally different from each other (Fig. 3).

Figure 3. Three knowledge strategies.

270 T. Nomura

3.3.1 Vision-driven KM. We derived the concept of `Vision-driven KM' from thepractices of Toyota Motor, Askul, BP, Buckman Laboratories, and NorthropGrumman. This type of KM is designed for solving problems by tapping into theknowledge of many people. A clear vision, which shows the direction the entireorganization should take, is the most important. Furthermore, all of the companieswho adopt this strategy created Ba (physically and virtually) in which problems areshared rapidly by the entire organization, because they cannot predict whatknowledge is important before problems occur. We can ®nd the realization of just-in-time knowledge in the `Vision-driven KM' companies.

3.3.2 KM for professionals. `KM for Professionals' is the KM strategy typicallyfor Professional Service Firms. We found the KM strategy at PwC Consulting,Nippon Roche, Recruit, and World Bank. These companies, which adopt thestrategy, are improving their competitiveness by constantly enhancing individualcapabilities. Comparing to the `Vision-driven KM,' professionals require deeper andmore tacit knowledge, so the `KM for Professionals' companies try to externalizethe tacit knowledge of professionals and develop methodologies out of them. Sincequality tacit knowledge is shared through direct interactions with people possessingknowledge, they provide knowledge brokers to connect people and Ba for informalcommunication.

3.3.3 KM for emergence. The third KM strategy is pursuing innovations byutilizing the knowledge of customers and employees dynamically. Kao andSumitomo 3M adopt the strategy, because they understand the source of innovationslies in chemistry between people from different ®elds. Top executives talk about the


importance of activities other than day-to-day tasks, rather than speci®c top--downdirections. It is important for the `KM for Emergence' companies not to limit thepossibilities of employees' creativity, but encourage them to discover new vision bythemselves.

3.4 Design of `Ba' to ®t the knowledge strategies

As mentioned in the previous section, knowledge strategy, in other words, accordingto the objective of the utilization of knowledge, the factors of Ba that supports itmay vary. Moreover, design of Ba is not just IT and of®ce design but nothing morethan designing the way of using Ba in the social relationship with work process andorganizational culture (Fig. 4).

3.4.1 Ba for sharing problems and collaborating. Vision-driven KM is aknowledge strategy that makes speed of solution as their competitive advantage.The design of Ba is required to make it possible to gather knowledge of the wholeorganization in a timely manner. Ba may be possible by providing a virtual Q&Aspace or a physical large room.

(a) IT issues All the employees, as well as external experts and customers, areequally able to access. The place to throw questions may be speci®ed to one.These questions should be easily aware by people who can answer them.

(b) Workplace issues Certainly, large room without a wall is a typical way torealize Ba for problem sharing in a physical of®ce space, but in addition, the

Figure 4. Strategic choice of a KM strategy.

272 T. Nomura

layout of each department should be deeply considered to gain the KnowledgeDynamics. Speed of solution is not possible if the scope of workspace awarenessdoes not cover necessary people who are expected to share knowledge.

(c) People and organizational issues A facilitator of knowledge sharing is neededto constantly check if the questions are not being run-around and whennecessary, contact directly to the experts and try to provide responses to them.

(d) Process issues Work processes should be continuously simplifying thoroughly.By restructuring unnecessary works, interest of all employees will be directedtoward common problems and when a problem arises, let the knowledge ofadequate employees concentrate on this problem.

3.4.2 Ba for tacit knowledge transfer. KM for Professionals is a knowledgestrategy that improves the company wide professional service provision capabilityby investing to employees' capability improvement. It needs Ba where experts canshare deep tacit knowledge and can discuss comfortably. In order to jointly developlong-term methodology by closely investigating tacit knowledge and know-howbased on one's experience, not temporary, but intimate discussions should continuefor a certain period of time. This Ba should as well sustain the context for a certainperiod of time and discussion should be smoothly resumed when one returns here.

(a) IT issues Professional service ®rms organize important taxonomy ofknowledge, de®ne the set of required skills for employees, and further manageknowledge and capability accordingly. Employees should be able to maintainthe database of knowledge and capability, which were inputted. By disclosingthem internally, it will be possible to use them as search system of best practices(know-how) and experts (know-who).

(b) Workplace issues A space will be needed where small number of people cancollaborate for many hours to design a quality methodology that can be used fora long time. Moreover, ¯exible work setting is needed, because people tocollaborate should be changed according to the situation.

(c) People and organizational issues Typically, a KM of®ce serves as a librarianwho accumulates and searches information and knowledge, or as a knowledgebroker who introduces experts. In a professional organization, organizationalacknowledgement of knowledge contribution is essential.

(d) Process issues In professional service ®rms, knowledge itself is a product. It isimportant to incorporate sharing outputs of work among colleagues as part ofthe work process.

