COE NEWSJAPANADVANCED INSTITUTE OFSCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
1990

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

Vol. 2 No. 4

Summer 2006

Guest Column 1:

Researcher Column:

Expert Mining for Solving Social
Harmony Problems

Knowledge Sciences and Nanatsudaki
Model of Knowledge Creation
Processes

Gu Jifa
Institute of Systems Science,
Academy of Math. & Systems
Science, Chinese Academy of
Sciences
jfgu@amss.ac.cn

Social Harmony System
We may define following systems, whichclosely related with the social harmony system:(1) Nature – Resource – Environment
system;(2) Economy system;(3) Social system.
For coordination between system (1) and (2)our government had proposed the policy forsustainable development. Many scientificmethods to help describe the sustainable
development on the base of more clear
qualitative and quantitative demonstration has
been developing.
In recent ten years with the development of
economy the contradiction has emerged
between the systems (2) and (3), such as
corruption, an income gap between interior
areas and coastal regions as well as between
Continued on page 2

Andrzej P. Wierzbicki, Yoshiteru Nakamori
Center for Strategic Development of Science andTechnology, JAIST

andrzej@jaist.ac.jp, nakamori@jaist.ac.jp

We observe here first the increasing
importance of the concepts of knowledge
management,
technology
management,
knowledge economy, knowledge civilisation,
recent theories of knowledge creation, etc. The
importance of these concepts today implies that
we are observing now a need and an emergenceprocess of a new understanding of knowledgesciences.
Continued on page 3

Inside this Issue

page 6:Introducing the On-going Research by
Research Assistants at the COE Center
page 8:♦ Upcoming Events♦ COE Center NewsJAIST-COE News
Strategic Development of Science and Technology

Summer, 2006

Expert Mining for Solving… (con’t)

Science Foundation of China has designed aflowchart: Synchronous Æ Asynchronous ÆSynchronous, or Meeting I Æ Analysis ÆMeeting II.

urban and rural population, unemployment,poverty, poor production safety and pollutionetc.

And a series of theory, methods, modelingparadigms and computer software and platforms
are developed, and had been applied to somemacroeconomic problems, e.g. forecasting the
GDP growth rate and the one under the impactof SARS, and some general complex economic
systems

In order to establish the harmony society or
coordinate the relationship between systems (1),(2) and (3), we have to use scientific methods
both from social and natural sciences to
describe the phenomena more deeply andwidely.
From the channels of acquaintance of
information and knowledge we may divide oursociety into three societies: formal and central

For social problem solving mental factors
instead of physical factors play more importantroles to social impact. Then psychologicalfactors and social behavior modeling will be inconsideration to expose some attitudes towards
someconcerned
problems
basedon
psychological tests. Internet is now anothercarrier of public opinions. Although there are
official channels to get information, prompt
information and true public opinions may beeasier emerged via unofficial channels. Fromtechnical point of views, more mining
techniques, such as data mining, text mining,
web mining and opinion mining, multi-media
information mining shall be applied to acquire
further information from different media.

society, informal society and network society.
The first one undoubtedly controls our society
dominantly; we may use most data resources
and formal information from statistics, press
and documents from authorities in different
level of governments. But we may also find thatthe other two societies have their own channels
for obtaining information and knowledge which
played some roles in our society. Considering
the new features in the social harmony system
we wish use Metasynthesis system approach
proposed by Qian et al., some new techniquesand methods, such as 6 mining methods (Datamining, Text mining, Web mining, Psychology
mining, Model mining and Expert mining).Here
we will emphasize the expert mining.

Both psychological tests and various
technologies provide information via diverse
channels, while it is still necessary to consider
opinions from human expert.

Metasynthesis System Approach

Expert meeting is a usual way to collectopinions or even knowledge or wisdom towarddifficult issues. Moreover, it is a way ofcollective problem solving. From another pointof view, expert meeting could also serves as one
kind of expert mining, i.e. to acquire more
information from human experts. To facilitate

Metasynthesis approach is to integratevarious data, information, and model,
experiences, wisdom and computer capacity tosolve the complex system problems. For
realizing this system approach our team in a
major project supported by National Natural
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Strategic Development of Science and Technology

Summer, 2006

expert mining, computerized tools for group
work will be applied; such as groupargumentation environment (GAE) and newfunctions are needed to be explored

There are a lot of discussion types here we
only wish mentions some of them: 1).
Syntegration (Beer); 2).meeting on Web(WebScope); 3) Nominal Group meeting

Expert mining

In order to run the meeting well we have to
pay attention to the Ba, Facilitation, andMediation in order to run the meetings efficientand effective

