COE NEWSJAPANADVANCED INSTITUTE OFSCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
1990

Newsletter of the Center for Strategic Development of Science andTechnology, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST)

Vol. 3 No. 1

Autumn 2006

Researcher Column 1:

Researcher Column 2:

On the Emergent Episteme of
Knowledge Civilization Era

Decision-making in the Real World

Andrzej P. Wierzbicki1,2, Yoshiteru Nakamori1
1.
Center for Strategic Development of Science andTechnology, JAIST;
2.
National Institute of Telecommunications, Poland

Zhichang Zhu
The University of Hull Business School, UK;
Center for Strategic Development of Science andTechnology, JAIST

andrzej@jaist.ac.jp; nakamori@jaist.ac.jp

Z.Zhu@hull.ac.uk

This is a short summary of a part of conclusions of
our new book (Wierzbicki and Nakamori 2007).

Decisions in the real world are derived byunderlying assumptions. The importance ofassumptions has been stressed by many writers.
Richard M Cyert, a behavioral economist and a
key figure of the Carnegie School of organization
decision studies, for example, warned researchersthat ‘Theories should be as realistic as possible intheir assumptions’. To practical managers, he said,‘You have to deal with the real world – and thereal world is messy and people make a lot of
mistakes’. There are plenty of evidences: IBM’s
failure to capture the PC market, Kodak’s late
switch to digital camera, Marconi’s fatal ‘me-too’‘focusing’ strategy, NASA’s Challenger launchdecision, Russia’s centrally planned and controlled

In the era of knowledge civilization, the concept of
episteme introduced by (Foucault 1972) cannot be
restricted to historical studies, can be applied also
to analyze the current situation and future
developments. After the middle of 20th century, theepisteme of industrial civilization era wasdisintegrating and three essentially different
episteme of three cultural spheres developed
divergently. This concerns the separate episteme of
hard and natural sciences, the distinct episteme oftechnology, and the episteme of social sciences
and humanities that is itself diversified, with someextreme versions represented by post-modernsocial philosophy. There is a need of a new
integration of the episteme for all sciences,humanities and technology. This need was stressed,
e.g., by social sciences, but we present here thearguments for such need from the opposite side, of
hard sciences and technology, which might lead todifferent conclusions.
The episteme of technology differs considerably
today from the episteme of hard and naturalsciences. This is best illustrated by the findings of(Laudan 1984) concerning the question, whether
the Kuhnian concept of a scientific revolution(Kuhn 1962) is applicable also to technology. The
general conclusion was that this concept is notapplicable, because technology values solving
practical problems and thus is less paradigmaticand more pragmatic than science.
Continued on page 2

Continued on page 5

Inside this Issue
page 7:
Guest Column: Cooperation between the
School of Knowledge Science of JAIST andthe Department of Innovation and Technology
Management, Kassel University, Germany
page 10:A Bird’s Eye Report of the International
Conference KSS2006
Page 11:♦ COE Center NewsJAIST-COE News
Strategic Development of Science and Technology

Autumn, 2006
any creator of a new theory will rather look fordata to support it than make experiments aimed at
falsifying it), but only if we interpret this principle
descriptively. However, Popperian falsification
principle can be also interpreted prescriptively,
explaining how things should be done – in order toattain reasonably objective knowledge 1 . And intechnology creation, this principle is not only
prescriptive, but also describes an actual behaviourof technologists testing their artefacts in extreme
conditions.

On the Emergent Episteme… (con’t)
Our comment, see (Wierzbicki 2005), is thattechnology values and follows in its everyday
practice more the concept of falsification of Karl
Popper than paradigms of Thomas Kuhn. Thus,
the emerging episteme that we propose below musttake into account also this difference. Other
differences, e.g. to the episteme of social sciences,are better known.
We are also aware that the formation of a new
integrated episteme will take its historical time; thefollowing is just an outline of such episteme
formulated from a technological viewpoint – to be
criticized and modified by future research.

The emergence of new concepts and properties onhigher levels of complexity was noticed for a longtime in philosophy. But a clear formulation of
emergence principle evolved first with theempirical evidence of the concept of punctuatedevolution in biology; then it was rationallyreinforced by the concept of order emerging out ofchaos; parallel, it was pragmatically substantiatedby technology, in the hierarchical systems theory,
as well as in the concept of seven layers of
telecommunication
protocols,
see,
e.g.,
(Wierzbicki and Nakamori 2006).

