Ikujiro “Jiro” Nonaka, MBA 68, PhD 72, a pioneering organizational theorist honored for his lifetime of academic achievement by many, including Berkeley Haas, died at home in Tokyo on January 25. He was 89.
Over his distinguished career, Nonaka, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University, became one of the world’s top scholars in the field of knowledge management, which is developing and using the intellectual capital of workers to create and expand business knowledge.
Born in Tokyo, Nonaka came to Berkeley from Japan in 1965 to study marketing at UC Berkeley’s business school, moving on to earn both an MBA and a doctorate. Long-time friend and colleague Hirotaka “Hiro” Takeuchi, MBA 71, PhD 77, met Nonaka while the two were studying at Haas.
“I followed Jiro’s footsteps at Haas and we went on to conduct research together at Hitotsubashi University on innovation and knowledge creation,” said Takeuchi, former professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. “Jiro was fond of saying how lucky we were to have studied at the ‘Athens of the Pacific’ where we received our philosophical foundation. He was also fond of saying, ‘Our theory is unique because it is based on philosophy.’”
Lifetime achievement
Nonaka was honored for his life’s work in both the East and West.
The Wall Street Journal in 2008 named him among the 20 Most Influential Business Thinkers. In 2013, he was named among the first 10 management leaders to be inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame by the prestigious London-based organization. In Japan, he earned a Purple Medal of Honor from the government for his contribution to academia and delivered an Imperial New Year’s Lecture, at the invitation of the Emperor of Japan—the first business professor asked to do so.
Berkeley Haas celebrated Nonaka in 2017 with a Lifetime Achievement award. He was the fifth recipient and the first academic to receive the honor In 1997. Then-Haas Dean Rich Lyons said that Nonaka’s impact on the business world would be long-lasting. “Applying a humanistic lens and practical wisdom to his research, he developed new frameworks for how organizations can transcend simply managing data to using the knowledge within their organizations to create better outcomes,” said Lyons, who is now UC Berkeley chancellor.
An era of research
Nonaka became interested in studying American theories of management while working for nine years at Fuji Electric. He began on the factory floor, and moved into roles in human resources, marketing, and finance. “In my eyes, Japan’s own management style at the time was already getting quite outdated,” he told Berkeley Haas Magazine in a 2017 interview. “I noticed that most new theories and methods were coming from the U.S.”
After earning his doctorate at Berkeley, Nonaka remained in California, becoming the first Distinguished Drucker Scholar in Residence at Claremont Graduate University. He returned to Japan as a professor at Hitotsubashi University in 1982, researching innovation at Japanese companies including Fuji, Xerox, Honda, and Canon.
Using their research on Japanese companies, Nonaka and Takeuchi described the process of product development in Japan as “rugby not relay.” “In Western companies, people pass the baton from one team to the next sequentially,” Takeuchi told Berkeley Haas Magazine. “But in Japan, they use a scrum, passing the ball back and forth to each other as they move down the field together.”
Embracing knowledge management
Over the years, Nonaka returned to Berkeley to meet with colleagues and teach—and his ideas left “indelible imprints” on many graduate students, said David Teece, the faculty director of the Tusher Center for the Management of Intellectual Capital.
Nonaka joined Teece in his class, “Management of Innovation and Change,” during the mid-1980s, and the two became committed colleagues as Nonaka embraced innovation and knowledge management as his core field of research, Teece said.
Teece and Nonaka also co-taught UC Berkeley Executive Education courses for Japanese companies in Japan and the U.S.
Nonaka’s breakthrough as a thought leader came with the 1994 publication of “A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation,” in Organization Science. The article helped establish the field of knowledge management as a discipline. In 1995, Nonaka collaborated with Takeuchi on the book “The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation,” which remains highly influential for its explanation of the role that Japanese philosophy could contribute to Western business.
“The Knowledge-Creating Company book written with Hiro is a classic in the strategy and organizational space,” said David Aaker, the E.T. Grether Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Public Policy. “Not many have such a visible home run. I believe he was one of the foremost global thought leaders in organizational behavior and business strategy in the last half-century.”
“I believe he was one of the foremost global thought leaders in organizational behavior and business strategy in the last half-century.”
Professor Emeritus David Aaker
In 1997, Fuji Xerox and Xerox together endowed the $1 million Xerox Distinguished Professorship in Knowledge, making Nonaka the first professor in the world dedicated to the study of knowledge management.
Lifelong influence
Henry Chesbrough, former faculty director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation at Haas and professor of Open Innovation and Sustainability at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, knew Nonaka as a mentor and colleague for 30 years. He said Nonaka excelled at blending theory and practice.
“Moving knowledge across an organization requires careful planning, and also socializing that knowledge, along with crafting a culture of empathy and understanding,” he said. “While he was a highly published academic, he was also deeply interested in actual companies and had ongoing relationships with several Japanese and American organizations throughout his life.”
Nonaka’s work with Takeuchi also endured throughout his life. The pair co-wrote two last articles together: “Humanizing Strategy” (Long Range Planning)” and “Strategy as a Way of Life” (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2021).
The day before Nonaka passed away, Takeuchi visited him at his home. “We worked hard together, didn’t we?” Nonaka told him. “It was so much fun, wasn’t it?”
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