3.4.3 Ba for creating chemistry

(a) IT issues It is important for KM for Emergence companies to allow employeesto determine whether their competitive knowledge which has been already


established in the company, is applicable to the new applied ®eld or not. ITsystems that visualize the platform of their competitive knowledge are required.

(b) Workplace issues It is essential that the latest knowledge and ideas are visiblein the workplace so that people who usually do not work together can start acreative dialogue.

(c) People and organizational issues Understanding of the management that doesnot ruin individual ideas is essential. The greatest incentive is to let the personwho provided the idea to execute.

(d) Process issues It is important for this strategy to let people who are not expertsreadily utilize the knowledge by putting established technology and meth-odology into platform. The management should try to increase opportunity fordirect dialogues between R&D and Sales, or further R&D and customers.

4. Assessing knowledge workstyle: how to design Bato ®t the way of work

4.1 Knowledge assessment program

Knowledge Assessment is a diagnostic program for Knowledge Management. Itmakes knowledge assets and knowledge capabilities visible. In order to shift toknowledge-based management, companies must ®rst understand the current status oftheir knowledge management efforts. Knowledge assets and knowledge workbecome manageable only when they are visible.

Knowledge Assessment comprises two surveys: Knowledge Executive Interviewsand a questionnaire survey called Knowledge Scanning. At the heart of thisassessment program is Knowledge Scanning, a questionnaire survey in whichsubjects (knowledge workers) are asked to answer 200 questions over a period ofthree days.

The survey will help companies understand what points to focus on in theirfurther pursuit of knowledge-based management by unveiling the characteristics oftheir organization, how individual workers work, interrelations between theirknowledge workers and communities or Ba, the gap between the top executives andknowledge workers in their awareness of the importance of knowledge assets, etc.

This program includes the `SECI Model' [10,11] and knowledge audit of`Knowledge Assets' by Knowledge Innovation Research Organization (KIRO),which has experience in this area, and Time Utilization Survey [12] of DEGW.Through these methods, assessment by different perspectives became possible. Theframework of the Knowledge Assessment Program is comprised of four KMModels: Knowledge Assets Model, KM Architecture Model, Knowledge CreationModel, and Knowledge Work Pattern Model.

Especially, the knowledge creation process and knowledge work patterns areimportant for guiding the design of a physical and virtual Ba, so we present thedetailed results of the two surveys in the following sections.

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4.2 Knowledge creating process

Professor Ikujiro Nonaka has taken the ®rst letter of the knowledge creation model,and named it SECI model. SECI stands for the four modes of the knowledgecreating process, `Socialization (S),' `Externalization (E),' `Combination (C)' and`Internalization (I).' As you may understand, new knowledge is created from theinteractions between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. It is important toremember that the original source of knowledge lies mostly in tacit knowledge.

The survey based on this model was designed to reveal how intensely each subjectcompany and its knowledge workers were committed to each mode of the SECIProcess. The subjects were questioned about the time they spent on the 12 mosttypical activities of each mode, and asked how much time they spare and the degreeof importance of such activities. The following table indicates the top ten knowledge

Table 1. SECI Gap

SECI AverageGap

Sales R&D Staff

1. Contact client directly toelicit needs or problems

S 1.31 0.9 Rank11.59

Rank11.53

2. Sense new needs orperspectives through interactionswith people from other company

S 1.28 1.18 Rank21.23

Rank21.33

3. Get know-how or new perspectivesthrough joint-projects or otherinteractions with expertsoutside the company

S 1.16 Rank11.29

0.96 1.11

4. Creat new idea with relevantdepartments by combiningeach other's information

C 1.1 Rank21.27

0.85 1.19

5. Share different perspectiveswith different people in across-functional project team

S 1.05 Rank31.19

1.01 1.03

6. Find a new market opportunityor a strategic direction byobserving consumer trends

S 1.04 0.92 Rank31.05

1.12

7. Visiting worksite to collectuseful, hands-on informationand ®nd problem

S 0.97 0.77 0.93 Rank31.3

8. Sense new needs or perspectivesby putting yourself in thecustomer's or user's shoes

S 0.96 0.92 0.84 1.09

9. Walking around the company touncover problems whichcannot be shown in documents

S 0.94 0.86 0.94 1.08

10. Systematically organize existingproblems by utilizing anyproblem-solving or ideaconceiving method (suchas KJ method)

E 0.94 1.02 0.91 0.88


creation activities whose gap between the degree of importance and the activity timeis huge. These, in other words, are 10 activities that `should be done but have notbegun' concerning knowledge creation.

The most seriously insuf®cient activity of knowledge creating process is Social-ization. Speci®cally, typical R&D people and corporate staffs are overwhelminglylacking contact with customers and communication with other companies. On theother hand, Sales representatives greatly lack activities for designing new conceptthrough a dialogue with experts, as well as other department staffs.

