Preface

This book is the outcome of an unexpected cooperation. It began on a sunny winterafternoon in 2007, at Jiro’s Hitotsubashi University office overlookingthe Imperial Palace in downtown Tokyo. It was the first time Jiro and Zhu satdown together. Two days earlier, Jiro delivered a keynote speech at a conferencein Ishikawa. After the speech, as Jiro’s students struggled to create apath for him to escape from the enthusiastic audience, Zhu managed to presenthim with a business card, saying ‘Professor, it was I who wrote thatarticle.’ The article, just published in a knowledge management journal,was titled ‘Nonaka meets Giddens: a critique’. When the conferenceended, Jiro invited Zhu to Tokyo.

Zhu expected a barrage of questions, corrections and instructions. Instead, afterbeing served the first round of green tea, the conversation was about theworries and joys of being a father, calligraphy and sushi, Confucius and Dewey,Mao Zedong and T.E. Lawrence, IBM and Lenovo, changes in Japan and the rise ofChina. Before the second round of green tea, Jiro suggested co-authoring a bookon corporate strategy.

Jiro and Zhu talked to each other in English. The differences between them,however, go beyond native languages. Jiro received rigorous training at WasedaUniversity, obtained a degree in political science, worked in a Japanesecorporation for ten years and wrote several books on military and businessstrategies before writing the award-winning The Knowledge-CreatingCompany. At the time of our meeting, Jiro was being bombarded bycompeting invitations from the worldwide business and academic communities.