Organizational knowledge creation essentially enables innovation. Innovation, in other words, is a dynamic process of pursuing the "truth" by creating new meanings and values in the context of "here and now." The strategy supports organizational knowledge creation since it is about striving to enact the new reality that aligns with the organizational mission or objective, even under the volatile and unpredictable environment.

The overemphasis on scientific management has been debilitating the creativity and innovative capacity of Japanese companies, which are originally known for their human-centric management. Since organizational knowledge creation starts with the process of "socialization," where people mutually empathize and share the subjectivities of each other, tacit knowledge of humans, as opposed to data or explicit knowledge, plays the main role in innovation. Art and science should be balanced, and tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge need to interact with one another in both conscious and unconscious manners for innovation. This empathy-based, or "phenomenological," approach to management can allow organizations to create new meanings and values through the interaction with others and the rapidly changing environment.

Knowledge Creation Theory derived from research on new product development of Japanese companies in the 1980s, and then it has evolved widely as methodology as well as models of knowledge management and knowledge-based management. The evidence-based research of SECI process was indispensable during this evolution. Recently, companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of "innovation management" as managerial challenge. Needless to say, the core of innovation is knowledge creation process. These interests are expanding to open innovation and "societal innovation". In this article, a model of knowledge creation for "social enterprise" is discussed, as a future corporate form beyond the boundaries of firms.

Innovation is indispensable for maintaining the competitiveness of companies and advancing society. This paper describes about the concept of innovation and the knowledge creation. Especially, the view point is relationship between innovation and human knowledge creation.

The creation of a new service business is becoming one of the major challenges in Japan. First, we discussed some process models to increase the choice of people who wish to create new services because service business characterized by the intangibility and the simultaneity requires more frequent use of customer's knowledge, compared with manufacturing business centered on the exchange of tangible goods. Second, we proposed a "KCE (Knowledge Creation Extension) Model", which integrated Nonaka's SECI Model with the separation of internal and external knowledge in the Absorptive Capacity Model and five steps in the Design Thinking Model. Third, in order to verify both of the applicability range and the usefulness in the model, we examined (1) eight companies with a focus on the companies won the Japan Service Award and (2) a detailed company case of innovative service. As a result, both of the applicability range and the usefulness in the proposed model were confirmed, and a few valuable findings were obtained.

This paper attempts to construct a ba ("field") theory toward collective creativity. Ba is a foundation of knowledge creation. I define ba as "a time-space given meaning by humans' inter-subjective/inter-corporeal relationality." In order to create a ba model, I introduce concepts from Husserl's inter-subjectivity and Merleau-Ponty's inter-corporality in phenomenology as generative principles and use Bio holonics based on Nishida Kitaro's basho theory as a foundation. Furthermore, I introduce Yamaguchi's three layers model of phenomenology. The third layer in Yamaguchi's theory is highly related to the transcendental status of human's creativity. Through these theoretical background, I am able to highlight the characteristics of ba, their generative mechanisms, as well as their functioning and effectiveness in collective creativity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been one of the hot topics in the business world in the recent years. There are controversial arguments towards AI; a rather hostile view because it is replacing human beings at work and in jobs, and a rather optimistic view that it is only a tool to complement human beings.

These arguments intend to explore the proper relationship between AI and human beings. The essential question to ask is while AI would be replacing routine tasks or works that do not require creativity and innovation, what role should human beings play. To answer this question, we need to ask whether AI can possess creativity and innovation similar to human beings, and how do human beings to demonstrate creativity and innovation.

In this paper, first, the progress of AI and the organizational knowledge creation theory will be reviewed, and then seek for hypothesis on the role of human beings in the age of AI from the view point of the organizational knowledge creation theory.

This paper provides new theoretical contribution and practical insight for existing leadership theory about leadership necessary for knowledge creation process. Leadership for knowledge creation means that practitioners cross the various practice and management layers according to environmental change and circumstances, balance the various contradictory factors, and realize innovation. This paper presents that the knowledge creation leadership framework will be the source of innovation in modern enterprises.