The Knowledge-Creating Company

Teams play a central role in the knowledge-creating company because they provide a shared context where individuals can interact with each other and engage in the constant dialogue on which effective reflection depends. Team members create new points of view through dialogue and discussion. They pool their information and examine it from various angles. Eventually, they integrate their diverse individual perspectives into a new collective perspective. This dialogue can—indeed, should—involve considerable conflict and disagreement. It is precisely such conflict that pushes employees to question existing premises and make sense of their experience in a new way. “When people’s rhythms are out of sync, quarrels occur and it’s hard to bring people together,” acknowledges a deputy manager for advanced technology development at Canon. “Yet if a group’s rhythms are completely in unison from the beginning, it’s also difficult to achieve good results.”