Let us start first with three basic principles that we
believe will be decisive for the change towards the
new episteme of the knowledge civilization era.
These are the Popperian falsification principle, theemergence principle and the multimedia principle,
described already in (Wierzbicki and Nakamori
2006).
We use the concept of falsification not in its early,
rather naive sense of abandoning a theory after
finding a counterexample (Popper 1934), but in amore mature sense, as explained in (Popper 1972):

Thus, the reduction principle of the industrial
episteme – that the behaviour of a complex system
can be explained by the reduction to the behaviourof its parts – is valid only if the level of complexityof the system is rather low. With very complex
systems today, we should use instead:

Falsification principle:
the measure of validity of any hypothesis,
theory, or a model is the number of either
attempted falsification tests that they havesuccessfully passed, or of critical discussion
tests leading to an intersubjective agreement
about their validity

Emergence principle:
new properties of a system emerge withincreased level of complexity, and theseproperties are qualitatively different than andirreducible to the properties of its parts.

This falsification principle applies not only to ahypothesis, theory, or a model; in technology, itapplies also to tools and artefacts, while thefalsification tests are either tests of practicaladequacy or even destructive tests (if we want tobuild a reliable car, we must apply diverse, often
destructive tests to the car prototypes). The
inclusion of critical discussion tests is actually an
extension of Popperian falsification, making it
more open towards the needs of social sciences
and humanities.

It is a fundamental conceptual change. Even if it
might seem that emergence principle logicallyresults the principle of synergy or holism - that thewhole is more than the sum of its parts - this is notnecessarily a correct interpretation. The principleof synergy or holism does not say that the wholeshould have essentially different properties than its
parts. Thus, sciences of the 20th century,
accustomed to the atomistic or sub-atomistic
reasoning of physics, continued to believe in
reductionism: a whole might be slightly greater,
but is still reducible to its parts. This is precisely

Technology
distinguishes
clearly
betweenprescriptive and descriptive models or concepts: aprescriptive model might not correspond to actual
practice, but expresses a recipe how things should
be done. Thus, we agree with social science
criticism of Popperian falsification principle (that1

2

Full objectivity is obviously – after the relativism ofEinstein and the indeterminism of Heisenberg,
followed by diverse philosophic debates – notattainable, but technology at least tries to be as
objective as possible.

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Strategic Development of Science and Technology

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to words, concentrated on communication to that
extent that it tried to reduce humanity to discourse.
This is also a great intellectual challenge: we must
learn to speak about intuition (contrary to classicaladvice of Wittgenstein), that is, we must devise
new concepts that will enable us to analyze
intuitive aspects of knowledge and knowledge
creation.

how post-modern sociology of science attempts to
reduce objectivity to power and money. However,information
technology
providedacounterexample to such reasoning already in the
middle of 20th century. only its importance has notbeen widely noted: this is the distinction ofsoftware from hardware. Software cannot function
without hardware, but its functions cannot be
explained by analysing hardware; it is simply aquite different level of complexity. Thus, theemergence principle stresses that with an increased
level of complexity, the concepts of synergy andholism still are applicable; however, the whole isthen not only greater, but qualitatively different
and irreducible to its parts. In this sense we aresaying that the emergence principle expresses theessence of complexity and means much more thansynergy or holism.

The multimedia principle is perhaps even more
important than the emergence principle, also more
important than other trends such as digital
intelligence (which was originally understood onlyin verbal sense) and implies that we should use as
much multimedia content as possible in order tostronger stimulate creativity. This will have
impacts comparable or exceeding the developmentof printing technology, thus becoming the essenceof the new civilization age.

It is also a fundamental intellectual challenge,
because through all industrial civilization era thelegacy of reductionism persisted in our thinking
and much what was written in the second half of
20th century needs to be critically evaluated oreven revised precisely from the perspective of theemergence principle.

Based on these three fundamental principles, we
can give now a detailed description of an
epistemological position that might be called
constructive evolutionary objectivism, closer infact to the current episteme of technology than tothat of hard sciences:(1) People are not alone in the world; beside otherpeople, there exists other parts of reality or ofnature, although part of this reality has been
converted by people to form human-made,mostly technological systems. There are partsof reality that are local and multiple, there areparts that are (more or less) universal.
(2) People
developed
bothlanguagetocommunicate with others, and tools to convert
various aspects of nature according to theirneeds; humanity can be defined only when
taking into account both these basic humanfaculties.
(3) According to the multimedia principle,
language is a simplified code used fordescribing much more complex reality, while
human senses (starting with vision) enablepeople to perceive much more complex aspectsof reality. This more comprehensive perceptionof reality is the basis of human intuition; forexample, tool making was always based on
intuition and a more comprehensive perceptionof reality than just language.
(4) People have an innate curiosity about otherpeople and nature, thus they constructhypotheses about reality, while creating a
structure and diverse models of the world.
Until now, all such hypotheses turned out to beapproximations
only;
but
we
learn
evolutionary about their validity following the