Expression of expert’s thoughts may betaken in following fashions: speak explicitly(language, word); speak implicitly-tacit; express
by gesture (expression in eyes, gesticulation,and tone); speak on Web; speak lie (speak
insincerely, false intelligence, rumor;(3) Metasynthesis of Opinions by interview
deeply Psychology mining can help people toanalyze the thinking behinds.
Recently we have run a scientific test on
discussing the social harmony by the expert
mining, psychology mining and model mining
in a MBA course. We divide all MBA students
into six groups to attend the discussion on six
selected topics separately. In each group weassign one facilitator using different discussion
methods with some useful tools and methods,
such as PathMaker, GAE, UciNet, GIS,
interview and game theory. Most of themsatisfied such new scientific discussion test.

We may propose some basic ideas formining the thoughts: Netting globally, optimum
seeking locally; 6 mining (Data mining, Text
mining, Web mining, psychology mining,
Model mining, Expert mining); from tacit to
explicit (SECI model); combination of humanand machine; spatial information analysis.
Then we will metasynthesize the expert’s
opinions by text, meeting and interview.
(1) Metasynthesis of opinions by text havethree kinds: Simple survey (narrative); Metaanalysis; Qualitative Metasynthesis

The investigation for social harmony system
in China is just started in recent years. We will
put a lot of efforts for running investigation,
especially if we can collect a lot of data and use
many new techniques, the problem formetasynthesizing all concepts, methods,
experience and tools still stands as a hard task
for our Chinese scientists.

(2) Metasynthesis of Opinions by meetingshould consider the types of meeting anddiscussion, Ba, Facilitation, and Mediation.
There are three types for convening theexpert meetings: 1) brainstorming type forcollecting the vivid and frank opinions; 2)
studying type for collecting and studying some
opinions on the base of deep investigation; 3)
decision type for concentrating the opinions. In
order to obtain the consensus from experts wealso studied different methods, tools for getting
the consensus, such as DMTMC-system, GAE
and PathMaker etc.

Knowledge Science and Nanatsudaki… (con’t)
This is not a discipline but ratherinterdisciplinary field that goes beyond theclassical epistemology, includes also some
aspects of knowledge engineering from3

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Strategic Development of Science and Technology
information technology, some aspects ofknowledge management from management andsocial science, some aspects of technology
management, some aspects of interdisciplinary
synthesis and other techniques (such as decision
analysis and support, multiple criteria analysis,etc.) from systems science.

Summer, 2006

footing. There is an observable tendency today
in management science to teach future
managers while insisting that the episteme ofsocial sciences is superior. But, when taughtthat way, the future managers will not be able tounderstand knowledge workers coming fromhard science or technology. Future managers
should thus understand each of these threeepisteme, for example, should know thattechnology is an art of constructing tools, not atechnocratic, functionalist worldview.

This emergence process is motivatedprimarily by the needs of an adequate educationof knowledge workers and knowledge managers
and coordinators; however, also the research on
knowledge and technology management andcreation needs such interdisciplinary support.

To summarize, we should thus require thatknowledge sciences give home to several
disciplines (in an alphabetic order):The classical understanding of the words
knowledge science might imply that it isepistemology enhanced by elements ofknowledge
engineering,knowledge
management and systems science. However, thestrong disciplinary and historical focus of
epistemology
suggests
anoppositeinterpretation: knowledge science must be
interdisciplinary, thus it should not start withepistemology, although it must be enhanced byelements of epistemology. The field closest to
knowledge sciences seems to be systems
science – at least, if it adheres to its
interdisciplinary origins and does not sufferfrom the unfortunate disciplinary division into
soft and hard systems science.

•

Epistemology,•

Knowledge engineering,•

Management science with knowledge
management,•

Sociological (soft) systems science,•

Technology management,•

Technological (hard) systems science,on equal footing, with a requirement of mutual
information and understanding.
Knowledge science is naturally concerned
also with models of knowledge creation
processes. In the book Creative Space, we haveshown that there are many spirals of knowledge
creation, but we can distinguish two essential
types. On of them are spirals of organizational
character; typical for market innovations andpractice-oriented organizations, another type are
spirals some of normal academic character,
typical for research organizations.

