Ikujiro Nonaka

Ikujiro Nonaka (野中 郁次郎) is a Japanese organizational theorist and Professor Emeritus at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy of the Hitotsubashi University, best known for his study of knowledge management.

Nonaka was born in Tokyo in 1935 and as a child he lived through World War II.

His nationalist spirit led him to believe that Japan should adapt its technological and organizational skills.

In 1958 Nonaka received his B.S. in political science of Waseda University.

After graduation Nonaka accepted a job in Fuji Electric, where he initiated a management program.

This curriculum was in the 1960s further developed together with the business school of Keio University and offered to companies all over Japan.

In 1967 Nonaka moved to US where in 1968 he obtained an MBA and in 1972 a PhD in Business Administration both at University of California, Berkeley.

Nonaka was the First Distinguished Drucker Scholar in Residence at the Drucker School and Institute, Claremont Graduate University; the Xerox Distinguished Faculty Scholar, Institute of Management, Innovation and Organization, UC Berkeley.

Back in Japan he became professor at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy of Hitotsubashi University.

Nonaka co-wrote several noteworthy articles with Hirotaka Takeuchi, a colleague at Hitotsubashi University, including:

In 2008, the Wall Street Journal listed him as one of the most influential persons on business thinking, and The Economist included him in its "Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus".

Nonaka has also proposed the SECI model, to present the spiraling knowledge processes of interaction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge.

SECI is short for: