Vikobama: Introducing a new Approach to a Knowledge-Based Vision Development Process.

In his recent work, Nonaka argues that what differentiates firms from one another is their vision of the future and their practical ability to act out and to realize that future vision (Nonaka / Toyama 2008:2). Thus, the development process of a future vision is crucial for the long-term well-being of a company or of an organization. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new method of a knowledge-based vision development process called VIKOBAMA (Vision development and knowledge-based management). The main focus of this new approach is on the development of a knowledge vision, together with a mission statement on a collective level (of organizations, firms, teams or communities). There are three important and groundbreaking aspects of VIKOBAMA: the creation of self-transcending knowledge is most vital for the whole process the individual visions of the employees are of high importance, and are therefore well integrated into the overall vision of the system a radical bottom-up approach is implemented on a collective level These three aspects are essential steps for the development of a sustainable overall vision of any system. Furthermore, this paper describes some experiences with the method of VIKOBAMA, mainly taken from several case studies with medium-sized companies in Austria. In addition, the paper at hand is one of a few studies which both, theoretically and practically, deals with the aspect of self-transcending knowledge in the context of vision development processes and knowledge-based management on the individual level as well as on the collective level. The paper is organized into three parts. Part 1 points out the importance of a sustainable knowledge vision in companies and gives a short overview on how to create a knowledge vision in the context of the SECI/ba model of Nonaka and his colleagues as well as on the context of the fifth disciplines of organisational learning (system thinking) by Senge. Part-2 introduces the VIKOBAMA method itself and describes the main steps of this knowledge-based vision development process. Moreover it deals with the most important aspects of the creation of self-transcending knowledge, as well as with knowledge transfer and with knowledge distribution of implicit and explicit knowledge. In part-3 several case studies with medium-sized companies in Austria will be analysed, in which we have applied the VIKOBAMA method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]