The concept of 'Ba': building a foundation for knowledge creation

摘要

The management of knowledge has become a frequently discussed topic in the management literature. What are the fundamental condi- tions for knowledge creation? Where is knowledge like other resources? To address these questions we introduce the Japanese concept of "ba", which roughly translates into the English word "place". The concept of ba was originally proposed by the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida and was further developed by Shimizu. Although our concept Of ba draws extensively from these works, we have adapted it for the purpose Of elaborating our model of knowledge creation.