The third fundamental principle is related to anevident trend in web communications and inrecording our intellectual heritage: to include more
multimedia
messagesandrecords.
An
understanding of the full significance of this trend
is related to the rational theory of powerful but
fallible intuition (Wierzbicki and Nakamori 2006).
This theory explains why visual and generally
preverbal information is much more powerful thanverbal: images require at least ten thousand times
more processing capability, human mind has suchcapability but it is suppressed to subconscious byverbal reasoning and, for the lack of words todescribe it, is called intuition. The multimedia
principle combines these arguments:
Multimedia principle:
words are just an approximate code todescribe much more complex reality, visual andgenerally preverbal information is much more
powerful and relates to intuitive knowledge andreasoning; future records of the intellectual
heritage of humanity will have multimedia
character, thus stimulating creativity.
This is perhaps even more fundamental conceptualchange than the emergence principle, since almost
all philosophy of 20th century attached a great role

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Strategic Development of Science and Technology
falsification principle. Since we perceive thereality as more and more complex, thus devise
concepts on higher and higher levels ofcomplexity according to the emergence
principle, we shall probably always work withapproximate hypotheses.
(5) The origins of culture are both linguistic, suchas stories, myths, symbols, and technical, suchas tools and devices used for improving human
life. Both these aspects helped in a slow
development of science – by testing,abstracting
andaccumulating
humanexperiences with nature and other people,
testing and refining corresponding models andtheories. This development is evolutionary
and, as in any punctuated evolution, includes
revolutionary periods.
(6) The accumulation of human experiences andculture, of meaning of the world, results in andis preserved as the intellectual heritage ofhumanity (or the third world of Popper) with
its emotive, intuitive and rational 2 parts,
existing independently from human mind inlibraries and other depositories of knowledge.
(7) Human thought is imaginative, has also
emotive, intuitive and rational components anddevelops out of perception, sensory
experiences, social interaction, tool making,and the interaction with the intellectual
heritage of humanity, including interpretive
hermeneutic processes.
(8) Objectivity is a higher value that helps us tointerpret the intellectual heritage of humanity,
select its components that more closely andtruthfully correspond to reality, or are more
useful either when constructing new tools or
when analysing social behaviour of people.
(9) A prescriptive interpretation of objectivity is
the falsification principle; when faced
cognitively with increasing complexity, weapply the emergence principle; the sources ofour cognitive power are related to themultimedia principle.
(10)
While above general principles are equallyapplicable to hard and natural sciences, social
2

Autumn, 2006
sciences with humanities, and technology, theymight be differently interpreted by them: hardand natural sciences search for theories that are
universal, calling the laws of nature, and arethus influenced by paradigms, exemplars ofsuch theories; social sciences and humanities
concentrate on local and multiple aspects ofreality, thus follow multiple paradigms;
technology is most pragmatic, motivated by
the joy of creating technical artefacts, and isfollowing in its everyday practice more theprinciple of falsification than paradigms.
We are aware that the contemporary differences
between the episteme of the three cultural spheresof social sciences and humanities, of hard andnatural sciences, and of technology are very great,thus the acceptance of the principles listed above
might take a long time. For example, modern
history valued objectivity, believed that we shallreport history following Herodotus principles orwie es eigentlich gewesen war (as it actually
happened). However, post-modern philosophy
attacked that belief and promoted the slogan
winners write the history. We believe, on the other
hand, that this slogan is ethically wrong: we cannot
permit that our intellectual heritage is polluted; ourdescendants should know the history written
possibly most objectively. In general, we must takecare to preserve and protect the intellectual
heritage of humanity against possible pollution(which might be an outcome, e.g., of a rashprivatization of knowledge).
References:
Foucault M (1972) The order of things: an archeologyof human sciences. Routledge, New YorkLaudan R (ed, 1984) The nature of technologicalknowledge. Are models of scientific change
relevant? Reidel, Dordrecht
Kuhn TS (1962) The structure of scientific revolutions.
Chicago University Press, Chicago (2nd ed., 1970)
Popper KR (1934) Logik der Forschung. Julius Springer
Verlag, Vienna
Popper KR (1972) Objective knowledge. Oxford
University Press, Oxford
Wierzbicki AP (2005) Technology and change: the roleof technology in knowledge civilization. Ith World
Congress of IFSR, Kobe
Wierzbicki AP, Nakamori Y (2006) Creative space:models of creative processes for the knowledge
civilization age. Springer Verlag, BerlinHeidelberg
Wierzbicki AP, Nakamori Y (2007) Creativeenvironments: creativity support for the knowledge
civilization age. Springer Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg

Emotive heritage consists of explicit part such as
products of arts (music, paintings, literature, movies)
as well as of tacit part: collective unconsciousness,archetypes, myths and instincts of humanity. Intuitive
heritage contains, e.g., a priori synthetic judgmentsof Kant, not necessarily true but nonetheless very
powerful in stimulating scientific creativity. Rational
heritage contains all recorded experience and resultsof rational thinking of humanity - non-fiction,sciences in their broadest sense. See (Wierzbicki andNakamori 2006).

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Others found that information is inherently
incomplete, subjective, asymmetrically distributedand costly to acquire due to real world complexity
and uncertainty, human cognitive limitation,different
organizational
positions,diverseeducational backgrounds and working experiences.

Decision-making in the Real World… (con’t)
reform, America’s recent war on Iraq, and so on.
Times and again, costly mistakes are less due tolack of goodwill, commitment, resources oroperational skills, but because of problematic,
hidden and unquestioned assumptions. Suchassumptions can take many forms: industry recipe,
dominant design, institutional logic, ideology,
routine, group-think, ‘normal science’, ‘bestpractice’, just to name a few.

Communication. Some assume that the gap
between decisions and actual outcomes is due tomisunderstanding in communication, and thatmisunderstanding can be cleared by better
communication
technologies
andmultiplechannels. Others think that human communication
is inherently unfinished, uncompleted, nondeterminated and reciprocal. A decision or policy
is merely a gesture calling for responses, which ispicked up, interpreted and acted upon by different
actors differently due to different local situations.
In this later view, we should expect many surprisesin policy consequences and should exploit
differences and diversity for novelty andinnovation.

It is thus imperative for managers, policy-makers
and researchers to ask ourselves: (1) based on
which assumptions and adopting what models are
we doing our projects and research, (2) how are
our assumptions and models related with the ‘realworld’, (3) how do our assumptions influence ourdecisions, (4) how realistic and effective are ourdecisions, suggestions and policies?
Social, organization and management theorists
have explored diverse, even conflicting,assumptions upon many issues that surround andshape decisions. For example:

Human nature. From the very ancient time, in theWest as well as in the East, human nature has been
considered inherently good, bad, both of good andbad, not good nor bad, and so on. This has raisedinteresting issues and debates: the Hobbesianjungle, the tragedy of commons, the free-riding
problem, opportunism, and so on. It also raises
practical questions: in making decisions, in
conducting business transactions, in search forcommon goodness, in governing organization andsociety, shall we rely on the character of the ‘goodguys’ or on socially devised institutions, what kindof institutions?

Rationality. Some assume that people makedecisions rationally and that irrationality can andshould be overcome if proper information,
incentives and decision tools are available. Otherssuggested that our decisions and actions areintendedly rational but inherently bounded,
selective, contextual and adaptive, due to limited
cognitive capabilities and biases, as well as vested
interests.
Preference. Some assumes that actors’ preferences
are clear, stable, consistent and consciously
followed in decision making. If this does not
happen, then it is a problem to be sorted out.
Others argue that in reality decision makers’
preferences are usually ambiguous, fuzzy, illdefined, inconsistent, changed over time. And
when making decisions, time and again, actors
ignore or suppress their preferences for purpose.
They see this as the real pattern in which decisions
are actually made. If you demand that these‘problems’ are sorted out beforehand and/or in theprocess, you can never make decisions.

Human interest. Are human beings and decision
makers fundamentally economic man, social man,or political man? Neo-classical economics is said
to be based on the assumption of the economic
man, Confucius is outstanding for his teaching of
the social man, and Aristotle famously suggested
that man is a political animal. Some take a broader
view. For example, Habermas presents that as
humans we have three differentiated ‘cognitive
interests’: technical, practical and emancipative,
and that ideal organizations and societies are thosethat function to nurture all three human interests
rather than allow one to dominate or ‘colonise’ theother.

Information. Some assume that, in principle,
information is fact-based, neutral, equal andavailable to everyone, that more efforts and better
tools will supply more and better information, andthat you should collect all necessary information
before making decisions, let alone taking actions.