The cultural sphere of social sciences withhumanities differs today from the cultural
sphere of technology, and the latter differs fromthe cultural sphere of hard sciences, because
they adhere to different values, have different
episteme, use different concepts and language.
We discuss these fundamental issues here
because we insist that diverse disciplines must
be represented in knowledge sciences on equal

The normal academic research combines
actually three spirals: hermeneutics (gatheringscientific information and knowledge from
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Strategic Development of Science and Technology
literature, web and other sources and reflecting
on these materials), called by us the EAIR
(Enlightenment – Analysis – Immersion –Reflection) Spiral; debate (discussing in agroup research under way), called by us the
EDIS (Enlightenment – Debate – Immersion –Selection) Spiral; experiment (testing ideas andhypotheses by experimental research), called byus the EEIS (Enlightenment – Experiment –Interpretation – Selection) Spiral. Since all ofthese spirals begin with having an idea, called
the Enlightenment (illumination, aha, eureka)effect, they can be combined into a Triple Helixof normal knowledge creation, typical for
academic work.

Summer, 2006

Combination – Internalization) Spiral; another,
actually older but formulated as a spiral only
recently, is the brainstorming DCCV
(Divergence – Convergence – Crystallization –Verification) Spiral; still another, theOccidental counterpart of the SECI Spiral(which is of Oriental origin), is the objective
setting OPEC (Objectives – Process –Expansion - Closure) Spiral.
Each of these spirals has a different role andcan be applied for different purposes, but all
have their strengths. Unfortunately, they cannot
be easily combined into a multiple helix like the
Triple Helix, because they do not share thesame elements. However, the main challenge is
not only to combine these spirals between
themselves, but also with the spirals of
academic knowledge creation. This might beimportant for several reasons:

These three spirals contained in the Triple
Helix do not exhaustively describe all what
happens in academic knowledge creation, butthat they describe most essential elements ofacademic research: gathering and interpreting
information and knowledge, debating andexperimenting. These spirals are individuallyoriented, even if a university and a laboratory
should support them; e.g., the motivation forand the actual research on preparing a doctoral
thesis is mostly individual. Moreover, the Triple
Helix only describes what researchers actuallydo; it is thus a descriptive model that does notgive clear conclusions how to organize research.
However, there are also several othercreative spirals described and analyzed in thebook Creative Space. Important for practicalknowledge
creation,forinnovations,particularly in industry and other purposeoriented organizations are the organizational
creative spirals, motivated by purposes of agroup and aimed at using the creative power ofthe group. One of them is the widely known
SECI (Socialization – Externalization –•Combiningthesespirals
mightstrengthen academic knowledge creation,
because it would increase in it the roleof the group supporting the individual
research;•

Combiningthesespirals
mightstrengthen also industrial innovation andknowledge creation, because someindividual elements should be explicitly
accounted for;•

Combining these spirals might help in
the cooperation of industry withacademic institutions in producing
innovations, because it could bridge thegap between the different ways of
conducting research in academia and inindustry.

With these purposes, we present here the
JAIST Nanatsudaki Model – an exemplar
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JAIST-COE News
Strategic Development of Science and Technology(serving as an example to follow, a prescriptivemodel) of a process of knowledge andtechnology creation. It consists of sevencreative spirals; and each of these spirals might
be as beautiful and unpredictable in its
creativity, as water whirls in the sevenwaterfalls (nanatsudaki) on Asahidai close to
JAIST. The seven spirals include the threeacademic and the three organizational
mentioned above, but are supplemented by aplanning roadmapping spiral based on the ISystem (the pentagram of Nakamori). The
model is build following the assumption that its
applications will concern technology or materialscience development, thus the application phaseconsists of experimental work.

Summer, 2006

Importance of some of its constitutive spirals
was recently supported empirically by the
results of a survey of opinions about creativity
conditions conducted at JAIST.

Although the model could start with any
constitutive spiral, we assume that it starts with
objective setting (thus uses part or entire of the
OPEC Spiral) and end with the applications,experimental work, here represented by the
EEIS Spiral.

Diagram of JAIST Nanatsudaki Model(Septagram of Creative Spirals)

Introducing the On-going Research by Research Assistants at the COE Center(1) Andre Saito (PhD candidate at the SchoolofKnowledge
Science;E-mail:asaito@jaist.ac.jp)

emergence of the knowledge economy has
brought new challenges to organizations,managers and workers. As knowledge becomes
more important than capital, land or labor in thecreation of economic value, organizations
experience an acceleration in the pace ofinnovation and their boundaries begin to blur,managers must adopt strategizing as a way oflife and have to master the complexity ofknowledge work, and workers are compelled tolearn continuously, expand their creativity, andcollaborate more and better. The field ofknowledge management has been advanced in

Research Title: Developing knowledge
management competence through graduate
education
Abstract: This research aims to apply theconcept of competence to the knowledge
management activity, proposing a framework ofknowledge management competence that willcontribute to facilitate the development of coreskills for the knowledge economy. The
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Strategic Development of Science and Technology