4.3 Knowledge work pattern model

We used the Time Utilization Survey (TUS) Methodology developed by DEGW touncover how knowledge workers use time and space.

In this survey, the subjects were questioned about their work time spent outsideand inside their of®ces. It revealed that one third of the total work time of knowledgeworkers was spent outside their of®ces, and two thirds inside their of®ces. Theresults of the survey also show that half of the knowledge workers spent more than50% of their work time at places other than their desks. On average, they spentapproximately 40% of their work time in face-to-face communication with others. Itimplies the importance of the seamlessness between the physical workspace andvirtual one. It is quite interesting that the most important activities for the creation ofknowledge are spontaneous collaboration with others. It also suggests that informalinteractions and environments or communities to support them are very important.

We also conducted a survey to classify knowledge workers by their workstyle, byasking the degree of autonomy and interaction of them (Fig. 5).

The key ®ndings of this survey were the discovery of `Nomad-type workers'whose work was highly autonomous focusing on interactions with others, and`Analyst-type workers' who did creative work mainly inside their of®ces. There werealso `Agent-type workers' who did routine work with frequent interactions with others,and `Keeper-type workers' who did routine work with few interactions with others.

The results of the survey revealed that nomad-type workers, who made up 29.8%of all the subjects, were making a considerable contribution to the distribution ofknowledge by acquiring new knowledge outside their of®ces and offering it to theircolleagues. It is also notable that the behavioral patterns typical to the workstyle ofnomad-type workersÿÿÿsuch as `walking around,' `having dialogues with others' and`communicating knowledge'ÿÿÿwere observed in any type of job site to a certainextent. Therefore, by intentionally introducing the workstyle of nomad-type workersto job sites dominated by other types, for example research centers where manyanalyst-type workers work, companies can improve the quality of knowledgeinteractions. How to foster quality nomad-type workers is one of the importantchallenges for us. Fig. 6 shows how each workstyle corresponds to each job. It canbe identi®ed that nomad-type worker's workstyle is not completely the same as asalesperson's.

Figure 5. Knowledge work pattern model. Source: DEGW.

Figure 6. Ratio of knowledge work pattern for job.

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Each company is able to identify what kind of Ba is needed by visualizing fourtypes of knowledge worker distribution of every department. The important issue ofthe organization with a number of nomad-type workers, is the possibility of reusingactivities and dialogues at the physical workspace that were recorded. On the otherhand, in an organization with a number of analyst-type workers, the method ofactivating dialogues in virtual space and nurturing cross-functional communities isimportant. Furthermore, in the case of organizations with a number of analyst-typeworkers that want to change them to nomad-type workers, it is important that the Babe designed so that people can work seamlessly between the core of®ce and mobilecomputing.

As a result, it is important to design Ba according to the workstyle of everyorganization. When Knowledge Assessment is employed, this becomes possible.Moreover, after introducing new Ba, by applying Knowledge Assessment again, it ispossible to measure the effect through the change in workstyle.

5. Conclusion

This paper proposes the framework for designing Ba to ®t both corporate strategiesand individual workstyle. In other words, we argue that it is important to balance theperspectives of management and the perspective of individual, when designing Ba.

The reason why we insist the importance of Ba so strongly is that we haveuncovered important Knowledge Dynamics that cannot be recognized by themanagers of the organization. Especially when the business environment changes,the informal networks beyond the boundary of divisions are the key for adapting thenew rules of business. Every organization has tremendous knowledge assets, but it istruly dif®cult for them to get adequate knowledge quickly from the reservoir ofknowledge in their organization. However, we could ®nd truly rich social capital inevery best-practice company to overcome the knowledge issues. The mutual trustand understanding are more important for them than the IT systems and the of®celayout. For example, employees at Askul, Toyota, and Kao work in a large room sothat they can immediately ®nd people who can solve a problem. European and UScompanies such as Buckman Laboratories and World Bank succeeded in globalaccess to the people by using IT for every different topic. These cases show thatwell designed Ba can be the enabler to develop and further utilize social capitaleffectively.

It is not straightforward to design strategic Ba that ®ts to the way of work in theorganization. However, active discussion on the issue of the change from IT-basedKM to the management of Ba is being held currently in Japan. This idea is based onthe recognition that the role of management is not to manage knowledge created inthe past, but to guide the interactions among people who create knowledge, andfurthermore, support its activation. It is a hope that the study on Ba will create a newbusiness theory and a new trend of IT research, and that this paper would be helpful.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all of knowledge leaders of KM leading companies both in USand Japan for their fabulous hospitality. Furthermore, I want to thank Mr NoboruKonno and all members of the Knowledge Dynamics Initiative at Fuji Xerox fortheir fruitful discussion.

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