Environment-events. Can we, in principle,
comprehend the world, plan for the future andcontrol our action? Some believe the world being
sufficiently orderly, stable and more or less

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assumptions of a certain sort. Humans have tried
many efforts to tackle hidden assumptions. For
example, in the East, we have the Chuang-tzu
Taoist ‘forgetting’ and the Zen Buddhist‘enlightening’; in the West, we have methods like‘strategic assumption surfacing and testing’ and‘soft systems methodology’.

manageable. Others, for example Taoism and the‘new complexity sciences’, contend that the worldis largely uncertain, chaotic, emerging, selforganising and hence difficult to fit into
prescriptive models or sophisticated plans. There
are debates upon whether the social world isobjectively given, subjectively enacted orintersubjectively negotiated, upon whether‘embedded’ actors really have decisions to make,have choices to make, have alternatives to selectfrom. Some further consider that management
decision counts little because, like species in
Nature, organizations and policies are disciplined
and selected by ‘the market’.

Another question is what to do with the diverse
assumptions and models. Some warm hearts preferan ideal world. They consider the ‘dark side’ inassumptions and models of the political andinstitutional sort as too negative and pessimistic. If
we emphasis too much on the ‘dark side’ and the‘negative aspects’, they will become self-fulfilling
prophecies. For example, if everyone adopts the‘political man’ assumption, then each of us comesto the office in the morning calculating how tomobilize and manipulate colleagues in order toexploit emergencies for personal interests, theorganization and society will become a very ugly
and stressful place to live in. These warm hearted
people – they can be managers and researchers –propose subsequently that good leadership is totransform human stupidity and errors, nurture trustand care, shape positive behavior, via means ofgood organizational cultures, etc. Others dismiss
such an attitude as too romantic. After all, we areliving in a real world and therefore should be
realistic in decisions and actions. We may not likethe ‘dark side’ and the ‘negative aspects’, but they
are always here to stay with us, they will not
disappear simply because we do not model them in,there are limits of what we can do with them, andwe have to face them when making immediate
decisions. Some take a positive view of the ‘darkside’ and ‘negative aspects’, suggesting that
effective leadership is not to assume the ‘darkside’ and ‘negative aspects’ away but to exploit
them so as to get things done, to achieve uniquecompetitiveness. They call this ‘technology’ and‘intelligence’ of ‘foolishness’.

The above is just a taste of the diverse and usuallyconflicting assumptions around decision making.
There are many more. Based on and around theseassumptions, researchers reveal a wide range ofdecision making patterns and propose manydecision making models and tools. For example:
Rational: systems/social engineering, strategicplanning, decision tree, simulations, road maps,
formal methodologies, strategic choice, structuralcontingence model …
Natural:muddling-through,logicalincrementalism, emergent strategizing, garbagecan decision-making …
Political: power game, language game, agency
theory,resource-dependence,
decoupling
efforts …
Institutional: ‘iron-cage – coercive, imitative,
normative isomorphism’, path-dependence, lock-in
effect, competence trap, lid on the garbage-can …
Fatalist-pessimistic:
organizational‘Decisions do not matter’ …

Autumn, 2006

ecology,Interactive: gesture-responses, evolutionary game,strategic ambiguity, ‘Good managers do not makepolicy decisions’ …

Perhaps, I suppose, a more promising and more
realistic approach lies in idealist pragmatism,
which is close to what Professor Nonaka, theFounding Dean of the Knowledge School, recently
calls ‘distributed phronesis’.

The list can go on and on. Given this diversity andcomplexity in underlying assumptions anddecision models, the questions to managers andresearchers are: where do we stand, what kind ofassumptions do we feel comfortable, how to makeassumptions transparent, how to justify ourassumptions, how to share our assumptions withothers? Perhaps, at the first instance, we need toask ourselves whether we realise that we indeed
make decisions and take actions based on

Pragmatism can be understood as a theory ofknowledge and a methodology for action. It is an
inherent intellectual and cultural sensibility in the
Confucian tradition which is shared by, among
many others, the Chinese and the Japanese, as wellas in indigenous American thought. It had been
caricatured by some for a very long time as

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Autumn, 2006
skills that are appreciated and shared by thecommunity.

anything-goes, as being distasteful of any theory,
as an instrumental kind of thinking, distinctively
non-intellectual, altogether uninformed andunrefined. However, a genuine pragmatic
sensibility is to me featured by a refusal toentertain ideas and actions as disjunctively related,a rejection to ‘the spectator theory of knowledge’,a commitment to endows experience with learning
rather than seeking ‘truth’, a willingness to takeaction without knowing how things might unfold
in the future, a readiness to embrace uncertainty
and surprises, an eagerness to capitalise on theunanticipated and unexpected, a conviction thatvalidity of knowledge should be sought based on
the consequences of acting upon it, an enjoyment
in conversation with situated agents about
possibilities for change, a proposition viewing
temporal conversations in a community, not any
extra-historical Archimedean point, as our only
sources of guidance for action, and a belief thatparticipative consensus, if ever achievable, areoften achieved at the aesthetic and cultural levels
rather than with regard to the claims of Reason.