Summer, 2006

response to such challenges. Drawing
contributions from a wide range of disciplines
like economics, management, information
studies and computer science, research on
knowledge issues has grown steadily in the last
decade. In practice, experience on knowledge
management advances as organizations of all
sectors and sizes continue to launch initiatives
to improve their capacity to create, transfer anduse knowledge. Despite the progress of the field,
little work has been done regarding thedevelopment of knowledge-related skills inmanagers and workers.

network analysis and knowledge mapping are
targeted ways to these two subsystems.
(3) Haigang Song (PhD candidate at the
School of Knowledge Science; E-mail:haigang@jaist.ac.jp)
Research Title: Regional Knowledge Creationin Cluster Promotion Organizations through Ma
Management
Abstract:
Despitesomesignificant
contributions to the regional innovation
research field in previous regional innovation
theories, there are still at least two theoreticalgaps that need to be filled: (1) what are theknowledge creation processes among diverse
members?, and (2) what are the structuralelements, processes and role of cluster
promotion organizations based on knowledge
management?. The purpose of this research is tocreate a new framework for cluster promotion
organizations to fill these theoretical gaps byintroducing a new concept of Ma. The
objectives of this research are three fold: first,
to define a new concept of Ma, and indicate
three main characteristics of Ma by integrating
Japanese concept Ma, western philosophy with
Chinese philosophy; second, to define theconcept of Ma Management, and indicate three
types of knowledge on which Ma Management
based; third, to discuss epistemological levels,
conditions, and structural elements of Ma
Managementinaclusterpromotionorganization.

(2) Nie Kun (PhD candidate at the School of
Knowledge
Science;E-mail:niekun@jaist.ac.jp)
Research Title: Social network analysis andknowledge mapping for implementing the EOSECI and the pentagram I5-System
Abstract: Starting from the discussion ofknowledge
creationprocesses,
bothorganizational and normal academic knowledge
creation, we emphasize the technical solution
and application of these knowledge creation
models, since these models are well establishedand interpreted, it is still difficult to implement
them. EO-SECI and I5-system are two of themost famous one, this article was going todescribe large scientific research process using
EO-SECI model, and Intervention andIntegration of I5-system were supposed to be thetwo most important and difficult subsystems,
taking a look at an example which is a large
project in China consisting of many small subprojects, actually, each sub-project by a group
had done a excellent job, but the challenge wasto integrate all the sub-project as a whole to stepup the project, finally, we found that Social(4) Tian Jing (PhD candidate at the School of
Knowledge
Science;E-mail:jtian@jaist.ac.jp)
Research Title: Knowledge Management andKnowledge Creation in Academia
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Summer, 2006

supportcreative
processes(Creative
Environments, CE for short) from a software
engineer’s perspective, using experience from
two implemented Creative Environments.
Starting from user requirements for a CE andfrom models of creative processes, the research
describes a functional specification of a CE.
From this specification, a general modular
architecture of a CE is derived. The paper
considers methods of data representation in a
CE. The paper also describes two implemented
Creative Environments and relates theexperience of the two implementation efforts.
The first described CE has been implemented at
the Japanese Advanced Institute of Science andTechnology (JAIST), and the second at thePolish-Japanese Institute of Information
Technology (PJIIT). The subject of information
security in a CE is also considered in the paper.

Abstract: This thesis advances the belief thatknowledge management (KM) is applicable not
only in industrial and market organizations, butalso in academia – at universities and research
institutes. Specific features, methods andtechniques of KM in academia are analyzed or
proposed, so as to develop an appropriate
framework, new methods of measurement andnew approaches to improve research efficiency
and effectiveness as well as to promotescientific knowledge creation.
(5) Hongtao Ren (PhD candidate at the
School of Knowledge Science; E-mail:hongtao@jaist.ac.jp)
Research Title: Implementing Creative
Environments for Scientific Research
Abstract: The research considers the design
and implementation of environments that

Upcoming Events♦ ‘Social Innovation Forum’Tatsunokuchi, Ishikawa, August 1, 2006
♦ JAIST Forum, Tatsunokuchi, Ishikawa November 10 - 13, 2006
♦ The 7th International Symposium on Knowledge and Systems Science (ISKSS) “Towards
Knowledge Synthesis and Creation” Beijing, China, September 22-25, 2006

COE Center News♦ Dr. Hiroyuki Tsuruoka joined the Center as Visiting Fellow as of April 1, 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 Totok
Hari Wibowo at totoku@jaist.ac.jp, tel. +81-761-51-1790 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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