Strategic communities for knowledge creation: a Western proposal for the Japanese concept of Ba

The concept of ba was introduced in 1996 by Ikujiro Nonaka and Noboru Konno. Since then, it has played a major role in the Japanese way of knowledge creation. It now belongs to the specialized jargon of KM out of the archipelago whose approach of KM is different from the IT oriented one in the USA. The print of Japanese culture in this concept makes it not so easy to understand through Western languages using a unique word, clear, distinct and without any shadow. Therefore this paper proposes an equivalent through the formulation of strategic knowledge community. This contribution is organized in three parts. First, it strives to define the ba concept from a Japanese cultural point of view. Then, it considers some philosophical implications of the concept, and last, it presents some case studies from the Human Health Care’s program from the Eisai Company. This paper was made possible because of an investigation program about the Japanese way of knowledge creation that is supported by the French Embassy in Japan. The global results of this investigation will be available in a book this year.