To research, pragmatism does not promise
integration, synthesis or transcendence of diverseand conflicting assumptions and models because it
recognises that while each and every
assumption/model is partial and limited, each andevery one is unique and therefore cannot be
subsumed or reduced into one or the other.
Pragmatism hence values different assumptions
and conflicting models because, properly
connected and juxtaposed, skilfully compared andappreciated,differences,diversity
andcontradictions provide us with richer perspectives,
deeper insights and fuller understandings of theworld, of ourselves and of our decisions.
To pragmatism, good science is good conversation,
not talking to ourselves but carefully listening tothe other. We need critical spirit and engaging
conversations in our communities, not pretended
agreements or trained indifference. We need
intellectual division of labour and focuses in
research, but, to phrase it in economics jargons,
specialisation is good only when accompanied bysubsequent trade – looking into and buying in what
other theories/models produce and offer. In the end,
it is difference, diversity, pluralism, tolerance anddialogue that make our assumptions transparent,
make ‘group think’ and ‘trained incompetence’less likely, and hence are good for knowledge
creation and innovation, as well as for decisionmaking in the real world.

Pragmatism has significant practical implications
for decision making practice and research. To
practice, pragmatism means sensitivity to contexts,
willingness to take action, focus on consequences,and openness to uncertainty, comfortable withparadoxes, skilful in ambiguity, keen on flexibility,
good in language games, caring for common
goodness, playing with emerging possibilities andusing available resources to find workable
solutions. What differentiate good decisions frombad ones are situated sensitivity, inspiring
envisioning, timely political judgements and social

Guest Column:

Introduction

Cooperation between the School of
Knowledge Science of JAIST andthe Department of Innovation andTechnology
Management,
KasselUniversity, Germany

Accordingtopost-modern
philosophy
communication is a necessary precondition forbeing in a social environment. “Indeed I cannot
exist in everyday life without continuallyinteracting and communicating with others”(Berger/ Luckmann 1967, p. 23). This is nothing
new for a scientific environment since science has
been always based on communication and sharing
ideas.

Carsten Borchers
The Department of Innovation and Technology
Management, Kassel University, Germany

Such a process of interaction evolved between the
School of Knowledge Science of JAIST and
Kassel University, Department of Innovation andcarsten.borchers@uni-kassel.de7

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Autumn, 2006
♦ How this question can be answered in thegeneral case?

Technology Management (iTM) after getting toknow each other at the IFSR Conference in Kobe
in November 2005. Now, the first exchange ofideas took place with enjoying high attention in ajoint meeting at JAIST in September 2006. All
expectations were excelled. A next meeting isplaned to take place at Kassel in January 2007. The
exchange between JAIST and iTM started with theissues of the emergence of knowledge
management and the cultural influences onknowledge management. Meanwhile, the topic has
been extended to the research on the issues of“Gender, Women, Couples, and Careers” as wellas “Aging Society”. But a set of research topics isstill evolving. The scope of our cooperation is set
by the domain of both partners: the considerationof knowledge, innovation and technology from aholistic perspective.

To answer these questions, many different
endeavours covering a broad range of research
activities are involved. But the main focus of theinterest is forecasting technologies as well as
management of knowledge concerning this issue.
Especially, knowledge management is challenged
by the complex character of this endeavour, since
relevant knowledge and information about the
future is distributed over a very large area.
Bringing a huge quantity and complexity ofknowledge from different people, companies,
countries, cultures, systems and media together
requires a sophisticated approach. For establishingsuccessful knowledge transfer within a certain
scenario, all influencing factors have to beconsidered. Thus the department maintains aninterdisciplinary and integrative character andemployssociologists,
computerscientists,
economists, business economists, engineers as wellas political scientists. The developed scientificconcepts and research results are also taken to areal company context.

The mission and objective of the Department of
Innovation and Technology Management
The department of Innovation and Technology
Management is lead by Mrs. Prof. Dr. habil.
Marion Weissenberger-Eibl. The primary objectiveof the department is education and research on theintersection of economics and technology. Thisimplies an interdisciplinary character of thedepartment considering technical, ecological,
political-social and ethical-cultural aspects.
Our research focuses on innovation management,
maintaining and improving products, services,
technologies, processes, structures, strategies andsocial systems. In the sense of a comprehensive
management interpretation, our purpose is to
identify and analyze the strategic, organizationaland methodological questions. Following this, we
also aim to enhance the cognition and scientificderivation of organizational design and activity
recommendation for industry and service
enterprises.

Fig.1 Research activities of the department of iTM

Research project (in preparation): knowledgetransfer via internet

Our educational task is to provide students with awell-founded scientific education, which also
includes the challenges of real business. Hereby
we use innovative concepts and methods toencourage scientifically and critically thinking aswell as responsibly working and acting.

Information Society becomes a frequently used
metaphor over the past decade. It draws the imageof a society, in which knowledge and information
are the most important resources. In contrast to
tangible assets, these intangible assets require adifferent treatment, which is also indicated by theproverb “knowledge is the only resource thatgrows with use and share”. Over the past years
information and communication technology has
produced a special impact on the exchange of
information and knowledge by boosting the global
communication as well as enabling fast, world

The point of the future development of iTM
The key objective of the activities of the iTM
department is to answer the following questions:♦ How future business between technology
and economy will look like?

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wide and knowledge-based cooperation. National
and international information and knowledge
networks have emerged.

Autumn, 2006
Our main objective of the research project in thefield of gender, women, couples, and careers is tobring more high potential females in managerialand specialist jobs. In many Western European
countries young women and men are finishinggrammar school and further schools in equal
proportions. That applies today also to the numbersof female and male students at universities andeven applies for the first high qualified jobs. But
an increasing gendered differentiation can beobserved when high potentials “climb the career
ladder”. This differentiation looks like thedecreasing proportions of women. We think thatthe traditional male career model doesn’t fit withthe expectations of females on their career andwith their duties to their families. Our research
projects try to find out different kinds of models tobridge this gap. One opportunity is to develop a
promotion model that includes schooling programs
at universities and personal development methodsof enterprises. This will help to fit the imparted
skills by university schooling programs with therequirements of managerial and specialist tasks. In
that way, we will break the glass ceiling for
women in today’s enterprises to get more highqualified females into the positions of managers,
chief executive officers or to the board of directors.
We will also develop different kinds of careermodels that fit women business and familyinterests. The contact person of this project is Mrs.
Dipl.-Soz.
Selma
Kölbl
(selma.koelbl@wirtschaft.uni-kassel.de)With the continuous growing of the amount ofelectronically available information, nearly every“knowledge worker” (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995;
Drucker 1960) faces the problem of finding thedesired information. Within some organizations,search-time becomes a significant share of thedaily office hours. Davenport and Prusak (2000)
point out: “volume may be the friend of data
management, but it is the enemy of knowledge
management – simply because humans have toshift through the volume to find the desired
knowledge” (Davenport and Prusak, 2000). The
objective of this proposal is to reveal theinterdependencies between information andknowledge. The right understanding of thisquestion would enable knowledge to automaticallyelicit knowledge from information streams.
According to the underlying concept the user can
not search for information, but information tries toreach the user. This information – formed asagents – could interact and exchange content toincrease its “value”. They are “rewarded” by theuser. In consequence a market for the agent’s
information accurse and the information organizes
themselves by competition. The resulting principle
of information management will be similar to“survival of the fittest”. The substantiality of life
(connection to reality) is introduced by information
containing the context via a representation of realworld phenomena.

References:
Berger, P. L., Luckmann, T. (1967): The Social
Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociologyof Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books
Davenport, T.H.; Prusak, L. (2000): Working
Knowledge, Boston: Harvard Business School Press
Drucker, P. F. (2005), S. 78: The Essential Drucker,
New York: CollinsBusiness
Nonaka, I.; Takeuchi, H. (1995): The Knowledge
Creating Company, Oxford: Oxford University
Press

Operative goal of the project is to specify andevaluate the concept. The design and testing of
information agents as well as the elicitation ofboundary conditions are considered. The question“does knowledge emerge?” will be answered. The
contact person of this project is Mr. Dipl.-Inf.
Carsten Borchers (carsten.borchers@uni-kassel.de)Research project: Gender, Women, Couples,and Careers

9JAIST-COE News
Strategic Development of Science and Technology

Autumn, 2006

The Bird's Eye Report of the International Conference KSS2006
As the world declared entering into an era ofknowledge economy, the significance ofdeveloping knowledge has grown to a level where
it is coming to dominate other socio-economic
factors. The recent developments challenge manyof institutions to understand the nature ofknowledge and its role in applications, toeffectively utilize the knowledge for improving thecorporate competitive advantage and national
comprehensive power, as well as establishingdevelopment of knowledge sciences. The FirstInternational Symposium on Knowledge andSystem Sciences was held in Ishikawa, Japan in2000 to start some endeavors of confluence ofdifferent ideas and opinions, methods andtechnologies, schools and disciplines, theorists andpractitioners, which arm to develop knowledgescience from systemic perspective and may be
regarded as somewhat practice of meta-synthesis
system methodologies toward complex problem
solving. After 7-year work, the 7th International
Symposium on Knowledge and System Sciences(KSS2006) took place in Beijing on September 2225 to show some new achievements and prospects
for continuous thinking and studying, especially toobserve the power of synthesis for knowledge
creation.
During the conference, a total of 49 papers havebeen presented. The participants came from 12
countries and regions including Australia, Austria,
Canada, Czech, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Russia,
Slovenia, United Kingdom, Taiwan of China andChina mainland. Those papers are roughly grouped
into 9 categories, knowledge science, knowledge
creation and support systems, knowledge systems
engineering, data mining and text mining, complex
system modeling and analysis, knowledge
management, knowledge management practice,complex networks and complexity research,system thinking and methodologies, which cover
the highlight topics of theory and practice ofknowledge and systems sciences, and reflect thecontinual thinking and understanding about thescope of knowledge science.
At the end of the gathering, the audience has
greatly accepted the generous offer from JAIST toorganize the next International Symposium on
Knowledge and System Science scheduled for2007.

Faces in the conferenceProf. Jifa Gu

Prof. Yoshiteru Nakamori

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JAIST-COE News
Strategic Development of Science and Technology

Prof. Andrzej P. Wierzbicki

Autumn, 2006

Prof. Zhichang Zhu

COE Center News♦♦♦♦Dr. Totok Hari Wibowo left the Center and came back Indonesia as of September 2006.
Dr. Jing Tian joined the Center as postdoctoral researcher as of Oct 1, 2006.
Mr. Hiroyuki Asano joined the Center as researcher as of Oct 1, 2006.
Dr. Zhichang Zhu from the University of Hull Business School (UK) was a research professor at the
COE Center from Oct. 25 to Nov. 21, 2006.
♦ Dr. Zbigniew Król from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences
was a visiting researcher at the COE Center from Nov. 7 to Nov. 28, 2006.
♦ JAIST Forum on Knowledge Creation and Social Innovation was held in JAIST, Ishikawa, Nov.10 11, 2006, with the following program:
Akio Makishima (Vice President, JAIST): Opening Address
Yoshiteru Nakamori (JAIST): A Brief Introduction to the School of Knowledge Science and a COE
ProgramAndrzej P. Wierzbicki (JAIST): Knowledge Sciences and Nanatsudaki Model of Knowledge Creation
Processes
Robert Kneller (The University of Tokyo): Knowledge Creation and Application in a Local Context:
Creation of New Components and Increased Cooperation with Local Industry.
Nico Stehr (Zeppelin University): Worlds of Knowledge and Democracy: Is Civil Society a Daughterof Knowledge?
Michael C. Jackson (The Business School at Hull): Reflection on Knowledge Management from a
Critical Systems Perspective
Ikujiro Nonaka (Hitotsubashi University): The Strategy of a Knowledge-Creating Company:
Management by Distributed Phronesis

These lectures were followed by a day of discussions of detailed projects of the COE Program. We
will publish the main content of these lectures in the next issue of COE News.

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JAIST-COE News
Strategic Development of Science and Technology

Autumn, 2006

JAIST-COE News is published by the Center for Strategic Development of Science and Technology, Japan
Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, 1-1 Asahidai, Nomi, Ishikawa 923-1292, Japan.
Questions, comments, article proposals and for more information about the JAIST-COE News, contact Jing
TIAN at jtian@jaist.ac.jp, tel. +81-761-51-1839 or go to the link: www.jaist.ac.jp/coe/index.htm
Articles in this newsletter are based on a variety of sources. Signed articles reflect the views of the author.
Unsigned articles are prepared by the editorial staff, which is solely responsible for their content.

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